Social Engineering is Not a Degree That Should Be Offered
Right. I don’t usually tackle topics of controversy on this site, simply because I did it once and it all went very pear-shaped courtesy of a right-wing hackjob who calls herself a journalist blogger deciding to ignore what was decent and simply direct her animals readers to my site and proffer threats the likes of which I’d rather not receive again, thanks.
A BBC Radio 4 programme was brought to my attention. It is a very serious and very controversial topic and it’s not one that I embrace lightly. But I sat at the kitchen counter last night listening to it on the iPlayer, shouting at the computer every 20 seconds. I was engaged in the radio programme. I was attuned to it.
I was livid.
There’s a woman named Barbara Harris who started a movement called CRACK, or Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity. I had a hard enough time with the stupid moniker, it made my teeth itch hearing someone butcher things like that. CRACK has been changed to Project Prevention, which has a basic premis: pay women addicted to drugs to be on contraception or – preferrably – to be sterilized. It’s as she stated using leaflets in poor and minority neighborhoods, “DON’T Let a Pregnancy get in the way of your crack habit!” She went on to state that the women who are on drugs who have children are no better than dogs. She battled in California legislation to get women who have children while on drugs to be put on long-term birth control. In her view, women should be forcably sterilized, a move which was seen by the International Criminals Court as a crime against humanity.
I can’t begin to tell you how uncontrollably angry this makes me.
Let me be clear on this – having children who are born addicted to drugs and must go through withdrawal is not ok. It’s despicable, it’s cruel, it’s neglect, it’s wrong on absolutely every level. My being a mum notwithstanding, I would never be ok with children born with the horror that drug withdrawal is, and I include fetal alcohol syndrome as another condition forced upon the innocent that they should not be bearing. Not ok. Not ever.
I fully support handing out birth control pills, which I know makes me diametrically opposed with those who spout on about abstinence. People will have sex, we might as well prepare for the results. I support free birth control for those who request it and would gladly contribute my tax money to support it (and, in the case of the NHS, I do). You want to run a type of planned parenthood targeted at drug addicts? Rock on. You have my support.
But forcing women to sterilization is not ok. Using their addiction as the lever to choices about their health that they are in no place to make is not ok. As recently as the 1980’s some countries have been forcably sterilizing citizens with mental illness, all as a type of modified eugenics (not to mention that Germany in WWII forcibly sterilized Jews, minorities, homosexuals, and political prisoners). People react with horror at the concept of forcible sterilization due to mental illness…yet drug addiction is listed in the DSM-IV as a mental illness.
I get the foundation of what Barbara Harris is trying to do – she wants to end children winding up in foster care and social services, she wants an end to children born to drug-addled mothers. I support and embrace that, too. What I don’t embrace is the idea of sterilization. She is peddling a permanent solution to women who have impaired judgement. They are making long-term and permanent decisions about their future while in a state that makes them unable to do so. They don’t have the best interest in mind for their children, but if/when some of these men and women clean up and sober up, they may find that they are now facing a lifetime without children, something that most would argue is a “biological right” (although yes, I do struggle severely with the idea that you need a license to drive a car, but not to have a child). Barbara Harris says if they clean up she’ll pay for the sterilization to be reversed and then they’ll be able to have children. I say: Like fuck it will, and this is something I know something about.
I also don’t embrace referring to these women as dogs. They are people. They are people with some serious fucking problems, but they are people. When I listened to her on the radio, I was irate. There she was, spouting her word as law. Her children, she said, she hopes will be on long-term birth control. She wants them to be a lot older before they become parents. She advocates that everyone is on birth control for a long time before children arrive. I see where she’s coming from on this one – I presume she simply wants to ensure that parents are mature and ready for kids, that they are mentally, fiscally and physically able to handle children. I used to think that, too, but one thing that blogging has taught me is that for every stereotype – a 20 year old mum who just wants to party and neglects her kid – there is something to break the stereotype – a 20 year old mum who is devoted and hard-working and is raising her child in a nurturing and able environment. It’s not up to us to judge. It’s not up to us to impose conditions. By all means, administer birth control pills and/or patches, I absolutely support that, but do it in such a way that you don’t take the human out of the equation. These men and women didn’t wake up one morning and say “Yessir, I choose to have a drug addiction!” Treating them like animals is unlikely to be a motivator to recovery.
