Mandatory birth control for welfare?

Great Debates
61

Wait, how is that the case? I’m seriously not getting this. Let’s imagine 6 states.

  1. State 1 doesn’t offer any social welfare programs at all

  2. State 2 offers a social welfare program to everybody (i.e. “Everybody gets gov’t money”)

  3. State 3 offers a social welfare program, but there’s a maximum income requirement (as is the case in most countries that offer poor-relief)

  4. State 4, who’s really concerned about overpopulation, offers a social welfare program, but it’s contingent only on not having children (i.e., there’s a law that says that everyone in the country who has no kids gets $100 a year or something)

  5. State 5 has the opposite problem, and offers benefits contingent on having children (i.e. Have a kid, we’ll give you $100 as a gift from the government.)

  6. State 6 has a social welfare program that has both a maximum income requirement and a no children requirement (i.e. "We’ll give you aid if you make less than X a year and you don’t have any kids)

So, which of these states, if any, has violated the UN declaration? You’re seeming to suggest that state 6 has. Has state 4 or 5? They’re also making a distinction based on family status.

In all of these states you have the right to marry and found a family. It’s just that in states 4 and 6, you can’t get a specific government benefit if you do (and in state 5, you can’t get a special government benefit if you don’t.)

62

Plus, what happens if a woman is raped and ends up pregnant? What then?

63

If the woman is on the 100% birth control stipulated in the OP, she can’t be.

64

Just for the record, I don’t remotely support a program like this actually being introduced, for any of dozens of reasons (eg 100% effectivity, gov’t corruption). Also for the record, I support educating everyone, and if something along these lines had to go in place (to prevent the collapse of society or something extreme like that), I think that education programs would go a hell of a lot farther in the long run.

That being said, I was really asking about an idealized situation, where the gov’t did not use this as a stepping stone to attack human rights, and that this magical uninvented birth control is 100% safe and effective for everyone who took it. Under this program, current children would not be removed (as someone mentioned upthread), but it would be a measure to prevent problems from getting worse.

However, like I said in the OP, being poor doesn’t mean you’re unfit parents, which is why I suggested having a child limit instead (hell, to a certain extent, I think there should be some sort of child limit anyway, to prevent anyone [including John K. Rudd Greg Kennedy Jr the 17th, Esq.] to having families of 16 kids, largely because of overpopulation issues, but again, it’s not something that really has a real-world application at this point, and is anyway inconsequential to the thread at hand), or at least some kind of education.

It does somewhat niggle at me that the state essentially provides incentive to become a baby factory, and though this may not be the best answer to that problem, it is more of what lies at the heart of my thoughts on the issue. I know that many many people are not on welfare for life, and that most people don’t think it’s a good idea to have a dozen children just so they can not work. But what is the answer to people who do? In this idealized context, could we (to prevent the removal of the lowest economic strata entirely) say that families are allowed 2 (or 3 or whatever) children, because everyone should have a right to raise a family, and that the state will pay for those initial kids, but after that, if you continue wanting gov’t assistance, you’ll have to be on this 100% effective and safe BC?

Now obviously there are still cracks in a system so simply-constructed as this one. One example is that people could stop getting their checks for a month, get off the BC, get pregnant, and then go back on. I’m less interested in finding chinks in this very basic proposal than I am about considering societal implications.

And maybe, because of the idealized nature of this proposal, it becomes so far removed from actual society that it’s not useful to talk about. I’m willing to accept that as well. I don’t know, like I said, it’s just something I was thinking about and wanted to get ideas about, not (let me repeat what I opened with) something that I think would be a good idea to actually implement, if for nothing else because the current problems that would be better served with better education systems.

65

Welfare stats
White-39 % less than 7 months 19 %
black 37 7mo to 1 yr 15
hisp 18 1 to 2 yrs 19
asian3 2 to 5 yrs 27
5 yrs + 19.6 %
Number of kids mothers
1 43.2 % teen 7.6 %
2 30.7 20-29 47.9
3 15.8 30-39 32.7
Divorced 28.6 % disabled 9 % single parent 55.3 %
Most are white and are children.
4 + 10.3 40 yrs and older 11.8

66

BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed, my original response to your post was reactionary. This is an extremely relevant and important topic. Your proposal is grounded more in reality than ideals.

Mandatory birth control for welfare mothers is an idea rooted in eugenics and stereotypes. It perpetuates the belief that welfare recipients, poor women and children, are not valuable, lazy, and deviants. It also places blame on women for the perceived Welfare state.
I agree that poverty and welfare dependence are not the best conditions for children. There are socially responsive ways to reduce welfare. A good start would be a comprehensive sex educated for all young women and access to a variety of affordable or free birth control. Controlling fertility is a narrow approach to a complex social issue.

