I can’t see this happening. Birth rates are falling too far, too fast for the state to want to curtail it further.
Julie
Eh, nothing like this is gonna happen any time soon, and I’d be expecting life-extension (bio)technology and perhaps in vitro gestation as nearly standard by then, so hey. Never mind that that whole nuclear family thing might not be considered so great either.
Besides, just because birth rates are falling below death rates in some western societies right now doesn’t mean that we don’t have a lot more people on the planet than might be ideal.
Commendable, but idealistic. If rape could always be prevented, well, we’d live in a far better world then we do. That said, I’m very uncomfortable about the idea of forced sterilization of anyone. Besides the idea that sterilization should be something decided by each individual for him or herself, it would be too easy for mistakes or political agendas to happen.
The daughter of a doctor and a judge has a tested iq of 70. She is decreed to be capable to judge for herself. The daughter of a welfare mother and an unknown father has a tested iq of 70, but she is decreed to be incompetent. The daughter of two office workers has a tested iq of 70–but she is a member of an ethnic group that one of the deciding committee secretly dislikes, so she is judged to be incompetent. One woman tests at 71; one at 69. Does that make one incompetent and the other competent? What is the criteria here? We can say that an iq of 70, or an iq of anything for that matter, is a silly and arbitrary line to draw, but somewhere, a line’s gotta be drawn.
What about a young girl with brain damage? After she is sterilized, she defies the medical predictions on her case and makes a miraculous recovery. By then, it’s too late.
I like even less the idea of “Sterilize everyone–let the courts figure 'em out.” We’ve all been turned down for jobs we knew we could do, loans we knew we could repay, apartments that could have designed for us, colleges we knew we could be a credit to. Now, imagine sitting in front of those same interviewers and committees and telling them what a great parent you would be.
But why are these women being “judged” at all? Who is bringing the matter before the court?
If we genuinely believe that women’s guardians are so wicked that they will try to get their wards sterilized for no reason, then we have a problem with how guardians are chosen more than with sterilization at all.
Julie
** jsgoddess**, my hypothetical suppositions were imagining a world where the situation the OP advocates was fact. If the court had the power to order sterilization, each case would indeed have to be decided on an individual basis. And if sterilization was mandated, the decision would be out of the hands of the guardian anyway.
The last paragraph in my post was in response to the posters in this thread who are advocating wholesale sterilization of all of society, with individuals who wish to become parents must petition to be allowed. I can appreciate the sentiment to cut down on unwanted, abused, and neglected children…I just don’t see a practical way to put this into effect, ever. I’m very sympathetic to the heartbreak that prospective adoptive parents are sometimes subjected to. Dashed hopes happen. And even with all the restrictions, every now and then a monster still gets approved.
I believe it is already legal in the U.S. for a parent or guardian of a mentally imcompetent adult to decide whether or not to sterilize him or her, even though restrictions differ from juristriction to juristriction. Somebody correct me if I’m wrong. The question is whether or not the guardian should have that power. And there…I’m torn.
You’re right, sugaree. There are so many different things in this thread that it’s hard to keep them straight. I don’t know the current law on whether a parent or guardian can, in general, get permission to sterilize a woman of diminished capacity. Though that power could be used for evil, I think it’s probably a good thing to have available if the woman is going to be placed in any sort of institution–where her risk would be greater for rape than if she lived in a home with her parents, for example.
Julie
sugaree:
Frankly, I’m not much of an idealist. I’ve been a nurse for too long.
No, I don’t believe all rapes can be prevented, any more than I believe that all car wrecks or murders can be prevented.
I do believe that victims should not be punished for the the crimes committed against them. In the case of the OP, for example, it was not the mentally incompetent woman’s fault that she was raped by the man who was supposed to be protecting her; I don’t believe mentally incompetent women should be forcibly sterilized to prevent them from conceiving in the event they are raped.
I could be raped today, in my own home. Should I be forcibly sterilized on the off chance that a man breaks into my home and impregnates me? Bear in mind, too, that this surgical procedure carries risks to my health and life.
Any person who is too mentally incompetent to protect his or her self is deserving of the same protection from the law as is a child of the same mental age. If my thirty-year-old daughter has the mental age of a three-year-old, I will protect her from sexual advances the same way as I would protect a three-year-old child. In this case, for example, I wouldn’t leave her home alone or let her wander around unsupervised any more than I would a three-year-old.
If this child of mine must live in an institution because I am unable (or unwilling) to provide her with this protection, then I expect that institution to protect her.
An instution may be safer, after all, since the boys/men can be much more easily separated from the girls/women. I would hope that any institution that cares for mentally incompetent people would be well-enough staffed to at least prevent the residents from raping each other.
Even more, I assume that people who run/manage/work at such institutions are not allowed to rape the mentally incompetent people in their charge. To me, this is just as horrible as a preschool teacher molesting the children in his/her care.
