That doesn’t seem to be a valid reason for opposing a law that (hopefully) spares future addicted babies from being born. For example, some du Pont scion supposedly got no jail time for rapping his daughter but we still think the law a valid one, no?
I can’t do much about the difference in the ways the laws are handled between rich and poor (I’m willing to listen to ideas, though!) but I do see a process that might limit the number of children born with drug problems. I understand the reservations people have about forced sterilization and I’m willing to compromise but I firmly believe something should be done.
Yeah, like many things in life, sometimes you draw the short straw and have to deal with it. There is no constitutional right to have sex either. Don’t want to take the chance of losing your freebies? Then don’t have sex. Cases of rape can easily be dealt with by a simple exemption written into the law.
It’s kinda weird that you are willing to allow the mom and baby to die, but did not suggest the obvious answer to keeping a baby from being born, while allowing the mom to still received benefits.
And don’t kid yourself. That’s the short straw. The mom doesn’t receive any benefits anymore. Welfare exists to keep people from dying. The baby is only going to increase what she needs to survive. Even if you take the kid away from the mother, you can only do so after the baby is born, and now the mother will be worse off during the pregnancy. Right when she needs the most help, you want to take it away.
So you can’t even say your are pro-life. The baby will likely die before birth, but your way, the mother will too. Is that what it’s about for you? Punishing the mother?
As I covered in a prior post, pre-natal drug addiction is not as damaging as usually assumed. It is the dysfunctional family environment that does the most damage.
This would be the strongest possible argument against the Affordable Care Act. All this supposedly beneficial change and people can’t even afford birth control pills? Except that: The old story line you are repeating is no longer accurate.
Even in the minority of states that have foolishly turned down medicaid expansion, like mine, family planning services are among the most common kind of care available to the indigent.
Example:
US Government search tool that can be used by needy individuals reading this:
I think you are making your claim about availability of birth control to argue against the assaults on basic freedoms some here propose. I agree that eugenics is morally disastrous and bad all around, but we should be accurate in our criticisms.
You’re clearly passionate about this and I believe in your sincerity. But I also believe you need to calm down a bit. Throttle is back and avoid the insults. This is not the place for them. If you feel you must do so, take it to the Pit.
OK, then 3% or 4%, it doesn’t matter. If HALF the women in this country couldn’t afford to raise another child without government assistance then half the women in this country shouldn’t be having children.
Yes, it is. We have mortgage interest deductions because (rightly or wrongly) we want to encourage people to own homes. We do not have welfare to encourage people to have kids they cannot afford. Moreoever, having more kids you can’t afford directly increases the cost of welfare in this country; having more kids (whether you can afford them or not (and if you are taking a mortgage interest deductions instead of the standard deduction, you can probably afford your kids)) does not increase the cost of the mortgage interest deduction.
This is not an entitlement anymore. We are not taking away something that belongs to them at the point of a gun. Maybe you should calm down a little bit.
Why do you say that?
So first I don’t know about the welfare reform act; then i don’t know about depo provera (or as it norplant); then contraception is the same thing as sterilization; then 1/6 of the US population would have to be given this contraception; and finally I’m like the Nazis.:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
Seeing as how China is going on right now and is MUCH closer to what i am proposing (I think its been pretty clear that I’m proposing contraception after one child and not sterilization and I think it shows the weakness of your argument that you have to pretend that i am talking about sterilization).
OMFG:smack: Seriously? China has been doing this for generations without throwing anyone in concentration camps or killing any Jews, what makes you think we would be worse than the Chinese?
Where do I say anything about eugenics or permanent sterilization?
:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
No, I’m not talking about eugenics, you just find it easier to argue against eugenics. I don’t think eugenics is what led to the nazi death camps. I’m pretty sure it was something else.
And what does that have to do with my proposal?
You are replying to a tangent about abortion.
Once again, I am not talking about eugenics or sterilization.
BTW eugenics was supported by people like Winston Churchill, Margaret Sanger,Marie Stopes, H. G. Wells, Norman Haire, Havelock Ellis, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, John Harvey Kellogg, Robert Andrews Millikan, Linus Pauling and Sidney Webb.