67

People would know there’s a end to the free ride, and they better do something before it ends

Children growing up believing they should get something for nothing and should not have to contribute to society is not good for anybody. If a mother has to go on welfare, she should do everything in her power to let her children know it is temporary and to get off of it and go to work. Like I posted above, there is a problem with second generation welfare recepients in this country. They don’t have the idea that anyone should have to work to earn money because nobody showed them there is a better way than standing with your hand out.

68

“Its not a crime to be poor in America. But it might as well be.”

  • Will Rogers
69

Currently in California, you will NOT receive ANY benefits (cash aid, food stamps, etc.) for a child conceived during the time you are receiving benefits. There is no longer any financial increase which results from having an additional child while on welfare.

Furthermore, currently, in California, there is a “five year lifetime limit” on benefits. Period. You can get the five years consecutively, or in cumulative shorter periods; but when you hit that five years, that’s it, that’s all. Have a nice day.

Because I know that I can be very, very opinionated and because I have a vast deep respect for Dopers of every stripe I will try and say this congenially:

I have been hearing these tired and ugly assumptions about welfare mothers my whole life. I won’t even get into whether they were ever true in the past; in my state and I suspect most others, they cannot possibly be true now.

Ordinarily I would go find a specific written cite in support of this, but in this case, I am speaking from direct personal experience.

That is all.

70

::applause::

This is a post that addresses the argument. And well.

Adding my own two cents, I’d say that dangling food in front of hungry people and extracting a “voluntary” agreement to submit to birth control is simply an ugly thought. I freely admit that this is a personal reaction, but I would not personally wish to contribute to and live in a society that treated its members like that.

71

illegal immigrants

72

OOOOkay. My work concerns the study of populations. I am professionally interested in the field of Social Justice. I’m lucky that my work allows me to consider topics that I feel so strongly about.

That said, reading this thread has just about gotten on my last nerve. I thought it had, but then it kept getting on it over and over so I guess there was a little more nerve left. I would like to thank **unconventional **and **brujaja **for taking the tone of this thread back down to the conversational and rational.

Captain Amazing and all y’all who kind of think this might not be such a bad idea, if it could really be done right. And particularly Bricker, the issue is not whether one chooses to accept birth control for the sake of receiving a ridiculously small amount of money upon which to support oneself and one’s family.

The issue is whether one gives power over one’s body to a governmental agency for the same. The government gets to decide what you do with your body. You give them your autonomy. If that doesn’t send cold shivers up and down your spine, it certainly does mine.

We are really mostly talking about women here - families with two parents have very little chance of getting what we consider to be classic “welfare”. Which no longer exists, by the way, but we’ll get to that.

And has anyone noticed the fact that this has almost exclusively been a conversation about forcing birth control on women? (For the privilege of food and rent, of course.)

So what shall we do to the men who have children on “welfare” whom they are not supporting? I’m surprised that hasn’t come up yet. (not being sarcastic) Perhaps the solution is that while their children are on welfare, ‘it’ shouldn’t come up. Give Depo shots to the men as well as the women. We do that to certain sexual offenders who live in the community right now anyway. Why not extend that franchise?

Certainly if we take the power of the body from the women who make the children, we need to take it from the men as well. Women don’t make children alone.

We could have a whole different thread about eugenics, which this is. It starts out with very nice intentions. Margaret Sanger, holy mother of birth control, believed in eugenics. (Also that poor women shouldn’t wear themselves out with pregnancy after pregnancy …) And it ends with the Nazis - literally. (This is one time where bringing in Nazis is actually valid history, rather than hysteria.)

I’m sure that **Annie **knows, if she works with women on welfare, that Welfare ain’t like it used to be. Let’s have some facts.

Remember President Clinton? Okay, now one of the other things about President Clinton is that he passed a huge welfare reform package. It is no longer possible to sit at home and live on welfare for one’s entire life. An individual may have 5 years of income assistance during their lifetime, if they are eligible. For this, they must work. Short-term employment preparation classes are acceptable.

A woman who has a baby is exempted from the work requirement for 6 weeks. After that, baby goes to day care. Day care for every single child whose parent is on income assistance must be provided by the state. It isn’t always pretty. None of us yuppies or bo-bos or pseudo-intellectuals would want to walk in to most of them. If you work hard at it, you can find some that are ok.

States are allowed to make some exceptions to these rules, to the tune of, I believe, 10% of the total population receiving income assistance. Not all of them choose to do so.

Most of the people receiving income assistance are rural and white, not urban and black.

As I recall, but I could be wrong on this one, some states don’t pay for abortions with medicaid. Contraceptive failure, rape? Let me lecture you on your irresponsibility. And the Federal Health Insurance plan - doesn’t even cover contraception.
Oh - and despite a Great Deal of moaning and whining and predictions of doom - Welfare Reform worked. Well, that plus a good economy. The number of individuals on income assistance dropped every year for at least the first three years, I don’t know later figures for sure.

