"I think it's really important for people to understand that the majority of women we sterilize are women who have had multiple children and don't want anymore," [said Barbara Harris, founder of the program]. "It's their decision."
"And to say, 'Let's go ahead and let them keep having babies because one day they might decide to clean up and keep one?' It's just not fair," she said. "And it's preventable."
Harris said that the last 20 women she paid to get sterilized had been pregnant a total of 121 times.
May 11, 2012
Paying drug-addicted women $300 to get themselves sterilized.
Project Prevention.
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93 comments:
It's at least as ethical as planned parenthood's actual actions, it seems to me.
Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
Sure.
If a guy can get drunk, have sex, and be responsible for a child the rest of his life, a woman can get drunk, get sterilized, and not be responsible for any more children.
Where's the ethics problem?
The sanctity of human drug addition has been left out. Four possibilities are missing from the vote.
Dangling $300 over the head of an addict to disable a working part of her body?
What's next, paying addicts for their kidneys? Or corneas?
Sorry, ends don't justify means.
The country that allows 1.2-1.4 million unborn babies to be killed each year should not be concerned about "ethics" of sterilization of drug addicts.
I voted good plus ethical.
I don't quite get the lefty opposition. They are pro choice. This is a choice.
I ride public transportation. I see a lot of magenta hair fat chicks with tattoos, and nose rings. I'm sure their transportation is subsidized. I don't want to pay for their health problems.
Hell, I probably already paid for their hair color, tattoos, nose rings and obesity.
Yeah, I know? Does a junkie really have a choice? $300 for the next hit. Addicts make choices too.
If it's not ethical, how can it be a bad idea?
I'm thinking the money might be better spent to get them un-addicted. I realize that's a harder thing to do, but isn't society better off in the long run?
Well, I screwed that up.
If it's not ethical, how can it be a good idea?
Mad-
$300 isn't going to go very far in getting them un-addicted.
I'm with MadMan and Erika. It's not ethical to tempt someone whose judgement is not up to par with money. They may take the money to score their next hit and then regret the sterilization later. Money better spent and more ethical to try to help them clean up their lives.
I chose bad idea because the unethical means makes it inherently not good.
As far as I know, Planned Parenthood will perform abortions on drugged out women.
So being on drugs isn't a way to argue you aren't responsible for permanent decisions you are making.
"Project Prevention mainly targets women of color," Hartmann wrote on philanthropist George Soros’ Open Society Foundation's blog.
"Essentially, while it targets specific vulnerable populations, it is trying to build support for eugenic and population control measures," she added.
--- Gee, where have I heard that argument before.
The ethical thing would be to give them free abortions.
It's a horrid practice. On the other hand, these people chose a horrid existence. Here come the liberals with "Some of them didn't have a choice." In 3...2...1...
No one can "make" you do anything. There are always choices, especially in America.
Again, the only ones hurt are the innocents.
How about this as an alternative? We don't give more and more money to people to have children when they can't even feed themselves. Just take the kids away, and put them up for adoption, or as a last resort, orphanages.(not my choice but where else?) And if you do have more kids the welfare check decreases to amortize the cost of raising you kid for you. That seems to me to be fair.
David said...
I voted good plus ethical.
I don't quite get the lefty opposition. They are pro choice. This is a choice.
David, the general rule is that leftists are only pro-choice about killing fetuses and anal sex. Most everything else, they want to tell you what to do.
As for if it is a good idea... I think it is a hard choice in a hard situation. There is no easy solution, and this is perhaps the most direct solution. It solves the problem, but I can't help but feel it is solving it by giving up.
Legally, they can give consent, unless someone has taken the time to become their Guardian. They are, after all, adults. And some may actually want to be free from the burden of pregnancy.
I have to think, though, that if a Academic proposed a study to track the women in this study to gauge the effect of the "treatment", and the funds for sterilization were part of the grant, that the IRB would never approve it because it would recognize the coercion in the payment.
This is the state, in order to save money, taking advantage of a person that is down.
Unethical.
Eugenics raises its ugly head again. The real problem for liberals and guilt-ridden caucasians is will the newly sterilized addicts still vote democrat? If they can't have more children they lose subsidies and PP loses cash flow. Now that is an ethical dilemma.
Imagine a new, DDT-like chemical discovery: spray it across the land, and it sterilizes men. Just makes them unable to impregnate women. Not carcinogenic, and, like DDT, doesn't hurt birds.
Would they like the idea?
You can't buy a kidney (or sell your own!), so should you be able to pay for someone to sterilize themselves? I don't think it works, legally, when I look at it that way.
"This is the state, in order to save money, taking advantage of a person that is down."
-- Not the state; nonprofit group.