She started her campaign as a way to save drug-addicted babies, four of which she has adopted herself. I absolutely agree that protecting the children is paramount, but surely there is a less dictatorial way to take care of this. Addressing this huge gulf of socio-economics, for example, in itself perhaps the biggest trigger to this vicious cycle in the first instance. I wonder if, upon testing positive for substances and a newborn testing positive for substances, that shouldn’t be considered child endangerment and the mother put into compulsory rehabilitation (in another location, to help give her the best chances of recovery, away from the environment in which drugs were made available) while the child is taken into care to recover from the addiction it has had imposed on it. The problem is that there is one tiny little victim in all of this, a newborn has to be subjected to something it shouldn’t, and I can’t figure out how to square that circle (which is my issue, as child abuse makes me uncontrollably angry). But I know that pushing legislation to forcibly sterilize women is not the way to do it. It’s a slippery slope – what’s next? Sterilizing people who have depression, because that runs in families and you don’t want to deal with children that will need medication and treatment to deal with the depression? Maybe we should tie the tubes of women who have a history of breast cancer in the family, go ahead and save a little money in the NHS? The problem needs to be sorted at the root cause, and yes I get that it’s hard as hell to do that ergo why it hasn’t been done, but this Project Prevention is simply a plaster over the serious wound that is the real heart of the matter. Social engineering should never be an option.
Barbara Harris says her heart is with the children.
So is mine.
And I imagine a world of social and medical engineering where people crack the borders and say: You have an illness and I am going to sterilize you because of it and I fear the worst.
-S.
PS-I can imagine this post may draw some serious debate. If you don’t agree with me or other commenters then that’s fine, but let’s keep it civil.
How many drug-addicted babies born to a single mother is enough, though? (And by single, I mean one.) I know a family who has adopted two children out of seven from the same druggie mom. If the adoptive parents are to be believed, all seven children have a different baby daddy. All seven are living with relatives or are in foster care or have been adopted. Now, it has been a joy to see these little boys grow up, especially the younger one. When I first met him, (and this is making me cry now) he was about a year old and the size of a 6 month old with no coordination whatsoever. He was as floppy as a newborn, and you had to hold him just so carefully because he trembled all the time. He’s 4 now and looks like a normal kid, although a bit small. Both boys are in a special school for kids with developmental and mental problems. The older brother is a bit slow mentally, but he is friendly and strong as an ox.
Yes, the mothers should be rehabilitated. But if they can’t be, and if they are using their bodies to get more drugs.. perhaps long-term birth control is a better option? If someone’s going to abuse their own body in that way, should the children who will be born have to pay the price? And then, just trying to think of long-term birth control, IUDs and Norplant come to mind. But you should be sexually monogamous with the IUD and is a drug addicted woman going to take care of the Norplant site or see her doctor regularly for injections?
To partially quote Chris Rock, “Now, I’m not saying what [Barbara Harris is doing is] right, but I understand.”
Forced sterilization is wrong. Period. Who gets to decide which women are worthy enough to breed? This smacks of genetic cleansing. Oh, I know, she is talking about drug addicts, but where will it end? What about women with genetic diseases? Women with a history of breast cancer? Women with IQs lower than pick-a-number? No, can’t do it. It is a crime against humanity.
Long-term birth control? Great idea. If my tax dollars are supporting you then you have no damn business having kids. Get off welfare/food stamps/WIC and have as many as you like, but I sure don’t want to support your kids as well as mine.
I’m with Marie – forced sterilization is wrong under any circumstances. Decriminalisation of all drugs and proper medical and psychiatric help for addicts would cut down crime (massively) and ruduce all teh probelms associated with addiction. Hell, I’d pay more tax to get that.
But I fear we’re about to get a dose of Tory Toff values, so it’ll just get worse, not better.
