And lets not forget those babies with fetal alcohol syndrome. And I’m not sure those crack babies haven’t suffered permanent effects either.
This charity offers several options of long term birth control and only allows for sterilization of people who have children already. They are preventing addicted, damaged, and otherwise abused children from being born and then shuffled around from foster home to foster home while their parent tries to get clean. I can’t see anything wrong with this at all and I would seriously consider donating to this charity. If they weren’t offering the temporary birth control options I might have a problem with it and if they were offering sterilization to people who didn’t already have children that might also be a problem but they aren’t doing either of those things. I think this might actually be a perfect solution to many of the problems so many foster parents, doctors, nurses, and other people working to help the children of addicts are facing.
I also don’t see how this is much different than all of the medical tests (mostly for birth control pills) where they offered $400 or $500 to you to take their pill and come in for medical exams once a week when I was 19 and hard up for cash. I think that was probably even worse because the medication was still in test phases and they didn’t know exactly what it would do to you if you were allergic or how effective it actually was as a birth control method so you could have ended up knocked up or hospitalized for participating with those studies. At least with this you know exactly what you are getting into when you take their $300 in exchange for your fertility, however temporary or permanent it may be.
It’s not. That doesn’t make it okay to buy them drugs.
Seriously, is it terribly hard to understand the concept that doing one bad thing that prevents another bad thing (even a worse thing) isn’t necessarily okay? That the ends don’t automatically justify the means, no matter how lovely an end it is?
Look, we are not talking about a neutral situation here. There is existing harm to be suffered. Someone will suffer it.
Either a child will certainly suffer the horrors of neglect and abuse, or a an adult faces the possibility of suffering the regret of cleaning up and finding an option closed to them.
I think all of you are also glossing over the horror a parent suffers upon the realization that they have harmed their child. It is much more possible to get clean without that sort of guilt hanging over one.
Given the choice between certainly putting a child in harm’s way (these people have a track record of producing and then neglecting/abusing babies) or possibly putting the reponsible adult in harm’s way, I’d like to think any adult would choose to take the hit. Some wouldn’t. Given what that says about their character, double the money to bribe those to be sterilized.
Have you ever offered or bought anyone a drink or shared a joint ?
You haven’t explained why sterilizing them is a bad thing or why you think that paying them to get sterilized is a worse thing than seeing babies go through crack withdrawal, get shuffled off to foster homes or get left alone to starve. Those ARE the two choices. Infertile junkies or crack babies. There is no third alternative. You have to decide what’s worse. Why is it so important to you for junkies to be fertile?
Because I love junkies and want babies to suffer. What other reason could I possibly have?
Oh wait, I totally have other reasons, which I’ve outlined quite clearly. Bored now.
I think you’ve lacking the understanding here. It’s a clear net good any way you want to add it up. It may not be the optimal good (arguably temporary sterilization has more utility), but I think anyone with any sort of reasonable sense of morality and utility will acknowledge an abusive (or at least neglectful) screwed up parent not being able to have kids is a massive less bad than an innocent kid in that situation.
So, uh, yeah, if one is a 9/10 on the bad scale, and the other is a 3/10, you do actually do good if doing the 3 makes the 9 not happen.
What’s strangest to me here is that you’ve said you’d support the measure if they gave them $300 in food credit instead. So you aren’t above declaring the sterilization worthwhile to prevent a harm - you’re willing to let people be bought into sterilization - but you apparently can’t abide the idea of a druggie potentially using money for $300 more in drugs.
That’s the part that doesn’t compute with me. If the charity gave out McDonalds gift certificates it would be OK?
Because, and this is the very last time I’m going to say it, exploiting their addiction to get them to decide to do what you think is best because of their addiction is morally repugnant.
But that doesn’t apply to $300 worth of cheetos? I mean - you’re still exploiting their general level of financial destitution in the case, right?
From a practical perspective, you’re saying it’s worth encouraging people to sterilize themselves if it will prevent harm to their potential kids… unless it’s for $300 they could spend on drugs. In that case, let them have and harm the kids. It seems very strange to me to be morally righteous about being unwilling to save a kid if it means letting a junkie score another week’s worth of drugs.