I’ll tell you why I find that problematic. Its one thing to try to control the behaviour of adults (or at least the outcomes of their beheviour). Its another thing to punish children
I don’t think contraception is search and seizure. I might be wrong.
I understand procreative rights are a sacred cow especially among the religious folks but I don’t see why it is morally disastrous and bad all around to require contraception while on the dole.
None of those children are the result of immaculate conceptions. Why aren’t the fathers also being held responsible? Screw the birth control - mandatory paternity tests and DNA records of every man in America. Make the fathers take responsibility for their wild oats instead of, once again, punishing the women and children.
Yes, that housing bubble was so beneficial to the nation.
No, we don’t have welfare at all anymore in the sense you mean it. NO ONE in the US is paying anyone to have kids.
The purpose of TANF is assist people in raising the kids they already have.
The purpose of food stamps isn’t to encourage people to pop out more babies, it’s to enable people to eat who have insufficient income to buy adequate food - including people who don’t have children at all.
Seriously, the portion of your, personal taxes that go to supporting poor people is pennies at most - and you’re too selfish to grant them that without invading their bodies and subjecting them to involuntary medical treatments.
No, but buying more house than you can afford sure as hell increases the costs of the mortgage deduction on society. We should not be encouraging people to buy more house than they can afford, the result is the housing bubble and a rash of foreclosures doing damage to both the finances and the neighborhoods of America.
People should buy what they can afford. The government shouldn’t be encouraging them, even indirectly, to buy more than that. Why are we spending money on people who have sufficient money for housing anyway? That money should be going to homeless shelters and rehabilitation services, not to increase the size of middle class and upper class housing.
Because the Chinese seem able to stop themselves before it gets to the point of genocide but people of European descent, based on the historical records, can’t.
Also, China’s one-child policy applies to EVERYBODY. It not one rule for the elite and one for the masses. Unlike what you propose, which is to prevent those nasty poor people from reproducing but the rich and elite can produce as many brats as they desires. What you’re saying is that poor people aren’t as worthy, and that’s what starts the slip on the slope to the sort of mess we saw in WWII.
And they were wrong for doing so even if they otherwise did great things with their lives.
I disagree some about the damage but even so, if a mother (and father, if he’s around) are so dysfunctional that their child is born addicted to some drug then they have shown themselves incapable of raising children. If a parent has already had numerous children removed from their care then they have shown themselves incapable of raising children. I want to avoid the future 10 years from now when some underpaid social worker has to decide if the children can survive in the home and must contemplate taking the children from their parents.
I believe sterilization to be the best solution but I’ll listen to other ideas.
The main reason fathers can’t be “held responsible” in the manner being discussed here is that fathers are not generally eligible for these various welfare programs to begin with. So there’s nothing to make them ineligible for - they’re already ineligible.
They are “held responsible” in other ways, notably some pretty severe child support enforcement rules, enforced by - among others - the welfare agencies. But cutting off non-existent welfare benefits is not an option.
To the extent that fathers are eligible for welfare programs, then I haven’t seen anyone in this thread make a distinction between men and women, other than yourself.
Then we should remove every child ever born to an alcoholic parent, every child ever born to a woman on a laundry list of prescription drugs treating everything from depression to epilepsy to acne, and so on - who, pray tell, is going to take these children in?
The proposals here are draconian and if applied consistently would result in massive societal disruption far more damaging than what they are purporting to cure. What this is really about is one set of rules for the poor and another for everyone else based on the assumption that the poor are inferior and should be punished more severely than anyone else for the same sin.
I have actually been in the position of being one of the people to draft a letter to a judge saying “please take these kids away from their mother before she kills any more of them”, which most of the people in these threads have not. Situations that dire are the minority.
The biggest problem is the need for effective treatment of the problem of drug addiction. Our current methodologies have only limited effectiveness and are not well funded. Why are we surprised at the results when there is more emphasis on punishing people than actually trying to help them?
Easy to say when it is YOU who face forcible sterilization.