PS, hate it when I forget to check my spelling…
While I would definitely agree with your position, I can see how Barbara may have developed her extreme ideas. It sounds as if she has spent a lot of time up close and personal with these babies and I can imagine that could cloud one’s judgment and make one a bit less objective. If you put me in front of a line of these suffering babies, I’d probably suggest a much stronger punishment for the mothers than sterilization. Rationality and objectiveness would fly out the window.
I don’t think it’s my right, nor anyone else’s, to deem who should be sterilized. I do believe that it’s a more sound financial decision, as a tax payer, to make contraceptives available than to pay for the child born into such sad circumstances.
If this Project Prevention actually catches on, and the addicts are sterilized…
1) Will men addicts also be sterilized? They can’t bear children, but I’m pretty sure the help in the creating process.
2) If after being sterilized, the addict undergoes treatment and such and becomes a clean and sober individual and they decide they want children… could they start legal procedures to sue the state/gov for forcably terminatng their human rights to bear children?
I believe there are little capsules that can be implanted in a woman that prevents her from having a baby for 5 years or so. That would be a good short term solution. After 4 or 5 years, test her for drugs. If she’s positive for drugs, put another capsule in. If not, remove the old one. If after 2 years she wants kids, test her for drugs. If she’s clean, remove the capsule. If not, too bad.
In my opinion, they should only be prevented from having kids until they’re drug free. I presume Barbara’s position is that most of the women she’d like to sterilize will likely be drug addicts for life. Still, I think most sensible people would be against permanent sterilization.
Who hasn’t said before while listening to a news story of abused children “some people should not be allowed to have children”? So I get her gut reaction to do something. But this is just a slippery slope into eugenics and is NOT OK.
I can see why you were livid while listening to this. This is disgusting.
Rare poster, frequent lurker…. I had to post because I see the damage that drug addiction does every day. And although it is not someone’s CHOICE to become an addict, it WAS their choice to pick up that bottle, needle, whatever, to begin with. I write adoption studies for foster kids, and I’ve seen far too many women have child after child, all drug-addicted, being placed in foster care. And then our tax dollars go to feeding, clothing, educated, paying for childcare, therapy, medical care, etc for these children. Many prospective adoptive parents want the “perfect” child to adopt – under age five, caucasian, no major medical issues. Most of the time this isn’t the case and these children remain “in the system” for far too long. It seems devestatingly true that those we deem the “least fit” to have kids seem to be the most fertile. I don’t know what the answer is, but my heart breaks a little more every time I see a child thrust into this world only to suffer…and the so-called parents get away scot-free. 90% of the time the father is nowhere in the picture – WHY is this not more of an issue??? I read about generation after generation of kids repeating their parents’ mistakes. Something has to be done.
Ditto that no one should be forcibly sterilized. Absolutely not. However, I can see what this woman is trying to do here, as wrongheaded and extreme as it is. Example: I have a school friend who has battled addiction on and off for 15 years or so, has had no less than eight abortions (we think more), many paid for by the State. Her elderly parents are raising her kids and, essentially, her as well. She’s on Welfare. The kids are on Welfare. She won’t use birth control, won’t stop having sex (to pay for drugs). It’s a terrible, terrible cycle. She is a “lifer.” She will never get her kids back. She will not change her behavior. It breaks my heart. If she had the opportunity for govt-funded, long-term birth control or even sterilization, she would probably take up that option. But that’s the critical key word – OPTION.
Social engineering is going on all around us. My daughters were forced to go to a school 7 miles from our house instead of one 2 miles away. Why? So she can co-mingle with another “class” of kids. I’d much rather she be in school with other middle class kids; but she’s forced to go to school with very wealthy kids. Ha, you thought I was going to say I didn’t want my kids being exposed to poor riff raff; but in this story my kids ARE the poor riff raff. : ) I don’t like the influence of excessive wealth on my kids, so I’d rather they go to school with kids similar to them.
So is some social engineering good and some bad?
Here’s another thought: people forfeit certain rights all the time. The right to vote (in America) is forfeited if one commits a felony. The right to privacy is forfeited if one commits a sex crime. The right to life/freedom is forfeited if one murders. Giving birth is a right, but can/should it be forfeited if someone’s crime is heinous enough? Have 1 crack baby, and you get the 5 year capsule to prevent children; and have a 2nd crack baby and you lose the right to have children.