If the woman attacked does become pregnant, she must undergo either an abortion or a pregnancy. Then what? Neither is intended as a punishment, but that’s irrelevent- either could be traumatic for the woman in question.
Before we can answer the question of whether or not to sterilize the woman in question, we must think about what we would do if the worst happened. We must possibly moniter our daughter or ward for signs of pregnancy, since early medical intervention is crucial.
It’s a decision I hope I never have to make.
Rape happens; in addition, as you mentioned, mentally incompetent people can be sexual beings as well. We don’t leave our three-year-olds unsupervised, but we let our nine-year-olds play outside by themselves. We let our twelve-year-olds stay home alone.
I think a woman with the developmental age of, say, eleven has a greater chance of becoming pregnant than does a woman who is comparable to a three-year-old. Then what?
This is totally anecdotal, but my mother used to work in a facility where they had just a terrible time keeping the patients off of each other, and more often than not, it would have been consential had the patients been legally able to give consent. This brings up another question: should the mentally incompetent be allowed automony over their own sexuality?
Sterilization, as far as I’m concerned, if the woman is unable to consent to sex/childbirth/abortion, is not a punishment.
People get raped. It’s horrible, but it happens. If we know it can happen, and we also know that one of the horrible consquences of rape can be pregnancy, and we also know that if pregnancy happens the woman will be forced either to have an abortion or carry the child to term (ignoring the possiblity of miscarriage for the moment), then it’s a matter of choosing which outcome is the most humane.
To me, forcing a woman to have an abortion is repulsive. Forcing a woman to deliver a child is repulsive. Forcing a woman to undergo a surgery to prevent either abortion or childbirth is less heinous if the woman in question would be unable to consent to any of the three possibilities.
I think people react to sterilization in a very emotional way–a way that isn’t necessarily “correct” in certain circumstances. If we’re dealing with a woman who is permanently unable to consent to sex, and will be permanently unable to have custody of her child, what are we denying her through sterilization? We aren’t denying her the right to be a parent; she will not be permitted to parent her child. We aren’t denying her the right to have sex; she’s already considered unable to consent to sex–anyone having sex with her is considered a rapist. All that’s being denied is the right to be pregnant, which doesn’t strike me as much of a right to be losing.
Of course, I’m saying “all that’s being denied” as if it’s minor, or a decision to be taken lightly. It isn’t. But if a woman were in the position of being unable, permanently, to be a parent, then “letting” her become pregnant, with the accompanying stresses, seems worse.
Julie
Julie
Time and again, foster parents are convicted of abusing the children in their care. Some, like the one who duct taped her charges, won awards for being a great parent. TWOTfan, as the many cases of abusive foster parents show, the government can’t reliably choose good parents even when they have good cause to. Getting them involved in every case is unwarranted and absurd.
I think that forced sterilization is wrong. For those of you who don’t see it so cut and dry, I have some questions. My mother knew two girls that were a bit slow whose mother had them sterilized when they were young. IIRC, these women managed eventually to live on their own and hold jobs. Do you think it was wrong to sterilize them? What line would you draw?
If there were any way to distinguish between consensual sex and non-consensual sex for everyone, then I’d say that everyone should have autonomy over their sexuality. The problem, just as with children, is that other factors can come into play, making “consent” difficult to determine.
I hate questions that end up pitting protecting the person versus allowing them autonomy. There does have to be a line, but figuring out where that line should lie is beyond difficult.
Julie
Do I think it was wrong? Yes.
The line I would draw is the same line that is already being drawn. We already have a standard that says that some people are incapable of giving consent to sex. We already have a standard that says that some people are permanently incapable of being parents. Both of those conditions would have to be met for me to say that there is anything ethical about sterilization. If the women are capable of keeping jobs and living on their own, those conditions were absolutely not met (in my opinion).
Julie
I don’t seem to recall anything from law school that says “anyone who is incapable of being a parent can be sterilized”. On the other hand, I do seem to recall something that says that no person can be sterilized by the state, even as part of a plea agreement, as punishment for any crime. We don’t sterilize competent adults who are serial child abusers. If we can’t sterilize human scum like that, under what basis do we feel it appropriate to sterilize people whose only “crime” is to have suffered some injury that impairs their mental skills so as to prevent them from raising children without assistance? Should we also, then, sterilize paraplegics and quadraplegics? They obviously will not be able to raise children without assistance. The simple fact is that we do not have a standard for identifying people who are “permanently incapable of being parents”; rather, we have a standard for identifying people who do not meet our standards for making complete decisions about their own lives, and impute from that the inability to be a parent. As lee points out, we’re not that good at separating good parents from bad anyway. And, finally, avoiding the danger of bad parenting was never the reason for sterilizing them in the first place.
