Category: Writers Block
Sterilisation is not a procedure to be taken lightly. For all intents and purposes,
though some modern methods can be reversed, it should always be considered permenant. That said, it's my firm belief that certain groups should be sterilised. These include those who will pass on life-threatening and/or debilitating diseases to their offspring, the severely mentally retarded, drug users who refuse to undergo counseling and rehabilitation and those with a history of abuse towards children and/or partners.
Having a disability is no fun and this is especially true for children. No one in their right mind would ever say "I can't wait to have a child so that he/she can have the same disability as me!" Yet there are actually people who, knowing that they will pass on a potentially life-threatening disease, choose to have children. Even in cases wherein it won't threaten the life of the child, it could still be so debilitating that the child will never grow into an adulthood of promise and possibility, but rather, into one of pain and suffering. Ordinarily, I would tell a pregnant woman to at least have the fetus tested for signs of any serious complications, wether or not she chooses to know the gender of the child. Should such abnormalities be found and determined to be severe enough, I would immediately advise the woman to have an abortion. But in cases wherein it's very clear that such a child would definitely be the outcome of a pregnancy, I believe strongly that the person should be sterilised. I say person because it might be the father with the disease. In that way, they can continue to have sex with no worries about getting/making someone pregnant. But if they are able to take care of a child, their desire to be parents is still strong, and the odds of one or both of them remaining alive for a decent amount of time are strong, I see no reason in the world why they can't adopt. If you're meant to be a parent and love children so much, why do they need to be your own and why must you have a child simply to say it's your's when you know he/she will suffer his whole life?
But what happens when the person involved doesn't even understand sex or gets the basics but can't take care of a child? I'm talking about the mentally retarded and the mentally disabled who are functional and not dangerous but still not able to care for a child. In the first case, we again have the possibility of the child turning out like the parents, which is truly undesirable. Here, the child isn't physically ill, but will never be able to grasp the basic things in life, or if his/her parents were a bit more sharp, will be able to do that, but again, won't be able to handle such a responsibility as parenthood. If such people have children, who will take care of them? They will end up in foster homes or group or nursing homes, if they are severely retarded, where they may be abused, neglected etc. In any of these cases, tax payer's money must be used to care for them and they will never be able to lead normal lives or contribute anything to society. The same is true for the mentally ill. While they may understand things, if the right kinds of genes mix, we could also wind up with a killer or again, someone who can't take care of him/herself and must be institutionalised, leading to the above problems.
We now come to serious drug users. I'm not talking about those who smoke some pot every once in awhile but those who do seriously dangerous things like heroin, cocaine, lsd and so on and who refuse to get help, to go through rehabilitation and to quit or even to attempt to do so. Here, I'm not speaking from my hat but from experience. My biological mother was a heroin addict and I live with the consequences of her actions every day of my life. I was born two months premature so needed to be put in an incubator until I was fully developed. When I was two-months-old, it was discovered that I was totally blind due to ROP (retinopathy of prematurity). At the time, the doctors said that it was likely due to a blow to the head. But more likely, as with so many other children born in the 80's, I was given too much oxygen. Thankfully, I'm only blind. But I know of several others with extremely severe disabilities as a result of their parents doing drugs. So while I respect a person's right to ruin his/her own life, that doesn't give him/her the right to inflict such damage on children and I do feel that, if they're that serious about not quitting/seeking help, they should be sterilised. The same holds true for alcoholics, since that can also cause horrendous birth defects and disabilities. Perhaps, the threat of being sterilised will help clean up some of these people.
There is a third group here which is extremely dangerous and which should never be allowed to have or to take care of children. These are abusers. Whether they've abused children, animals, the elderly or their partners, they have absolutely no place among children, let alone having them! It is true that, perhaps, some of these can be rehabilitated and in the less serious cases, I would always try that. If, after a few years of being watched closely, it is determined that they're safe, then I'd take them off the sterilisation list. But if they're found breaking the rules, particularly if it's in a truly brutal way, I'd push them to the top, skip the evaluation and sterilise them.
