It's interesting, I think, how much sheer emotion there is behind these child protection issues. Is there anything more emotionally provocative than the thought of harm to your children? Your own flesh and blood, who you've raised from before they could crawl. The amount of emotional and physical pain you've gone through (and willingly continue to go through) for your children far surpasses any other possible source.
Of course, people do overreact sometimes, but I think this is our instinct for a very good reason.
I think the strength of the emotion is perfectly understandable. The unfortunate side effect is that it makes rational discussion very difficult - because it's such an emotional issue, it's easy to misunderstand what others are saying, or to see something as much more black and white than it actually is.
The worst part is this emotional response is so easy to exploit. It can be "think of the children" laws with unintended (or intended) side effects. Or, like in this case, it can be used as a weapon to attack a person or community (even if I agree with the outcome, this particular instance feels like SA attacking Reddit either out of genuine outrage or, more likely, for shits and giggles).
Of course, people do overreact sometimes, but I think this is our instinct for a very good reason.