But what if they get drug free? We could say the same about a felon, a murderer, or a pedophile; unfortunately some actions have permanent consequences even if the offender cleans up his act.
And it’s not as though we’re trying to prevent someone from procreating; they’d already have 2 kids by the time they were sterilized. If we view bringing a baby into the world as a drug addict as a crime, shouldn’t there be consequences to doing that? Possibly permanent ones?
Forcible sterilization is wrong. Full stop. Coerced sterilization is no good either, and yes, impaired judgment falls into that category.
Year-long or multi-year birth control sounds really good to me. And FWIW, I’m one of those people that is not happy with the sexualization of our culture, and the side effects that birth control has on the culture and our bodies. But really, I think there’s a serious ethical question here and it can’t be solved by saying “either/or” when one of the options just isn’t going to happen, and birth control is a practical solution.
I agree that forced sterilization is wrong, no matter what the circumstances.
I also find it completely revolting that mothers of children born addicted get no punishment whatsoever. Right there? That’s an area of prevention. If there is a consequence to having a drug addicted baby (in addition to having the child removed from the mother’s custody, because in many cases, that’s not a punishment), you might see fewer addicted babies. Jail time. Forced rehab. Daily visits with a parole officer to have them watch you take your birth control pill. Something, anyway.
This is a topic that is very close to me at the moment.
My partner’s ex is a using Meth addict. They were together for a grand total of 6 weeks and somehow in that time she ‘managed’ to get pregnant. In England, you get pregnant without a job and the council will give you pretty much everything you want, which is what’s happened. I hasten to add, that when they broke up he had no clue she was pregnant.
Not only is she using but she has actually increased her dosage during her pregnancy. All I want to do is slap her and tell her to stop being so selfish but I don’t think she truly realises the repurcussions of her actions. Once the baby is born it will take 6 months to go through detox, provided she doesn’t still use and attempt to breast feed.
She was on the pill.
She’s 21.
You can’t force anybody to do anything that they don’t want to do, it’s a basic breach of human rights (god I hate having to say that). All we can do now is wait to see what the results of the paternity test are (because she’s a notorious liar as well) and if that child does turn out to by my partners then I will fight tooth & nail to get him full custody.
Somewhere mid rant I lost my point. I look at her and think “you’re not worthy to have kids” but maybe, one day, if she cleans up her act, she will be ‘worthy’. It is not our place to judge or decide what is best for these people. Maybe, just maybe, if they see what they have done to their children then the sheer horror of it all will be enough to change them.
We can but hope…
Fifteen years ago I would have agreed that forced sterilization should never be allowed. However, after working with abused/neglected and drug addicted kids……I have to say I see the merits. When parents become involved in our local court system, the judge orders them not become pregnant-however, I would guess that in 50-75 percent of the cases I work with the mom’s become pregnant while the children are in foster care. What is the solution? I don’t know, I just know that the problems seems to be getting worse-not better. I my personal belief is that people should be allowed to have as many children as they can carry, love, protect and pay for. When their parenting requires legal intervention-it seems that the parents may need help in making decisions about future children. My heart breaks for these kids.
Lemurgirl,
You can’t force anybody to do anything that they don’t want to do, it’s a basic breach of human rights (god I hate having to say that).
We do all the time. When someone uses drugs, we force them into rehab. When someone does crack, we force them into prison. When someone abuses their children, we take the kids away. So there is precedence for forcing action on people that they don’t want.
It is not our place to judge or decide what is best for these people.
When parents don’t do what’s best for kids, social services regularly steps in and takes action. I’m not saying social services is perfect, but wouldn’t it be better to step in before kids are conceived and require temporary birth control instead of the “state” having to monitor and possibly pay for a child for it’s entire pre-adult life?
Maybe, just maybe, if they see what they have done to their children then the sheer horror of it all will be enough to change them.
That’s our hope, but it’s a very big gamble with a child’s life if the mom doesn’t change. Don’t you agree?