The policy of allowing (or, in years past, mandating) the sterilization of “defective individuals” is nothing other than the practice of eugenics, and as such is without defense. The mere fact that a person is unable to perform all the tasks of parenting alone and without assistance does not mean that that person cannot meaningfully participate in the rearing of their offspring, nor does it mean that they should be deprived of the joy of bringing new life into the world. If the test were “can you raise this child on your own without any outside assistance”, many perfectly normal people would fail. This is really just a variant on “having children should be a privilege, not a right” – not a sentiment that has any place at all in a society based on liberty and freedom, but one that seems to have significant traction on this message board.
I read an editorial in a Iowa newspaper over the weekend about how Nazi German eugenics program (which started out with the sterilization of the mentally handicapped) was inspired by late 19th century Americans. Our society’s practice of sterilization of the “mentally incompetent” is the distasteful legacy of that era. I see no reason why we should continue to essay that treacherous ground.
This is from a Connecticut paper, but I assume it’s pretty much the same (very interesting) article: Ethnic Cleansing in Connecticut
Again, I have zero desire to get these women out of the gene pool. I’m not interested in the children, frankly. I’m only interested in what happens to a woman who is already burdened with some pretty massive disadvantages, trapped in a situation where she has no control, then raped, then ends up pregnant. No matter how much we argue that the woman’s guardians should have kept the rape from happening (of course they should have!), the problem is that it did happen. It does happen. And then what?
Julie
Surely the issue here is how we safeguard the mentally handicapped from abuse by the very people who are supposedly caring for them?They are after all, every bit as vunerable as little children.
sugaree:
I completely agree. However… consider this scenario.
Your daughter is 11 years old and has her first period. Do you automatically begin feeding her birth control pills each morning with her Captain Crunch? After all, if your child is raped, you do not want her to have to bear the consequences of either childbirth or abortion.
If this is a course of action that is in the best interest of the child, I’m surprised more people aren’t protecting their daughters with this method.
Nor have I ever known a parent to take his/her children to the doctor for regular exams to rule out the presence of STDs. We all know that gonorrhea (as just one example) can cause permanent scarring and dysfunction of the reproductive system if not treated early. Shouldn’t every parent, then, be sure to have their infants and children examined regularly for STDs?
Wouldn’t it be even better to treat all infants and children with antibiotics on a regular basis? Then, it wouldn’t even be necessary to take the time and effort to detect the presence of disease in the first place.
If (god forbid) my daughter must ever be placed in an orphanage or home for the mentally incompetent, perhaps the promotional spiels will go like this:
Every female resident in our institution is surgically sterilized. We can’t promise to prevent our residents from being raped, even by the owners of this institution, but at least they won’t have to endure abortion or childbirth!
Looking back to the OP, I wonder how many times the woman’s “protector” raped her. It’s quite possible (and perhaps probable) that he committed the crime more than once before she conceived and before her pregnancy was detected. I also wonder if the crime would have been noticed if she had not become pregnant. And how likely is it that he never took sexual “liberties” with any other resident before her?
Perhaps our standard of care for the mentally incompetent is so lax that nothing short of rape, proven by impregnation of the victim, is enough reason for a negligent/criminal institution to provoke outrage.
When you put it THAT way it doesn’t sound as proper as sterilizing a 22 year old that is 100% incapabable of doing anything on her own. Maybe the solution of sterilizing this 22 year old just sounds like the anwser because an innocent child woulnd’t have been born and will have a lifetime to deal with her legacy. I don’t think I mentioned it but the child was born healthy and they woulnd’t know for a few months if it had the same illness/disability that her mother has.
While the mother can not comprehend what has happened to her (In a way this is a blessing) this poor child will have to struggle through life.
This is a bad situation no matter how you look at it.
Guardians are responsible for the health and well-being of their charges, and this goes to giving informed consent for medical procedures that are necessary for the health and safety of those charges. If I’m a guardian for X, and X develops a condition that requires a medical procedure as a course of treatment, then of course I’m morally obligated to see to it that the treatment is provided. However, I would be infringing on my charges rights if I attempted to have elective surgery performed on them as a protection against something that MAY or MAY NOT come to pass.
This was pretty much my first comment on the situation. The pregnancy at least meant that the rapist was caught.
If the instituion gave the spiel you mention above, at least it would be honest. Girls and women in such institutions are so incredibly vulnerable. The more disability they have, the more vulnerable they are. Heck, there was a case where a man raped a woman in a coma and it was discovered when she became pregnant.
You’re being sarcastic, but to me, this is a good thing. Rape might happen. There are vicious little monsters in the world who will prey on the vulnerable. There are also men in these institutions who aren’t acting out of malice, but who will end up being rapists anyway. I don’t like the idea of sterilizing people. But I also don’t like the idea of turning a blind eye to the possibility of rape and its aftereffects just because dealing with it is extremely difficult.
Julie