When should the government get into our pants?

There is such a thing as termination of parental rights. In many states, sterilization or depo shots are often required of mothers seeking state assistance.

Special circumstance or no. At some point 25 kids a go, some judge should have had to power to make this a condition of his child support. Why is it ok to sterilize women, but not men?

KingGorilla wrote:

There is such a thing as termination of parental rights. In many states, sterilization or depo shots are often required of mothers seeking state assistance.

Special circumstance or no. At some point 25 kids a go, some judge should have had to power to make this a condition of his child support. Why is it ok to sterilize women, but not men?

i'll go ahead and steal Malor's thunder by saying it's not okay to sterilize either sex.

Seth wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

There is such a thing as termination of parental rights. In many states, sterilization or depo shots are often required of mothers seeking state assistance.

Special circumstance or no. At some point 25 kids a go, some judge should have had to power to make this a condition of his child support. Why is it ok to sterilize women, but not men?

i'll go ahead and steal Malor's thunder by saying it's not okay to sterilize either sex. :)

More or less OK than abusing or neglecting kids? I see the latter as a far larger evil than the former.

KingGorilla wrote:
Seth wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

There is such a thing as termination of parental rights. In many states, sterilization or depo shots are often required of mothers seeking state assistance.

Special circumstance or no. At some point 25 kids a go, some judge should have had to power to make this a condition of his child support. Why is it ok to sterilize women, but not men?

i'll go ahead and steal Malor's thunder by saying it's not okay to sterilize either sex. :)

More or less OK than abusing or neglecting kids? I see the latter as a far larger evil than the former.

As someone who has very provocative and unpopular views when it comes to emphasizing a child's rights at the expense of a parent's rights, even I'm wary of the government getting involved in the business of compelled/coerced/some kinda pressure situation involving sterilization.

KingGorilla wrote:
Seth wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

There is such a thing as termination of parental rights. In many states, sterilization or depo shots are often required of mothers seeking state assistance.

Special circumstance or no. At some point 25 kids a go, some judge should have had to power to make this a condition of his child support. Why is it ok to sterilize women, but not men?

i'll go ahead and steal Malor's thunder by saying it's not okay to sterilize either sex. :)

More or less OK than abusing or neglecting kids? I see the latter as a far larger evil than the former.

Do a quick history of the atrocities this nation has committed using forced sterilization; I am unaware of a more evil action done "for the good" of the victims.

edit: building on Cheeze's example, I support vicious, cruel, and obscene punishments for rapists, but not castration.

See: North Carolina's history of Eugenics. Scary stuff. That's why I think such an option as sterilization should only be a last resort, after all other avenues for recompense have failed, and only on a case-by-case basis.

Hell, in this particular case, why not say, "Okay, we'll increase the amount of welfare you can receive in order to support your children, if you agree to receive a vasectomy and not impregnate another woman/ father another child."

Should it be a law that after X number of kids you get sterilized? Of course not! But should a person continue to irresponsibly birth children and purposefully neglect them, then claim that they need more gov't assistance to perpetuate such a lifestyle, perhaps such an ultimatum from the judge is in order.

Well, sure. We also still force contraception and sterilization onto people. It is a part of present day Child Services in many states. This is not confined to the 30's and 20's. States do still require sterilization of welfare mothers.

I did a pretty in depth treatise on the moral ills of our depression era eugenics in the US. If you are alluding to forced sterilization of a man or woman filling the system with kids they cannot afford and the castration of the mentally ill, I think the connection is weak.

I think in the alternate we are talking putting these parents in jail, and the kids in foster care. Do we offer a choice then? sterilization or prison?

He's just trying to (and failing at) stopping 50% of his paycheck from going away to support his kids before he gets any of it.

My impression is that the bills are stacking up to the moon, and he's going to court to say, "Hey, look, you're already taking half my minimum wage, there's nothing left to take." There's no way he can pay for thirty kids, but the laws don't reflect that. He doesn't seem to be asking for less than half, just saying that half doesn't even vaguely cover what the state is demanding.

edit: on the new page, I see Seth did indeed grab my thunder on forced sterilization. Predictability, c'est moi.

KingGorilla wrote:

Well, sure. We also still force contraception and sterilization onto people. It is a part of present day Child Services in many states. This is not confined to the 30's and 20's. States do still require sterilization of welfare mothers.

Honestly I had no idea this was the case. If you want an example of straight white male privilege, here's a good one.

I did a pretty in depth treatise on the moral ills of our depression era eugenics in the US. If you are alluding to forced sterilization of a man or woman filling the system with kids they cannot afford and the castration of the mentally ill, I think the connection is weak.

Maybe. I think you could make a case that the former is worse, but given my ignorance that we are still sterilizing women in exchange for government care, I'll consider it more closely.

KingGorilla wrote:

I think in the alternate we are talking putting these parents in jail, and the kids in foster care. Do we offer a choice then? sterilization or prison?

Can we offer them a free IUD first and see how that goes?

Henry Ford had some choice words on the subject. Teddy R was also a proponent of sterilization as criminal punishment for most violent offences. He was a white power sort of guy. Sterilization became a major extra-judicial punishment for prostitution, vagrancy, breaking Jim Crow laws(White girl and black male). As a bit of odd irony, it was common to sterilize homosexuals.