The left is all for you having yourself sterilized.
So how can it be a bad thing for you to offer to pay for some poor person's sterilization too?
It is just a form of voluntary redistribution of wealth, right?
Why not just kill the addicts?
That would be almost free, plus no more unwanted babies.
Is this good?
Good for the collective, sure.
Is this ethical?
Sure; you're saving her from future misery.
Plus, if you pay $150 to some unemployed woman to kill her, you're stimulating the local economy, and she learns a useful trade.
You could probably extend the program in other ways, e.g., shortening a felon's prison sentence in exchange for his getting a vasectomy.
Matthew Sablan said...
You can't buy a kidney (or sell your own!), so should you be able to pay for someone to sterilize themselves? I don't think it works, legally, when I look at it that way.
You should be able to sell your kidney. It's your body.
The women in question are free [and apparently competent enough] to choose to make baby after baby which we pay for, so why are they not free [and competent enough] to choose to not make more babies? Are they not adults?
Whether or not you -should- be able to sell the kidney has no bearing on whether it is legal. I'm also iffy on letting people sell kidneys for the same reason as this. Poor, desperate people will be taken advantage of. In this case, though, its not like the group doing it profits/prospers, as opposed to rich people who need kidneys. There's no conflict of interest here, so I think it could be more permissible.
No one can "make" you do anything.
This is actually true and an ineradicable part of the mindset of (exceptionally) aware beings.
What isn't a part of the mindset of such beings is the proposition that "the rules I willingly embrace and accept responsibility for apply to everyone."
There's a fundamental difference.
The least evil of all the realistic options available.
Let's get serious and expand pay for no more kids to welfare queens. That would pose quite a dilemma for the WQ: Should I stop having keeds for money or have more keeds for money? Not such a dilemma really cause more kids means more money for ever, not just once.
Bagoh: I think you're right. It's icky and unpleasant, but short of miraculously un-addicting these people, I can't think of anything else. Well, besides reforming our adoption system so kids get out of the system faster. But that's also not really a solution.
Dangling $300 over the head of an addict to disable a working part of her body?
That's what I found creepy. They are paying for her next fix. That's not helpful.
I have to think, though, that if a Academic proposed a study to track the women in this study to gauge the effect of the "treatment", and the funds for sterilization were part of the grant, that the IRB would never approve it because it would recognize the coercion in the payment.
Hmmm. Would you concede, then, that child-based welfare payments are at least as coercive in the opposite direction?
It's faster and cheaper just to sell them their fix laced with cyanide.
Plus you make a few clams at the same time.
In New York, you can't adopt a pet from the animal shelter unless it's spayed or neutered, so there's that.
"The country that allows 1.2-1.4 million unborn babies to be killed each year should not be concerned about "ethics" of sterilization of drug addicts."
They go together. Both involve the refusal to see an inconvenient human being as human.
It's faster and cheaper just to sell them their fix laced with cyanide.
I guess, in the same way raping a woman is faster and cheaper than asking her out for dinner??? You can't just gloss over the moral relevance of consent like that.
It's merely A Modest proposal, Sofa King.
And given that consent is never granted by the fetus aborted, one can safely assume that consent is immaterial.
If it's "their decision" and they "don't want anymore" [sic], why would you have to pay them?
And if it is voluntary, how is it unethical?
Agree with vet66. This is eugenics.
Somewhere, Margaret Sanger and her penpal, Der Reichsfuhrer-SS, are dancing a polka, laughing and singing, "We win, we win".
Yeah, #3
Nope - not good and not ethical. I keep telling you it's a NewAge/Nazi culture and the evidence is everywhere. Killing kids, sterilizing supposed defectives - and the list goes on.
Nazi doctors would wonder what they got in trouble for,....
Drug addicts make bad choices -- at least until they decide to start making better ones (treatment, NA meetings, etc.) So instead of trying to persuade addicts to stop their addictive behavior, this program is taking advantage of their bad choice making to induce women to irreversably damage their reproductive organs.
Like suicide, this is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. And there isn't a lick of compassion for the addict in it -- it doesn't address the real human tragedy.
Margaret Sanger, the original guiding light of Planned Parenthood, would probably approve of this eugenics-based approach. It reflects the same moral blindness.
How many of those junkies are on SSI and if they carry to term they get welfare. How about making drug addiction a disqualifier for SSI and welfare. I don't see anything wrong about offering these woman the choice to get sterilized or not. If they are competent enough to have and 'raise' children they are competent enough to make that choice.
I'm w/ the folks pointing to eugenics. Next they'll be sterilizing mothers for $100 who have boys w/ mullets. All us right thinking people hate mullets, but they have a constitutional right to wear them.