Really. I mean, addicts have to eat too, right? So I would imagine that if you gave them $300 of food vouchers, they might be highly motivated to take it, because hey, that’s $300 they can spend on drugs instead of on food. So how is this not “buying drugs for addicts” if just giving them the $300 in cash IS “buying drugs for addicts.”
It doesn’t exploit anything or anybody. It’s an offer which can be freely refused, and there is no question that it’s better for them not to have babies than to have them.
Good point, and they can also (and probably would) just sell the food vouchers for cash anyway.
I was all prepared to come into this to hate on this program, but honestly, the more I read about it, the more I like it.
Ultimately, there’s a core in many of us that is afraid that if we support these types of programs that aim to urge people to make decisions about Who Should Reproduce and Who Should Not, that they’ll be knocking on our door next. Yes, yes, I know. Slippery slope, logical fallacy, etc. But is HAS happened in human history. Remember the surrogate who refused to relinquish the children she agreed to carry for the mother who had controlled, medicated schizophrenia? Remember all the support she got? How many of us have perfect pasts? How many of us have not a single thing that someone couldn’t set upon and make a half-way reasoned sounding argument that you shouldn’t have your kids? I’ve been point blank told I shouldn’t have had my kids before, and I’m a devoted mother with an expansive support system. Who’s just been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. A disease that has led to the abuse, neglect and general anguish of children before too. Where’s my 300 dollars for sterilization? So no. No one wants hurt babies. No one wants junkies in the throes of their addiction to have kids. But we don’t want them knocking on our or our friend’s door next. Call it a logical fallacy if you will, but people have seriously suggested sterilizing the mentally ill before.
All that having been said, I still ultimately support this program. It would feel differently if it was “Come get your 300! Snip Snip Ok Be on your way!”, as the sensationally worded news stories make it sound. It’s not, though. If they gather this information, work in conjunction with drug treatment programs, etc, they are clearly sitting down with these people. They’re getting to know their life story and circumstances, and then providing them with information to make the best decision for themselves as far as the birth control methods or whether they’ll participate in the program at all. Hell, a junkie could steal 300 for much less hassle than that, so the motivation is likely not easy drug money.
The 300 may get them in the door, but once they’re there, they get the opportunity to really sit down and think about their lives and the effect it has on others for the first time in who knows how long for them. For many, that could be the first step in the long road to getting clean. And if one decides to get sterilized and regrets it later, I would feel bad for them. Just like I feel bad for my 40 year old friend who waited until she was 38 to have kids and now can’t get pregnant. But having sympathy for them doesn’t change the fact that they can’t blame anyone. They made choices.
Hope this makes sense.
A poll on your attitudes has been started here
Presumably the $300 is paid after the operation, so it’s not like they’re dangling a bottle of whiskey in front of a drunk’s face. Frankly, $300 sounds like fair compensation to get somebody with compromised faculties to focus on reproductive health choices, even the squicky ones like vasectomies and the like. There are also post operative considerations which the destitute might have trouble dealing with.
Now admittedly, I know little about this program: it’s possible that this all a front for a wider effort to build a doomsday device which would capture US and Chinese satellites in the hopes of igniting a world war between the two superpowers, ending civilization as we know it so that the group’s genetically altered superbeings can emerge from their lair under a volcano and bring order and control to the planet. Well, you have to start somewhere. Or maybe we should take them at their word that they only sterilize addicts with one or more children and provide other contraceptive options regardless. Then again that could be humanity’s gravest error!!!
I know you were referring to needles, but I wonder how having a vasectomy/being sterilized (or having an IUD) would affect condom use in addicts, if at all.
If it were the norm for crack addicts to use condoms consistently, I don’t think that we would need to have this discussion. We’re talking about addicts who (according to the organization) have 4-5 kids on average with one client maxing out at 21 pregnancies. That’s a lot of unprotected sex.
So the choice is suffering babies who might grow into suffering older children if they actually survive their parents treatment, or the remorse that the crackheads might or might not feel later on in life at being able to have more children in the event that they actually do become clean.
If of course they ever do.
Big if that.