How would the same folks who are in favor of this feel about the same sort of program for:
Cancer patients (after all, the pain and treatment of cancer can seriously negatively impact one’s parenting abilities as well)
Rhuemetoid Arthritus patients (ditto)
Other mental illnesses (ditto)
Why stop at addiction to drugs? there’s a whole lotta gamblers out there as well, offer 'em $200 to get sterilized,
hell, why not make the same offer to folks on public assistance - after all, they cannot afford to have any more children, and that $200 could buy little Johnny that playstation he’s always wanted.
Of course, there’s more of a problem - the addict in question may be involved in some one else’s life as well and they might have kids. Sometimes one’s sibling may be an addict or a neighbor, and (since I’ve worked w/addicts for 25 years, I can assure you that family and close friends don’t always know about the addiction) they may be left in charge of other people’s children, so let’s sterilize all of the family members as well.
I agree that having children at risk is a bad thing. I disagree that this is an ethical (or effective) way to impact the problem.
Kalt:That means you have the right to decide to get yourself sterilized if you so desire. “Oh, but the money influences that decision.” So what? Money influences all decisions.
Which is why not everything should be for sale. Otherwise, we might as well let desperate poor people sell their organs, or their babies for that matter. Bribing poor people to irreversibly incapacitate themselves in an important way is not humane.
I’ve got nothing against drug addicts (or anybody else) choosing to be sterilized; in fact, it would be fine if CRACK simply used its money to offer free sterilization operations and/or free counseling and/or free birth control and abortions. Cash-for-sterility deals, on the other hand, are simply exploiting troubled people’s desperation and poverty to bribe them into choosing something they wouldn’t otherwise want.
Really? how much do you know about adoption? A friend of mine (without a history of crack addiction) spent more than 2 years trying to adopt.
I would be quite surprised if a routine background check for adoptive parents didn’t discover the past addiction. and even more surprised if they were approved despite it.
They’re not listening erislover because they don’t want to -
I wonder who here thinks it’s humane to allow a crack-head mother to conceive and have a disabled child? This is a two way street. There is more involved here than “mother’s” rights. Give a better alternative than “we shouldn’t do any because we don’t want to be inhumane to mother.” Or doesn’t the baby count for that much in this calculus.
erl:Becoming sterile does not stop one from becoming a parent, it stops one from bearing a child.
I think that sacrificing the ability to bear or father biological children still counts as being “irreversibly incapacitated in an important way”, even if one ends up having an equally fulfilling parenting experience as an adoptive parent. (Moreover, as wring points out, most ex-drug addicts will in fact find it much more difficult to be approved for adoption than “other sterile people” do.)
Yes, people should be perfectly free to choose sterilization anyway. No, we shouldn’t be offering them cash bonuses for that choice.
T2B1:I wonder who here thinks it’s humane to allow a crack-head mother to conceive and have a disabled child?
Tigers, I’m sorry to hear about your bad experience. If you would rather your parents had chosen to be sterilized so you wouldn’t have been born at all, I may not understand that, but I respect it. However, I don’t think eugenicist policies are the answer across the board, even if they’re undertaken out of genuine concern for disabled children. Where would you draw the line? Should older women, who have a much higher risk of bearing children with birth defects, also be offered money to be sterilized? How about couples with a family history of genetic disorders? Who gets to decide which people are “good enough” to have children?
Yes, I agree with you that crack addicts shouldn’t be having or fathering babies. But that doesn’t mean that it’s okay to bribe them to give up that ability for the rest of their lives.
I am NOT saying that currently addicted people make good or even adequate parents (generally, I’m sure there’s some individual case that runs contrary), so I am not advocating that everyone just stand aside and allow obviously incapcitated people attempt to rear children.
Well, if they can’t be approved for adoption, then perhaps they shouldn’t be “approved” for natural birth. Instead of arguing against voluntary sterilization, how about relaxing adoption requirements?
erl:Instead of arguing against voluntary sterilization…
Who here is arguing against voluntary sterilization? I just got through saying several times over that people who choose to be sterilized should be able to do so. Moreover, I’d support an organization’s funding those operations for those unable to afford them.
What we’re arguing against is the tactic of bribing addiction-addled poor people into letting themselves be sterilized. That’s not supporting reproductive responsibility, that’s taking advantage of their addictive desperation to con them into giving up their natural reproductive ability for the rest of their lives.
Sure, give them free counseling, give them free birth control, give them free abortions or sterilization if they want them, and don’t pull any punches about telling them that they should NOT be having or raising kids while they’re addicted to drugs. But don’t flash cash at them to wheedle them into making the most extreme and irreversible reproductive decision they can ever make in order to score a quick buck.
erl:Instead of arguing against voluntary sterilization…
Who here is arguing against voluntary sterilization? I just got through saying several times over that people who choose to be sterilized should be able to do so. Moreover, I’d support an organization’s funding those operations for those unable to afford them.