Bad idea. A drug addicted person will do ANYTHING for $300.
Permanent sterilization due to what may end up being a temporary situation is not a good idea.
What if she cleans up her act and wants to have a normal family but someone offered her $300 when she was addicted and she took it?
If the sterilization is reversible, I would say OK. Permanent sterilization? Bad idea and unethical.
What if someone offered $2500 to any black man or woman to get sterilized?
How about $2500 to any Jewish man or woman?
Legal? Ethical?
Despite all appearances, this really isn't about eugenics or racism or helping women with drug problems.
This program, together with things like the Obama/Fluke contraceptive mandate, is all of a piece with the left's war against women's fertility, part of their agenda of making all women sterile, if not chemically, then surgically.
Not good. Not ethical. The line is being blurred here between "voluntary" and forced sterilization by waving money in the face of a drug addict. May as well wave a bag of heroin at them. This is a return to eugenics, pure and simple, and I'm amazed that so many here are down with that.
"Three generations of imbeciles are enough," is just a few degrees separation from the Shoah.
I thought we were always supposed to be in favor of publicly funded birth control?
I'm as conservative as they come, and I voted "not ethical, bad idea." $300 is an insult.
"Hey, little girl. Trade ya $300 for a very important part of your body."
Or to put the shoe on another organ:
"Hey buddy, betchya $300 you're not man enough to get a vasectomy!" Oh wait. Can't use that last one. WashPo is claiming Romney taunted a classmate with it back in grade school.
There's a program in Hollywood where stars are offered ten million dollars a year to deny their sexual orientation. Is this ethical?
This does not seem ethical and is it possible it's a fake site?
How can anyone dare presume that an addict can't make a sound decision? That is the height of conceit. This offer has the humanity of giving the addict a choice, with economic incentive for making one of the available choices. I would lower the offer to $200, though.
Imagine a new, DDT-like chemical discovery: spray it across the land, and it sterilizes men. Just makes them unable to impregnate women. Not carcinogenic, and, like DDT, doesn't hurt birds.
Would they like the idea?
I think they'd like it even if the spray was carcinogenic (to men). Maybe that would even be a plus.
This seems very suspicious - are they trying to make a point about abortion here? Most of the commenters at least see some logical connection.
I'm very surprised that this program hasn't been investigated and stopped, which leads me to think that this is a political prank.
You can get drug addicts to do just about anything for money. Taking advantage of that to sterilize them is evil.
Why not pay them to stay on birth control instead?
Wrong word: "sterilize", reminds us of Hitler's programs to sterilize the undesirables.
Right terms: "birth control", permanent birth control, cut down condoms expenses (Fluke makes her condoms and f**king a Federal issue), PRE-choice interventions,...
Never "sterilization" or "prevention": pregnancy is, to a majority of people, not an illness to be prevented.
Carnifex: "How about this as an alternative? We don't give more and more money to people to have children when they can't even feed themselves. Just take the kids away, and put them up for adoption, or as a last resort, orphanages.(not my choice but where else?) And if you do have more kids the welfare check decreases to amortize the cost of raising you kid for you. That seems to me to be fair."
This is the most realistic and ethical idea here. As awful as orphanage existance can be, it can't be worse than being raised by an addicted or neglectful parent.
If done correctly, which undoubtedly it would not be, the children could be raised in a Boys' Town manner, becoming credits society. This strikes me as an antidote to the current prison population, black and white.
If the choice is paying for their abortion or sterilize, then it is sterilize.
If the choice is paying delivery expenses and forced surrender to adoption agencies, then the answer is no sterilising.
The married gays need babies from somewhere. That's a twofer.
NOTE: All complaints about this inadequate and immoral comment should be addressed to Allie who has the patience to read them.
Freeman, birth control would be less ethical in my opinion. Injectibles that last three months, like Depo-provera, tend to lead to weight gain, especially, I imagine, in the black population. I know it did for me. Any type will increase risk of breast cancer, although decrease for uterine and/or ovarian. Add in mood swings and/or depression. So starting it in very young girls, many of whom are smokers, I imagine, is a healthcare nightmare in the long run.
Vet66 touches on it (I was in SEA in 66 myself).
This seems in practice, if not intent, racist.
Thus a bad idea AND unethical.
Regards — Cliff
It's probably unethical, but a good idea. I doubt these women want children and it would prevent future abortions.
Forcing them to bare the child would most likely result in a child born drug addicted, which would put the innocent child at a disadvantage for life.
As someone on a different thread said yesterday, offer them free birth control implants. So is anyone re thinking the benefit of free birth control?
If abortion would become illegal, we will have to have a better way of preventing these women from getting pregnant.