Hi Shannon. Slightly off-topic, but I thought you might be interested in this. In Vancouver we have a place called Insite, North America’s only safe injection site, which in addition to reducing unsafe needle use and risk of death by overdose, provides addicts with access to health services, including birth control. The US gov’t has been very critical, and our (awful) conservative government has been trying to shut it down. The BC Court of Appeal very recently issued a decision that closing the site down would be unconstitutional. Here’s a very excellent piece from CBC that you might like to watch if you have a little time:
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2008-2009/staying_alive/video.html
And a song about the situation by a local band called the Be Good Tanyas (with a bad youtube video, sorry)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHBWgC8Xm2s&feature=PlayList&p=7D7B198F74A194FD&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=3
I worked in Social Services for awhile, and let me tell ya, the whole system is broke. There are good people out there who are trying to do the best they can-but there’s so many battles to be fought.
I have held babies that are a few hours old and addicted to heroin-and I have watched them painfully withdrawal. I have also seen people lose their parental rights, turn around and say “I’ll just have more kids”.
It is a horrible, rotten truth. I don’t know the answer, but forcible sterilization isn’t it. Just as I could never force a woman to have a baby, I could never tell her she isn’t allowed to have one, either.
I don’t want anyone telling me if I can have kids or not-and as someone who comes from a family of bi-polar, depressed, alcoholic drug addicts I am damn glad no one can.
There’s always a better answer than this-because this is just ugly.
Tried to find something in your thoughts to disagree with; but alas I find myself in complete agreement. The sterilization arguments make absolutly no sense on moral, ethical or scientific grounds. Eugenics cannot succeed as most “defects” are recessive in nature. So even if one assumes substance abuse behavior is genetically determined the recessive nature means one cannot breed it out of the population in question.
Always amazes me how the right wing politically always talks financial restraint yet consistently ignores the fact that prevention and early intervention is always cheaper regardless of the issue in question. Wonder why that it?
Great post Shannon. Thanx.
Forced sterilisation is wrong, regardless of why they want to do it. Wrong on all counts. Long term birth control, I am all for that. But sterilisation, like you said, it’s a slippery slope. What about people with genetic conditions – should we not be allowed to have children?
We all feel grief when we see injustice, well most of us do. We look for answers, we look for reason, we look to understand. Unfortunately. life isn’t simple but our ability to process information is. So we are pulled to seemingly straightforward and “easy” solutions to complex and incomprehensible problems.
It is so easy to generalize from the specifics, because it is comprehensible and familiar. Unfortunately with a subject as grave as this one it only skims the surface. When you start classifying people like this, you open the door to a culture that can ultimately allow the de-personification of sectors of society.
And that is the top of a very slippery slope and one that I, personally, would never wish to participate in. We should seek to understand, help and support. We should not seek, to dehumanize our fellow (wo)man.
Social engineering: And where are the males in this equation? (Other than the doctors and legislators.) I mean, jump back, the fertilizers…the other fifty percent of the outcome? And here’s a sticky note fellas, what if the woman, the “crack-whore”, isn’t pregnant by choice? O poor men, poor steeds, what can the product of this situation be?
This is a subject that I have, and continue to, struggle with mightily. I pretty much echo Shannon’s position – having children while on drugs (or otherwise incompetent to be a functional parent) is a crime in itself, but letting the government dictate one’s reproductive rights is an even greater crime. Once forced sterilization is allowed to take place, we are definitely on a slippery slope to totalitarianism.
But it’s difficult to remain objective when you see the consequences of poor parenting decisions in your very own life. My wife & I are currently raising our grandson, the child of our middle daughter who carried him while on drugs, then left him with us without looking back. He seems pretty healthy so far, but we don’t know what lies down the road as far as health problems go due to our daughter’s drug use.
Also we have a niece that has had five children and pawned every one of them off on relatives due to being unable and unwilling to care for them (something I’ve blogged extensively about). When you’ve had a nephew cry in your arms that he misses his mom, you cannot comfort him by telling him his mother is a worthless piece of shit. But you do wish you could rip the reproductive organs out of her body so she can’t create any more children that’ll suffer because of her neglect.