What we’re arguing against is the tactic of bribing addiction-addled poor people into letting themselves be sterilized. That’s not supporting reproductive responsibility, that’s taking advantage of their addictive desperation to con them into giving up their natural reproductive ability for the rest of their lives.
Sure, give them free counseling, give them free birth control, give them free abortions or sterilization if they want them, and don’t pull any punches about telling them that they should NOT be having or raising kids while they’re addicted to drugs. But don’t flash cash at them to wheedle them into making the most extreme and irreversible reproductive decision they can ever make in order to score a quick buck.
See? That’s the problem. Anybody with the appopriate sexual organs and a brain the size of a mustard seed can become a biological parent. But sterile people who can’t have children (but yet may be MUCH more responsible than the pea brained drug addicted people who ARE bearing offspring) have such a difficult time adopting.
I not making an “across the board” argument Kimstu. The question is a moral one. The question needs to be answered - “what are the risks involved in having a child?” “What are the motives of the person who wants (or does not want) the child?” If the risks are high that the child will be born with problems, and the mother knows or should know of those risks, than I question whether that person should bring a child into the world.
Otherwise all this uproar about cloning a child before the science is better makes no sense.
Let me ask you Kimstu - where do you “draw the line” on this issue. Let’s assume that use of a certain drug results in a serious form of cerebral palsy 95% of the time so that the child has to be institutionalized. Do we “draw the line” here or wait for more serious forms of disability? What if the resulting birth put a child into the world that suffered a lifetime of chronic pain. Is this where we “draw the line?” Or is there no “line” simply because we don’t know where to draw one. Is that a good reason for allowing clearly wrong behavior to continue?
Of course, because there is none to support. Kind of the whole point, really.
It is only a con if they don’t know what the word “sterilization” means. Perhaps you meant something else?
Oh, I suppose all that good advice (“Take birth control, clean up, you’re not responsible enough to have a kid, you know that?”) will be listened to… why? —Because the people in question have a good sensibility about them, except for the one little tidbit of not being able to make informed decisions about sterility (so much so that it would be a con)?
While I am uncomfortable about paying people to be sterilised, I’m not sure why.
That said, addicts are either able to make decisions for themselves or they aren’t. Sterilisation is just one of a huge number of choices that addicts are either able or unable to make. There are plenty of choices that have permanent consequences, so the ‘sterilisation choice’ is not special in that regard.
What I’m thinking is : are they able to make choices for themselves ? If yes, no problem with the OP. If no, then what ? Round them up and put them in institutions, because they can’t make their own decisions ?
erl:It is only a con if they don’t know what the word “sterilization” means.
If you don’t think “con” is appropriate, feel free to substitute “bribe”. I still maintain that it is not right to try to bribe poor and messed-up people into permanently discarding their fertility. If you seriously believe that they are incapable of making responsible choices, then pretending that they are independent grown-ups freely choosing to accept money for being sterilized is mere cynical hypocrisy. If, on the other hand, you believe that they can make responsible choices, then you should let them make their own reproductive decisions on the basis of reliable information and good advice, not cash incentives.
T2B1:If the risks are high that the child will be born with problems, and the mother knows or should know of those risks, than I question whether that person should bring a child into the world.
No duh. So does everybody else here. That doesn’t make it right to try to exploit that person’s poverty and addiction by offering them cash to give up their fertility for the entire rest of their lives.
Let’s assume that use of a certain drug results in a serious form of cerebral palsy 95% of the time so that the child has to be institutionalized. Do we “draw the line” here or wait for more serious forms of disability? What if the resulting birth put a child into the world that suffered a lifetime of chronic pain. Is this where we “draw the line?”
Are you suggesting that people in such cases should simply not be allowed to have children? That’s a more extreme eugenics policy than this thread is discussing.
Or is there no “line” simply because we don’t know where to draw one. Is that a good reason for allowing clearly wrong behavior to continue?
“Allowing”? Again, you seem to be suggesting something more extreme than whether or not we should bribe drug addicts to get sterilized. Are you arguing in favor of the policy mentioned in the OP, or of something else?
Good point. But the issue that concerns me isn’t that they will make bad choices about themselves—indeed, I don’t care at all about that, and in fact I expect everyone, crack head or not, to make poor choices they will have to live with, sometimes for the rest of their lives—but that they will make choices that will negatively impact someone who cannot make any choices at all, including being part of the situation to begin with: a baby. That concerns me.