Should 'unsuitable' parents be paid to get sterilised?

[Duffield1]

This is linked to a feature on the BBC website today:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8500285.stm

Should the state - or indeed, any charity - encourage people who would make unsuitable parents (for example, drug addicts or alcoholics) to be sterilised, so that they do not have children who suffer as a result of their addiction or incapability to look after a child?

(Obviously, the definition of 'unsuitable' is open to wide debate...)

[siasl]

Some worms are wriggling a lot in this can I'm holding. Maybe I should open it..... 

Why pay them? If you're going down the eugenics route - using whatever criteria to decide who can be a parent, then you may as well go the whole hog and not pay them. (yes, I appreciate this is volountary)

You've got two sides to the argument - firstly, there is an encroachment on a persons health and what they might perceive as a human right to procreate (or even a human right to get jiggy without thinking of the consequences). One example the Daily Wail recently held up as a beacon was a couple who were actually deemed too stupid to be parents, so their kids got taken into care - despite what seemed to be relatively lucid interviews with them where they said they wanted to be, and could be, good parents. There's other folks the Daily Fail like to write about - for example the woman who keeps trying for twins, and currently has 13 kids.

On the other side of the fence, you have the "think of the children" crowd, who would bash those that are not responsible enough to be a parent - there are probably ample studies in the social services that demonstrate that such families might have a higher tendency towards abuse than most.

The main problem with applying this to addicts of a variety of types is that there is a potential for change - they need not remain addicted for life, and there is a potential to reform and become "better citizens" (assuming that their addiction interferes with that). I guess you could implement a reversible sterilisation technique, though. Maybe those that get sterilised have to pass a "citizenship 101" test to have the procedure reversed ?

You could apply it to "genetically unsuitable" folks, but then you have a raging debate that will Godwin itself (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_Law) very rapidly. There are those horrid, incurable genetic flaws (Huntingdon's, for example) that might be eradicated by offering incentives to carriers to not reproduce, but I can't see that offering an incentive would work in this case unless it is a fairly significant sum.

Personally, I might be in favour of it, but the controls on it would need to be so convoluted it might not be an effective technique - so you'd end up in dubious ethical territory quite quickly. For example, what's to say that the addict has sufficient mental capabilities to make that decision - or is (s)he just after £50 to spend on more substances to abuse his/her body with?

[Wumpus]

I think that maybe encouragement is a good idea, however financial encouragement is in very poor taste.
It's also very poorly thought out. 
What price the ability to have a child?

And if somebody is so hard up that the prospect of surgical sterilisation is appealing, then there are other ways to earn cash.
Such as sperm or egg donation - which makes a mockery of the whole scheme.

I too question the decision making process.
Who would decide the suitability for parenting?  And at what age?  Many teenagers do stupid stuff in their youth, and many would say they weren't fit to be parents.
But give them a baby to look after, and it's amazing how they turn around.



It does seem to me that the current trend is for the state to control the people by financial methods.  And, quite frankly, it isn't working.
Partly because the cash on offer is usually such pathetic amounts.
I mean, what company director is going to give up his Jag and drive a Fiesta in order to save £50 per year in road tax?

[spryte]

sterilised? yes.

paid? no.

[KentPDG]

I think this question approaches the issue from the wrong end.  I have long held the view that people should have to be licensed to have children.  Those who bear children without being licensed would either have to then pass the licensing requirements plus pay a heavy fine for unlicensed procreation; or else have the child removed into foster care and adoption.  Those who violated the licensing provisions say, more than twice, would be involuntarily sterilize.  That applies to both sexes, and unlicensed parents would be identified (the first time) by having their violation tattooed on their bellies, so that there would be no question about whether a subsequent offense is their second.  There would be no third violation, due to the compulsory sterilization.

That is not so far from the system that currently operates in China.  There, couples are permitted to have one child, and one only.  Women who become pregnant or give birth a second time are offered two choices: voluntary abortion, or compulsory abortion and sterilization.  Harsh as it is, the policy has done wonders for China's previously explosive population growth rate.  (It has also greatly increased female infanticide, as the Chinese feel it is very important to have a son.)

You may recall that 30 years or so ago, India tried a policy of paying young men to have a voluntary vasectomy.  However, the program was poorly explained, and many men had no idea what a vasectomy would actually do to them, until after they had the procedure.  Many knew what it would do, but they believed it was reversible as easily as it was initially done.  In some places, the procedure and the payment were, de facto, compulsory upon the whim of local officials, who used it to enforce their own ideas of eugenics.  Ater a while, due to such abuses, the program was outlawed.

I will not outline here my ideas for what the licensing standards and procedures should be.  It would be an ineresting topic for debate, once the notion of licensing prospective parents has been accepted.

We live in a fascinating but confusing, contradictory society.  You can't cut hair or fingernails without a license.  You can't install a water pipe or wire an electrical outlet without a license.  You can't sell real estate or doughnuts or stocks without a license.  You can't practice medicine or law or psychiatry or clean teeth without a license.  But you can have as many children as you choose, even fathering children with many different mothers, or mothering children with many different fathers -- and you don't need to ask anyone's permission or approval.  You don't need to know anything about how to raise children, as long as you know how to make chldren.

Is it such an unreasonable encroachment on individual rights and freedoms to require someone having a child to know something about how to care for a child, and show a reasonable tempeament for living with a child, and to demonstrate some ability to provide the necessities of life for the child?

In the US at least, a principal rite of passage for teen-agers is to learn enough about how to handle a car, and to learn enough about the rules of the road, and to demonstrate at least moderate visual acuity and muscular coordination, that he is at least tolerablely unlikely to kill other people with a car; and so the child gets a driver's license.  That is virtually universal for the young.  Certainly, having a child is an even more meaningful rite of passage into adulthood.  Would it not be wise to require at least the equivalent of driver's education, and passing reasonable examinations, and demonstrating functional faculties, before allowing young people to form another life and bring it into the world?

So no, we should not pay people not to have babies.  We should require them to show the ability and resources to be good parents, before further overloading the world with the consequences of their passion.