I think to compare what was done in that era is akin to people trying to link the theory of evolution and natural selection to Nazi Germany.

Coercive effect or not, I think it is a solution for desperate situations. I find this instance in the OP a good example as Tennessee has a major problem of teen pregnancy, children on welfare.

I see the hierarchy of solutions as this.
1. Free contraceptive pills and condoms for ALL- try getting that passed given current partisan politics. Look at our sister thread on the war on women.
2. In depth sexual education, educating children and adults on how to procure and use contraception. See issue 1.

This is the BEST possible solution, and good luck getting the Christian right on board with that.

I think even in this situation you will have those who ignore family planning education and services. I just ordered a 100 pack of the little rubber satan sheaths from Amazon myself.

3. We take the children away from the mothers at birth, possibly incarcerate the women. Some states will do this.
-Personally, I think family services and such would be better served elsewhere,
4. Optional sterilization-coercive sterilization as a consequence of welfare.
5. True forced sterilization.

I think for most of us the ideal is getting kids and adults educated with easy/cheap access to contraception no? Pragmatically, I do not see that happening any time soon. And we still have the problem of the people who refuse to use those measures.

If we are to endure in a state or a country that refuses to teach people about family planning, what is there to do?

KingGorilla wrote:

Henry Ford had some choice words on the subject. Teddy R was also a proponent of sterilization as criminal punishment for most violent offences. He was a white power sort of guy. Sterilization became a major extra-judicial punishment for prostitution, vagrancy, breaking Jim Crow laws(White girl and black male). As a bit of odd irony, it was common to sterilize homosexuals.

I think to compare what was done in that era is akin to people trying to link the theory of evolution and natural selection to Nazi Germany.

I think it's more like how we're still wary of burning books even when it's not because of the content.

I think for most of us the ideal is getting kids and adults educated with easy/cheap access to contraception no? Pragmatically, I do not see that happening any time soon. And we still have the problem of the people who refuse to use those measures.

Is sterilization any more pragmatic a solution though? I don't see that happening any sooner.

Wait, we're doing forced sterilization currently? Where?

KingGorilla wrote:

If we are to endure in a state or a country that refuses to teach people about family planning, what is there to do?

Simple solution. Sterilize all the anti-family-planning folks. Wait a generation. Ta-Da!

Malor wrote:

Wait, we're doing forced sterilization currently? Where?

North Carolina formally shut down its discredited Eugenics Board in 1977. The Oregon Board of Eugenics, later renamed the Board of Social Protection, existed until 1983,[41] with the last forcible sterilization occurring in 1981.

The 27 states where sterilization laws remained on the books (though not all were still in use) in 1956 were: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin.

So it doesn't look like anything is currently going on.

Okay, yeah, that sounds more like what I was expecting. I know that some of those programs went on much longer than they should have, but I didn't think any had existed here for at least a generation.

Well some would argue that this is the same. But states have required that women get depo shots or be put on some form of birth control as a requirement for receiving welfare assistance. South Carolina made headlines by last year when a woman was court ordered to have tubal ligation as a consequence of her 9 kids being on welfare.

I think if we're truly concerned with the kids and not in punishing the behavior of sluts, we might consider the strengthening of child protection laws that allow the revocation of parental rights for abuse and/or neglect. Additionally, we might consider greater investment in public early childhood education, prenatal care, sexual education, and the like.

But that would make us into some kind of communist thunderdome like Finland or Holland.

TWO PEOPLE ENTER! ONE BABY LEAVES!

KingGorilla wrote:

Well some would argue that this is the same. But states have required that women get depo shots or be put on some form of birth control as a requirement for receiving welfare assistance. South Carolina made headlines by last year when a woman was court ordered to have tubal ligation as a consequence of her 9 kids being on welfare.

WTF?!?

Really?!? That's almost too incredible to believe.

That said, the only alternative I can offer is to not offer any welfare and let people die off during the competition for scarce resources as nature intended. It's pretty barbaric, on the whole.

The thing is, by offering resources only available for people who are failing to compete, we are altering the conditions of natural selection. By making it available on a per-kid basis, we are reducing the burden of each child on the family system, and making it more favorable for such people to have lots of children (not personally favorable, but genetically favorable).

On a purely dispassionate, inhuman level, we have to consider what such an alteration will likely do to the human population and how it affects economic behavior.

KingGorilla wrote:

Well some would argue that this is the same. But states have required that women get depo shots or be put on some form of birth control as a requirement for receiving welfare assistance. South Carolina made headlines by last year when a woman was court ordered to have tubal ligation as a consequence of her 9 kids being on welfare.

(I don't think that is such a terrible thing...)

SallyNasty wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

Well some would argue that this is the same. But states have required that women get depo shots or be put on some form of birth control as a requirement for receiving welfare assistance. South Carolina made headlines by last year when a woman was court ordered to have tubal ligation as a consequence of her 9 kids being on welfare.

(I don't think that is such a terrible thing...)

Neither do I, I just didn't want to be the first one to say it.