Got carried away there for a minute. Shannon, you did hit a sore subject with me, but one I believe we can see eye to eye with. Despite the heart-wrenching consequences to children in such situations, forced sterilization is the wrong way to solve such problems. But you have to use your head to draw such a conclusion, because your heart may disagree.
I had a few thoughts to share here. The first is that yes, I fully agree that these people need help, and that there needs to be consequences. The second is that I also totally agree that forced sterilization is wrong. Long-term birth control seems like a good option — but don’t those have to be surgically implanted? Is that okay, to force someone to undergo surgery to prevent her having kids? I don’t know very much about this, but I don’t think forced surgery is the perfect solution, either. But maybe better than we have so far.
The other thought is about genetic diseases — I was watching the inspirational quilt videos for Extraordinary Measures and those families whose children have genetic disorders often had two with the same disorder. I’m not talking about depression or alcoholism, which (from what I understand) is not a clear path of inheritance, it’s a risk factor. These are disorders with clear autosomal (recessive/dominant) patterns. I understand that you may have had a second child before you realized your first child has this condition, but to me, however unwitting it is, that is not fair to the children either. Obviously I do not wish to sterilize these women — but I would advocate genetic testing on either everybody, or everybody who has risk factors for being a carrier (not that I know what these are, but hey) and then these people could decide, as a couple, what to do if they are both carriers. I would never want to sterilize anybody, but in the case of genetic disorders, I think these couples are often responsible, moral people, who nevertheless bring children into the world to suffer through no fault of their own. But if they would have made a different choice if forewarned, shouldn’t we be forewarned? It’s something I struggle with because I don’t currently want any children. But if ever I did, both my mother and my grandmother have crippling arthritis, and I understand that’s one of the genetic-risk-factor things. Would it be fair for me to have my own biological child if chances were it would suffer that way?
I DO agree with you.
I think Solomon has it right – we cannot force sterilization, but why in the world can’t we force contraception? We lock people up for hurting themselves via drugs, we lock them up for taking a tv from someone else. We write very strict laws about doing these things. How are these crimes worse than bringing a child into the world that is already addicted and will have to fight for decades for some semblance of health, love and normalty?
If society at large needs to protect those who cannot protect themselves then we owe our consideration to the kids, not the addicts. A hormone capsule in the arm is FAR less invasive than a full body search in prison.
I believe that people have a right to create a FAMILY that they can love. If they cannot love, and take responsibility for, their family, then why should they have the right to create one? We legislate all sorts of things that take other humans’ lives into peril – driving, guns, practicing medicine. This should be one of them.
“I would advocate genetic testing on either everybody, or everybody who has risk factors for being a carrier”
My health care provider has a checklist for common recessives that should be tested for— as in, “Your family came from [this area of Eastern Europe]“. Aside from those, it’s up to you— I chose not to, because there’s no indications in the family line, and boy howdy, we know because my first nephew was born a “floppy baby” and you can bet my brother tore up the family tree looking for a cause. (FWIW, that young man has graduated from high school, is physically healthy but short, and is intelligent but socially and emotionally a little strange— hardly surprising, with four normal younger siblings.)
In general, the genetic risks have decreased to the point where a study done a few years back said in most cases, there’s not even a risk from marrying your first cousin. Most cases. And I still think genetic diversity should go on for a bit longer.
I just want to clarify that this group IS NOT forcing sterilization. Rather it is encouraging either birth control or sterilization, the woman DOES have the choice whether to do it and which method to choose. And it IS going on right now in about 20 cities across the U.S. and it IS being paid for by tax dollars (funded by taxpayers through federal and state programs such as Medicaid and California’s Medi-Cal) although Project Prevention pays a $200 incentive to the women to get it done.
Clarification noted, but I want to clarify that it is not forcing sterilization only because it failed to pass in legislation, but the intention was that there would be forced sterilization and undoubtedly that’s still a quiet goal (seeing as the founder of the project refers to women as dogs). The drug addict in question (and yes, they pay for vasectomies too) may have the choice about what to do and what method but I’d again argue that the capacity for making long-term choices like that is severely impaired.