There's one final group, which, too often, falls through the cracks when discussing this issue. Many people may try to deny it, but there are those who actually volunteer to be sterilised. Most are probably thinking "sure, I know about them. They're the guys who have a few kids or the women who are through having them." Unfortunately, this is the response of many doctors as well. Consider this. At 27, a woman is old enough to work, drive, vote, drink alcohol, gamble, buy a house, join the military (where she may get killed) and decide to have children. Yet many doctors will still tell her that she's too young to decide *not* to have them at all. When I went to my doctor and explained my situation, demonstrated that I'd done my research and confirmed that I didn't want to ever have my own children, my doctor was very understanding and agreed to help me achieve sterility. She even listened when I explained that, upon conducting more research, I wanted to go for a tubal ligation and not Essure. But not everyone is as lucky and the laws need to be changed to protect those over 18 but under 30 so that they can make informed decisions and not be criticised. This also means that there should never be forced signing of papers that women/men think are for other things, so that those who don't wish to be sterilised and are not criminals or ill can be safe. Those who wish to undergo the procedure also need to be told that this is a permenant decision, and while it theoretically can be reversed, if they're thinking along those lines now, it really is best if they waited and used another form of contraception.
All of that said, there are some clearly inappropriate and horrible uses for sterilisation that I will never support. These include sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, religion, gender, income and/or manageable disabilities such as deafness, blindness and the like. The same, with the exception of income, holds true for abortion. That is, fetuses should never be aborted just because of these reasons, though there may be others in consideration and some, like religion, can't be determined anyway.
In conclusion, I feel that the proper use of sterilisation is well justified and that state-funded programs should be started and/or continued/modified to aid in the process. It's for the betterment of society, the economy and the potential children and parents.
The biggest problem with that is who gets to decide who is worthy of taking care of a child, and hwo isn't.
Except for the drug users it is an interesting view.
How would you decide who is not going to change there act? Maybe they are heavy users, but also are not having kids, so do you fix thim anyway?
I think that there are reliable ways of deciding who should be sterilised. Those who are proven rapists, abusers or otherwise criminally insane are automatically on the list as are those who are so severely mentally or physically disabled that they literally can't take care of a child. If you don't even know who you are or can barely move, how can you expect to be able to handle taking care of a baby? For the rest, there should be a nonpartial committee set up to psychologically test people who might potentially be bad parents. These include drug users and alcoholics who completely refuse to undergo rehabilitation or to stop using/drinking, people with extreme depression etc. They can be evaluated for a given time so that it can be determined that this is not a temporary resistance to help. Even if the users don't want children, there is always a possibility of the women getting pregnant and of the men impregnating the women. If they're really high, or just plain careless, they may not use protection. So yes, I say sterilise them. If they really want a child that badly in the future, they can adopt, provided that they remain clean/sober for a decent amount of time.
To follow up on TBG's comment, who is there to decide? Are we going to have governments decide who should and shouldn't live? This is one of the many reasons why abortion is so rampant in countries like China and Russia. Weren't there forced sterilzations in Nazi Germany? While I don't disgree with your premise, I don't think the government should decide who is worthy to ahve children and who isn't, much as I think the option is appealing on some level.
Kate's absolutely right: even though I am no longer anti-regulation as I once were, this isn't one of those things.
Let's say for sake of argument you don't have a Nazi Germany campaign, or a Eugenics campaign like parts of the U.S. and Europe in the 1930s: let's say you have just such a group as Eleni proposes.
Here's the problem: Every public institution must justify its existence or it will be done away with. The only way regulatory agencies can justify their existence to you the taxpayer via your representation in Congress is to convince you / them you need more regulation. Sometimes, like the FCC (when it comes to frequency allocation and satellites), it works right. Other times not. For any body to survive, it's got to grow, or at very least replenish itself.
So before you knew it, in order for this regulatory body to not be done away with as needless pork, it will lobby for fillabusters on bills, create more red tape, and all the other things we have grown to love to hate about governments and public institutions. Then Congress will expect to see numbers, so said agency will do what it is people often do: fiddle with the procedures to crank out the numbers.
Again, not against regulation as a comcept, but you can't deploy it without very careful consideration of its fallout. And this case I don't think warrants it, or is even technically feasible.
Everyone knows why people want it: we all know you go to the hospital, you end up paying more because others pay nothing at all. You've got projects full of unemployed and probably unemployable. Most of us find the idea of just leaving the children of such to fend for themselves a revolting concept. India and other developing nations are trying to do what they can to get away from that. I certainly don't know what the answer is to these situations. And because I look at results as a medium, it's pretty apparent to me nobody else does either. At least not on a scale we're looking at here in this country.
But, Eleni, eugenics is a dark road which has been taken and forsaken in various forms by institutions, religious and secular alike. I think you'll find with a bit of reading, the human concensus puts it on par with scientific experiments performed on humans, something that hasn't been done since Nazi Germany.