Why do you assume ALL the fathers are also unemployed bums?
Do you think there are no men with jobs fathering children with women who are unemployed or working poor?
Find the fathers. If they’re working for them to pay child support as they should. Why the assumption none of them are employed? The fact that the current system is set up to favor single women over married ones is quite likely a factor in why so many of these women aren’t officially married even in they’re in a multi-year relationship with the baby daddy.
If the fathers are working then (and need to be “found”) then as single men they won’t be eligible for any programs so there’s nothing to make them ineligible for.
If they’re still married, then their benefits would be as a family and they would be included in the proposals being discussed here.
If you’re talking about enforcing child support - which is not the proposal being discussed - there’s already an enormous amount of effort being put into this. Mandatory naming of fathers in welfare applications so that the government can go after the deadbeats, wage garnishments, debtors prisons, drivers license suspensions etc. etc. What exactly do you feel is a failure to hold fathers responsible, such that you’re objecting to any sort of responsibility for mothers?
What I am saying is that BEFORE we decide to start sterilizing people simply for being poor (which is what is really being proposed here) we should get a DNA sample from every single man in this country so when a baby is born and the mom says “I don’t know who the daddy is” he can be located anyway and, if he does have some form of income, it can be garnished so he is supporting his child rather than the state.
As another side effect, it will make solving a lot of other crimes easier, too.
If we’re going to hold the mothers responsible then we should use whatever technology we have available to hold the fathers equally responsible.
Well that seems like an extreme position to take, IMO. But you’re entitled to your opinion, and I’m not inclined to argue it.
I would just observe that failure to take DNA samples from every single man in the country is not remotely the same thing as not holding fathers responsible, in light of the other measures being taken, as described, and you shouldn’t use this misleading lingo.
Now you’re going overboard. Children are not born addicted to acne medicine (and if they were, why is the doctor prescribing it?)
And I’ve seen the end when children are pulled out of the homes and given to foster care. I’ve heard the abuse that they went through and yet the parents are still having more kids, putting even more through that abuse. I want it to stop.
I will gladly support effective treatment programs. If a treatment program is ever devised that is even 25% effective I’ll reconsider my position.
What does this even mean? It’s easy for me to say when it’s not me facing life in jail, or a $50k fine, or any other punishment our government hands out.
If you (third-person “you”) don’t want to face sterilization then don’t fuck over your kids.
Common acne medications based on retinoic acid are teratogenic, producing some pretty profound birth defects. Some of them require that any woman taking them be on at least one, sometimes two, forms of birth control. Accidents still happen. Thalidomide has legitimate uses for some cancers and for leporsy, it’s a known problem for a woman to take the drug while pregnant, birth control again required… but it still happens.
Why do doctors prescribe such drugs? Because a woman has a condition where that drug is a valid treatment. Sometimes the woman doesn’t take her birth control. Sometimes the woman isn’t known to be pregnant when she starts treatment (pregnancy tests are not 100% reliable). Sometimes birth control fails.
There are a LOT of drugs that can do Bad Things to Baby - should we just tell women of child-bearing age screw you, you don’t get cancer treatment/your leprosy treated/your seizures stopped/whatever? I don’t find that acceptable. Should we prosecute women when accidents happen, things don’t work as anticipated?
I’ve seen a lot of instances where parents, with treatment, get their shit together and take care of their kids properly. Heck I’ve seen instances where parents don’t get their shit together but nonetheless keep the kids fed, dressed, the house clean, the kids in school, and manage to parent despite a drug or alcohol problem. Is it ideal? Hell no, but addicted parents are not inherently worse than foster care which is why in the real world there is some attempt to make decisions based on individual families and not by treating everyone exactly alike.
There is no treatment that effective for any addiction, so I guess we’ll just have to take away the kids not only of anyone on street drugs or alcohol but also anyone taking prescription drugs long-term or who smoke (either tobacco or weed, doesn’t matter). Yes, smoking too - nicotine is just as much an addiction as anything else and exposing kids to that shit second hand can fuck up their immune systems and lungs for life.