And surely if she was so keen on helping the addict, she wouldn’t be handing $200 out, knowing where it would be going?
I echo Paula’s comment – “While I would definitely agree with your position, I can see how Barbara may have developed her extreme ideas. It sounds as if she has spent a lot of time up close and personal with these babies and I can imagine that could cloud one’s judgment and make one a bit less objective. If you put me in front of a line of these suffering babies, I’d probably suggest a much stronger punishment for the mothers than sterilization. Rationality and objectiveness would fly out the window.”
I don’t like the problem. I don’t like the solution either.
I’m with Julie – how many is enough? These are women who are having 6, 7, 8 children none of whom they are raising – and unlike some women who have multiple children who are taken into care, and who WANT to raise them (but are incapable, or incapable of leaving a violent partner), don’t actually want to raise them.
I heard the tail end of this and didn’t hear her say that the women were dogs. I think I heard her say “we do this with dogs” which is rather like some people’s assertion that we should have to have a licence to have kids since we have to have one to have a dog.
The contraceptive pill would be pointless for these women – they would never take it regularly. Perhaps paying them to have a 3-year implant would be a better alternative. They are going to get the money for drugs from somewhere and they may as well earn it from a good result (preventing a small amount of theft or prostitution).
Shannon, you pose a very good debate. I know morally that forced sterilization is wrong on all accounts. But there is something about seeing an undersized full term newborn’s lips tremor as she went through withdrawal and it makes you wonder. I’ve never felt so powerless to help someone or been so angry at my sister as I had to watch my niece go through withdrawal to her mother’s selfish actions. I was there for her through this and her “rehab” I actually called social services on her as she was high on something other than methadone 2 days before she delivered. I believe I saved my niece from the unknown and unstable emotional roller coaster my sister is. She is now almost 3 and thriving in the care of my other sister and her husband.
She has since had baby #3 which as far as I know she is raising in some kind of long term halfway house. After what I went through trying to be there for her and doing everything I could including giving her extra visits with her daughter on my days off I took a step back with this baby.
Her teenage daughter absolutely hates her as she chose drugs over her.
So seeing this first hand and wondering ho many kids she will have I understand the idea behind forced sterilization albeit wrong I get what Ms. Harris is coming from.
[...] other news, check out this spirited discussion over at Shannon’s about the debate of forced sterilization of women who are addicted to drugs. [...]
This makes me think of debates over the US First Amendment – as a book I read states it, “Freedom for the thought that we hate.” Essentially, we have to allow hate speech, pornography, etc. because to abridge it would abridge free speech as a whole. And then a precedent is set. It’s the same with this debate, as you said – if we sterilize a junkie (even if it’s “volunteer” which IMO it is not, since offering $200 to a junkie does not lead to the making of a rational decision), do we then sterilize someone with another DSM-IV classification? Do we sterilize the homeless, or those with Down’s Syndrome, or autism? And as the offspring of two parents with DNA replete with fun mental illness, I already feel as though I’d be playing Russian roulette were I to breed, undoubtedly passing, at the very least, a healthy dose of depression to my possible future children. Should I be sterilized?
The “slippery slope” argument, while often political BS (no, same-sex marriage is not a precursor towards inter-species marriage, sorry wingnuts) is perhaps the most central argument here. And while I admittedly fantisize about sneaking up behind Michelle Duggar and slapping ten or twenty birth control patches on her, I cannot in good conscience say that bribing addicts to be sterilized is anything but a violation of human rights.
D – it is not the issue of the parents’ DNA – it is the issue of the damage done to the child through drug exposure in utero and neglect, abandonment, and bouncing around the foster care system, after birth. I bet your parents never put you through that.
(I feel I should also add, and will perhaps blog about this separately, that Fergal Keane expressed extreme scepticism that a woman would be allowed to adopt with a history of drug abuse or convictions for possession/supply/prostitution. The only convictions that completely prevent you from adoption, in the UK anyway and I think it’s the same over the pond, are offences against children and violent assault. So a clean drug addict can adopt. Not that this is much further away from “oh you’re infertile, you should Just Adopt”, but just to get our facts straight).