How do you feel about sterilization for some parents?

Jason's thread about schools serving breakfast made me think of this. How do you all feel about sterilization for people who have consistently shown that they are negligent and even abusive parents? How about those people (and I've met a few of them) who openly acknowledge that they don't even like their own kids but keep having them because the more children they have the more government assistance they get in the form of free health care, money, food assistance etc, to "take care" of them.

You are absolutely spot on there, Jason. I've heard just such parents brag about how well they know the system and how they managed to get even more money, etc, via some loop hole they discovered in the welfare system. Heck some even claim that they are too busy to get real jobs because it takes so much of their time to research the welfare system in order to take advantage of the loop holes! Grrrrrrrrr!!!

Sadly again, it is the innocent children who suffer the consequences.

Okay--who, then, will be making the decision to sterilize irresponsible parents? The government? That would be a real cock-up (pun intended)! The courts? They've been really effective, haven't they? A secret tribunal of the Star Chamber? Zounds!

Any way you cut it (ouch!--sorry), implementing decisions like this can turn a terrible problem into an irreversible Orwellian nightmare. Where does it stop? Should we also automatically sterilize anyone who has ever been issued more than one ASBO. Should we start routinely lobotomizing or exterminating repeat criminals? I think this is a door we dare not open.

Should we be angry about the way societal hangers-on work the welfare system? Absolutely! But remember that the rich and the politically powerful also work the system to their great advantage and get away with fiscal murder, as we have recently seen to all of our financial detriment! Perhaps they should be lumped in with the antisocial and the welfare cheats as well!

And while sterilizing deadbeat parents might be saving the world from a future Hitler, it might also be depriving the world of a future Gandhi. I work and teach at a University and I know a lot of kids who have grown up in hideous family circumstances. Despite the odds stacked against them, they have turned out to be wonderful, compassionate, productive human beings whose absence in the world would greatly diminish the lives of so many others. If their sociopathic parents had been sterilized in the name of social engineering (and let's call it what it really is), these precious individuals would never have been given the opportunity to blossom and thrive. Is this a decision that any of us are ethically qualified to make? We are not God and we should not play at being God.

Yes, very true, ........whoever you are?  but who should pick up the pieces of these broken children? us?  i would not begrudge helping a child, but really, these people just have children to gain benefit etc..... so we could end up with a whole society in need, who would look after our own children then?   i know i'm been a little dramatic, but you see the problem.

I agree, we shouldn't play god, its a dangerous thing to do, and also a lot of good kids come out of broken homes, it just seems so wrong that people can have as many children as they want with no thought of how to care for them, if we didn't live in this kind of society they would die before they grew, but now we all take the responsibility for them! and that kindness is played upon!

It's a slippery slope to be sure and there are no easy answers. Like our  mystery guest above and Jason, I too think it's dangerous to play God. But I also think that we are far too sentimental about the "right to breed". Any dog in the street can reproduce but that doesn't mean that they should.

Preventing the birth of one Hitler won't stop another from being born and neither will preventing the birth of one Mozart stop another from rising in his stead. There is no loss if the child was never conceived in the first place.

In nature it is "survival of the fittest" and no one has a problem with that, but with human beings it's gone the other way. Derelicts and otherwise unfit human beings are the majority now and that can't be good either.

Jason:

I am the mystery sermon-izer. For some reason, when I posted my
self-righteous little rant, it didn't include my avatar even though I was logged in. Methinks there might be a glitch in the system!

I agree that in nature it is often the survival of the fittest that holds true. Since cockroaches are believed to be the only creatures with the ability to withstand a nuclear war, the worst possible holocaust that could befall humankind, perhaps we need to rethink our concept of whom the fittest might be in our own society.

I've gotten a glimpse of survival in an uncaring world by my daily observation of (and attempts at interaction with) a derelict homeless man who spends his days and nights collecting returnable bottles from the trashcans in the library where I work. He is mentally ill and he manages to survive on the pittance he makes from the bottle refunds (worth the equivalent about 5p per bottle). He lives off the throwaways of others. I understand that he has been offered shelter and proper meals from time to time, but he quickly skuttles away when approached.  Is he useless and expendable? Does he deserve any less respect or care than any of us who are far more fortunate? He's certainly not pleasant to be near as he smells of urine and sweat and  dried excrement. But there is also a strange dignity about him in his lone and unceasing hunt for means of sustenance. He makes his way in the world. I doubt that I would last a week if I were to be put in the same predicament!