First off, this is not an abortion thread - so let’s avoid the issue except as it tangentially appears with regards to the actual point of this thread. Given the questions I’m going to be posing, it’s unreasonable to think that abortion won’t be mentioned nor play a part in any concensus that might be forged. But let’s not start there, please.
Yesterday The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court voided a bench order from a Monroe County Family Court judge, where the judge told two homeless addicts that they were forbidden from having any more children until such time as they recovered their current four children from the various foster care situations they had been put into by CPS.
At the time that the judge, one Marilyn L. O’Connor, handed down the order it garnered an amount of national attention, and the ACLU almost immediately challenged the order, on the behalf of the woman involved.
I don’t think anyone is surprised to see that this order got voided. For that matter as a case of simple morality, I don’t think that the courts, without instruction from the legislative branch, should be free to choose who does and does not have the right to reproduce. As a matter of personal opinion, I have a great deal of sympathy for Judge O’Connor, who is about to retire, and has been dealing with the messes that show up in Family Court for years now. I can see the appeal of telling someone who can’t even run his or her own life that until they prove they can be responsible for themselves they shouldn’t have any pets. Let alone children.
But a bench order from Family Court is not the way to do this. Neither, alas, is assualt with a Big Foam Cluebat, no matter the temptation.
So, I am glad of the Appellate Division’s decision, and I believe it was the right one. (Though I’m shocked that they’re also striking down because the respondant didn’t respond, AIUI that’s always been viewed as carte blanche for the court and whomever is pressing the case to determine the best solution according to the input of those parties present.)
On the other hand the parallel to this case with the push during the Eugenics movement of the early 20th century to sterilize the mentally infirm doesn’t work for me. Part of the argument for sterilizing the mentally infirm or defective was that they couldn’t possibly be responsible parents, and so, absent any evidence to the contrary, various state agencies started sterilizing people. The other fork was an attempt to eliminate inferior genes from the gene pool.
Neither of these motivations officially* factor into this specific case. This case involves two people who had four children and proved to the satisfaction of the court that the children needed to be removed from their parents, because their parents were failing to provide minimal care for the children, and secondly, no sterilization was mandated, nor performed - rather the judge’s order involved having the couple register for fertility classes and left the specific method for preventing pregnancy up to the couple.
So, on the one hand, non-reversible sterilizations performed based on prejudice, vs. an order to keep from reproducing until such time as parental fitness could be demonstrated to the court. While not proper, I don’t think it’s the same level of injustice, and the attempted parallel just doesn’t hold.
The debate I’d like to see, is based on that. I don’t want to ever advocate sterilizing any group of persons. But at what point does the State have a legitimate interest in controlling the fertility of persons who have proven unable to parent?
If you believe, as I do, that there’s some reason to consider that course of action when a parent, or parents, have had four children taken from them because of neglect, is there any way that the Legislative branch of the government could write a law that would allow that to happen that would stand up to Constitutional tests, and be resistant to abuse.
As much as the situation for this couple’s four children saddens me, I can’t help my suspicion that it’s allowing the government too much control over individuals, anyways.
I don’t trust the government, and especially bureaucracies, as a matter of course. They’re necessary, and generally well-meaning. But even within those broad bands, there’s huge room for abuse of power and position. CPS already has a reputation for being very hit or miss with its scrutiny, and its care for the children placed with it. If the Legislature gives the power to police who may and may not have children to any bureaucracy, I cannot believe that there won’t be modern-day eugenicists who will try to push their own private policies into the public arena, without any sanction from above.
So, no matter the logic that such a move might have, no matter how much I’d support education and assistance to such people to help them improve their parenting skills, and to control their fertility, I cannot see any governmental control of fertility as anything but the thin edge of a very, very dangerous wedge.
And I oppose it.
*I’m not an idiot, nor blind. Both persons subject to the original order were, AIUI, African American. Neither you, I, nor the Grand Poobah of Philadelphia can say for certain that race wasn’t a factor in the judge’s decision. Having said that, none of the arguments, which I do believe have some merit, were based on race - rather they were based upon the demonstrated failings of the parents involved - as parents.