I trust that most people, and everyone in the thread, have this desire in some form.
It’s a matter of who is judged unfit, on what basis, by whom, and how the matter is approached in practice.
Nobody is saying that addicts should have kids. We’re talking about whether ever being an addict renders a person subhuman “scum,” forever barred from a conventionally-assumed freedom.
nm
I judge them unfit on the basis that they are drug addicts, and nobody’s talking about “barring” them from anything, we’re talking about bribing them to sterlize themselves. If that means they may not be able to undo the procedure if they ever get cleaned up, I personally don’t give the slightest shit. Anything that prevents more babies from being born into that hell is worth the trade-off. Do you really think a recovering addict not being able to have a baby (because of a decison freely made themselves) is a worse alternative than a baby being left alone in an apartment to starve while the mother goes out to suck dick for rock? What the fuck?
Of course not, and nobody does, so stop repeating this bullshit strawman.
It’s not a strawman, it’s the issue at hand. If bribing addicts to get sterilized prevents a single crack baby being born, isn’t it worth that crackhead not being able to have a baby in some hypothetical cleaned up future?
I mean seriously, why should anyone at all care if anybody (not just addicts) wants to sterilize themselves. the world is overpopulated anyway, and there are cats who need homes. I’m not laying awake at night worrying about former crackheads (or anybody else, for that matter) not being able to get their vasectomies reversed. I’m not somebody who sees infertility as being any great tragedy. So they can’t make a baby. Big deal It’s not like anybody NEEDS a baby, they just WANT one. I want a Porsche, but no one’s crying for me about it.
Why not bribe the addicts to get a shot of Depo Provera or an IUD? It seems to me that you should try the least invasive policy options first.
Bio of a Space Tyrant by Piers Anthony.
The space tyrant is faced with huge population growth in the poor community and decides that he is going to give out free food infused with chemical birth control. It addresses the population and poverty problem.
I’d feel better about this if the procedures were reversible.
Um, no. Because that would be offering them sterilization, giving them no reason to take them up on it unless they want to be sterilized. You can’t possibly not understand that’s a very different thing than offering them a financial incentive to be sterilized.
What’s the difference, other than the latter would be more effective?
Because one is offering a service, and the other is offering a bribe. Decent people should have a problem with the latter.
As a taxpayer, I think our governments should finance this program. The cost of looking after a drug/alcohol gestation compromised child/individual in our countries that have some form of universal health care must be several orders of magnitude above $320.
Do you have a problem with tax incentives ?
With incentives?
What’s the difference between an incentive and a bribe ?
Why?
The difference between an incentive and a bribe is that we offer incentives for people to do what they should, and offer bribes for them to let us do what we shouldn’t.
Eh, maybe. But I think it’s rather a clever rubric. This group is self selecting. It’s the people who are the most short-sighted, unable to delay gratification and truly caught in the trap of their addiction that will take the offer. Or at least, that’s the charge of the people against this, right? That they’re so caught up in their addiction and ready to grab the money because they couldn’t possibly think to themselves that they might want children in the future more than they want a couple hundred bucks now, right?
Well, okay. That’s *exactly *the sort of people that shouldn’t be having kids. I’d even argue that that’s exactly the population that won’t make great parents, even if they *do *later manage to clean themselves up and straighten out. I’m fairly confident that the tales in this thread about great parents who are former addicts are not talking about the people who would have taken this offer, addicted or no.
I’m not assuming all, or even most, addicts would take the offer. Just the most damaged ones with the least impulse control and inability to plan long term…which is as good a test for parenthood as any we’ve got now.
Crack addicts shouldn’t be voluntarily sterilized ?
or
We shouldn’t make voluntary sterilization available to crack addicts ?
We should absolutely make voluntary sterilization available to crack addicts. If it’s truly voluntary, we won’t have to pay them. That’s what voluntary means.
If you really want to be pedantic about the terminology, then this idea doesn’t fit the definition of a bribe. It’s just an incentive.
It would be an incentive to people who are well enough off that $300 isn’t a big deal. To people for whom $300 IS a big deal, it’s a bribe.
So you would be okay with $30 ?
Or limiting the program to middle class drug addicts?