Misery-free treatment of a child’s lice infestation
Coercion is absolutely NOT necessary to treat a lice infestation. It was not even true 30 years ago, in the days of the nasty nit comb and stinky skin-peeling shampoo.
bodily integrity
“How do you determine what food to give your children?”
How do you yourself determine what to eat? It is the same with children. What we eat is determined by a number of things, including what we feel like eating, which may be affected by our ideas about health and other things.
“Is hiding medicine in your child’s food wrong?”
What turns taking medicine from something neutral or mildly unpleasant that you are willing to do to help you get better, to something terrifying and traumatic that you would rather die than do, is not actually the horrible taste of the medicine, it is the lack of control, the fear of being forced, the violation of your bodily integrity—which is a violation of your mental integrity, your agency. Something can feel fine if it is voluntary, but extremely traumatic if it is involuntary.
Whose ends?
Why the standard justifications for coercion don’t make sense.