Now, let’s get back to what, exactly, we mean by “Welfare”

Is a family who gets food stamps but not income assistance on welfare?
What about a family that gets WIC (women, infants and children’s assistance - it’s kind of like food stamps, but designed for the nutritional needs of pregnant and nursing women, … If you have ever heard of “the Government Cheese”, this is it)?
WIC and food stamps?
A family whose kid is on state health care? (All that stuff Congress was debating recently - working families who can’t afford health insurance, so lets help the kids)
A person who receives medicaid but not income assistance?

How many of them have to give up their personal autonomy?

Oh, and just for the record here. While the US Government would be forcing birth control on women in the US, internationally it refuses to provide funding for any birth control provider or even educational program if they are connected in any way with any organization that even mentions abortion. If there is a pamphlet in the clinic that someone else left, the whole organization could be shut down. Hey Africa - just say no!

Clearly I have strong opinions here. :rolleyes: But I have been working and volunteering in this field (poverty, child health, abortion/birth control) for over 20 years, I am pretty well informed, and I try to stay at least aware of major developments. I think that gives me the right to state some things rather strongly. If someone would like my credentials, just ask.

I mean no offense to anyone here, just in case any was taken.

73

In Australia we obviously wouldn’t agree with the OP. Quite the opposite we pay people on welfare to have more babies. Helps pay for the big screen TV.

74

Once you make receipt of govenrment funding conditional on the non-exercise of a particular “freedom,” it is tough to claim that freedom still exists. For example, a country that says you are exempt from income tax as long as you renounce religion would not be one that could legitimately claim to have Freedom of Religion, even if they weren’t arresting people who went to Church on Sundays.

75

In an odd way the ‘solution’ you’re seeking is in your own post. If a free, effective, safe-for-all form of BC (aside from abstinence, naturally) were available, I imagine birth rates would fall in poorer classes without any sort of legal action. And the male BC you imagine may very well exist.

76

Agreed, in this context. (I don’t wish to extend my agreement to all forms of “reproductive choice,” but I certainly agree that the only moral option is letting people decide to use birth control, or not, based on their own conscience.

Here I disagree. To take the devil’s advocate position for the other side, one may draw a principled distinction between two cases. A couple that has made reasonable provisions for child care can be said to have prudently chosen to have a child, even if some unexpected and catastrophic event comes down the pike later on. A couple already in the midst of catastrophic circumstances is not making a prudent decision when they bring another child into the world.

There is, then, not necessarily any hypocrisy involved.

Again, my opposition lies entirely on the ground that it’s wrong for the government to exercise such influence. I acknowledge the opposing view is a reasonable one; I simply don’t agree with it.

77

This is just for my own knowledge but a children taken off the state healthcare after 5 years this seems a little pointless ok your covered from 0-5 but then your screwed. Actually any of these programs would be rather ineffectual if they were cut off after 5 years except for food stamps for adults. Do these programs count against the 5 year federal limit?

78

First of all, I’m taking no position here as to whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea. I’m simply arguing that the government should have the right to do it. And the govenrment gets to decide what I do with my body all the time. The government says I’m not allowed to put narcotics in my body without a perscription. The governement says I’m not allowed to walk around nude in public. If a serious enough war should come along, the government will ship me into combat and make me risk my life.

If you notice, the OP talks about mandatory birth control for both men and women.

79

The reasoning was to stop people from having children they can’t support. I don’t know the exact rules of this law or if it was even passed, its just something I remember from seeing on TV some time ago. I’m not going to pretend its not hard hearted a bit, or that its a good idea. But I agree with the sentiment behind it.

80

I to am a bit appalled by the classism in this idea.

Look…people want to have sex. They want to reproduce and leave offspring…that’s what animals do…and we are all animals. To go to a group of people and insist that they not get assistance unless they not reproduce is going against one of the strongest drives people have. What will happen if you do this is that people will go on assistance and cheat on it, or, if they cannot cheat, they will not go on it.

So…say you come up with a system that is cheat-proof. So, most people would stay off of it GREAT! you say…less of my tax money being spent on lazy people.

Well…

What about the starving children? Will you let them starve? If not, you just broke your cheat-proof system…so you have to let them starve or people will just not go on the system, have kids and the state will feed them.

Do you think most parents will let their kid starve? …especially with an abundance of food around them? Hell no…they will do whatever it takes to feed their kids. Crime skyrockets? Put those parents in jail…ok…what about their kids? Let em starve and freeze?

See…this gets at one of the benefits of welfare. It is not just for the welfare recipients benefit but also for the people that pay money to welfare recipients. You get a more stable society…with less desperation, crime, hell even less REVOLTS. It is for all our benefit - rich, poor and middle class alike.

Now, you don’t want to make welfare too attractive but you don’t want to make it too unattractive as well. People will have kids…it is a driving force of our existance. Things like not being able to afford kids actually might drive this more than people who can afford them. You will not stop the poor from having kids.