Well, I'm in this conversation, so I'm not clear on what you mean. Sure, discomfort is a natural, acceptable reaction to all kinds of artistic expression. My objection is that I feel a line was crossed from storytelling to exploitation. For me, The Professional passed muster because it still had those moments of discomfort about an uncomfortable subject matter, but the handling of it in Leon, IMO, was gratuitous and salacious. My original point was that The Professional succeeded in telling the same story without having to sexually objectify a child the way Leon did (I can't give exact examples, I haven't seen them since the 90s, so I'm relying on the memory of how I originally reacted to it as a viewer just a few years older than Portman). Though I know little about Luc Bisson as a person and haven't seen more than a few of his movies, other commenters' remarks of him being a certified creep is not surprising.

The Professional (1994) is probably the only film I know where I actually preferred the version re-edited for the American market. It was less plodding, and it kept the symbiotic relationship of two very lonely people who had been violently let down and abandoned by humanity while minimizing the creepier aspects of Leon (1994). I saw the original version, Leon, years after The Professional and I felt the more overt sexualizing of these two paradoxical innocents was creepy and stomach turning. Some may accuse me of American puritanism, but I'll stand my ground that in Leon, it went too far. I also felt a little bewildered that while Portman had received a lot of sexualized harassment when she was still a child, much of it likely in response to this role, she then came to the defense of Roman Polanksy's facing his rape charges involving a very young girl. Though looking this up, I've just found that Portman has since publicly apologized and regretted signing the petition in his defense.

EDIT: I haven't seen either version in decades, seeing the OP's title "Leon: The Professional", I'm realizing there may be other versions I'm not aware of.

Precious moment when the cops scoff at her saying “I’m going to die” and all agreeing it’s an act right before she loses consciousness and dies. Obviously the hospital showed the same level of callousness to get her arrested in the first place when it’s obvious to anyone she was in medical distress.

What this article glaringly leaves out are the working conditions that drive so many recent hires to quit within several months. As the article states, it’s challenging to find people who are willing to take a $40k salary with a college degree for a job that in the best of circumstances is challenging, stressful, very high stakes, and emotionally and physically exhausting. But from what I know from my sibling who until recently was a social worker in a related field, funding for these programs is repeatedly slashed, resulting in each caseworker is saddled with more cases than can humanly be managed. So much of this kind of job means being present in the field for their clients who are usually in crisis, while simultaneously obligated to be in court for another, and multiply that into dozens, or even more. Now add mountains of paperwork. People burn out and get demoralized because they’re not given the tools to succeed on behalf of their clients.