Richard Epstein on Econtalk about the ethics of selling organs:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2006/06/the_economics_o_4.html
Virginia Postrel and Mark Kleiman on Bloggingheads discussing her donation of a kidney to a friend, and related matters:
http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/2198
As someone on a different thread said yesterday, offer them free birth control implants. So is anyone re thinking the benefit of free birth control?
This is absolutely indicative of the problem. There's no such thing as free. In this particular case, and given your solution, it would be a privately-funded foundation or institution that's offering BC implants to these women...but they have to pay for them first. As such, that's great if that's what they want to do with their time and money. More power to them.
But to equivocate that with the Fluke fiasco is disingenuous.
We could always grind the babies up and sell them in pill form to China. That's a win/win too.
@phx
I'm not trying to be smart, because Lord knows I'm not, but I don't see your point.
The ethical issue is competence. Someone who is intoxicated has questionable competence. It is not an arms-length transaction when one of the parties is intoxicated. That being said, it sounds like a good idea. But I am suspicious of ideas that sound good.
It simply comes down to this, you are either personally responsible for your life, or you are not. If you are not, move in with the people who ARE responsible for your life, give up all your rights as an adult because you aren't one. Someone else will cook for you, cloth you, bath you, and keep you warm. And you better not bitch one time about your treatment.
If you are, you don't need my advice, but if you need my help, just ask.
Dangling $300 over the head of an addict to disable a working part of her body?
Did you see this part of Ann's post?
Harris said that the last 20 women she paid to get sterilized had been pregnant a total of 121 times.
That's an average of six times each. Of course, we don't know how many were brought to term. Those that weren't however had their entire futures taken from them.
We can't protect everyone from the bad decisions that they make. Bad decisions are made every day by all sorts of people. Some have light consequences and some are quite heavy. Some you can learn a lesson from and avoid making similar bad decisions in the future. Some you're stuck with.
There are risks in everything we do and we have to weigh the risks against the benefits.
“We don’t allow dogs to breed. We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet these women are literally having litters of children,” Barbara Harris says.
From the article, "The North Carolina-based program pays women $300 to get tubal ligations (permanent sterilization) or an IUD, Implanon or Depro-Provera shot (all forms of long-term birth control)."
It's not just permanent sterilization.
That's an average of six times each. Of course, we don't know how many were brought to term. Those that weren't however had their entire futures taken from them.
The next paragraph tells how many survived past birth - "Thirty were either aborted, stillborn or died after being born," she said. "Seventy-eight are in foster care."
Mary Beth,
Thanks for pointing that out. Not only is the birth control offered free, they're being payed to get it. This is a terrific idea. A far cry from simply demanding they miraculously become responsible adults and pay for their own birth control.
The article breaks down what happened to the children that these pregnancies produced or didn't produce because they were aborted.
A far more realistic solution.
Thanks Mary Beth, I didn't click through to the article.
Still, these women aren't being denied the chance to have children. They can't take care of the children they have as evidenced by the number of children in the foster care system.
These choices being offered these women seem viable.
I don't at all dispute that addicts having babies often begets terrible suffering.
I have some personal experience in this area, as one of my children is adopted and his birth mother is an HIV-positive, drug addicted occasional prostitute.
However, the bottom line of what's happening here is that one group of people is declaring another group undesirable, and that the undesirables should A. be kept from breeding, and B. are only able to be motivated to that end by the basest and most craven of inducements, money for their next fix.
I just simply can't get behind that view of humanity. That certain others can't be treated with dignity, that they have to be bribed the way you put a dog's pills in a glob of peanut butter.
For the people crying racism, the woman who runs this program is married to a black man, and has been a foster parent to black children (whose mother(s) were addicts).
Stop seeing eugenics where there isn't any. She saw a problem, and is offering a non-coercive solution.
And given the number of pregnancies that these women have already had, its probable that addicts aren't willing to get sterilized on a whim.
If you read further, you'll see that some men have been sterilized through this program as well.
it sounds like a perfect test for fitness to be a mother. someone who would agree to be sterilized for $300 is not someone who would be a fit mother. the program also offers $300 to the women if they'll take free long-term birth control, so it doesn't sound too coercive. it would be much creepier if the government did it, but that's not the case here.
Great idea, libs should love it because it empowers the woman to take control of her own body. Choice, don't ya know? It should make conservatives happy because it eliminates the murder of babies,& since these women vote dem. [if they bother to vote at all] the Democrat party will eventually 'sterilize themselves out of existence.
So we all agree, $100 to sterilize Mullet Moms. How about asshole mothers..$350? And I know we can all agree retarded moms for $50 worth of candy. Moms in prison, a carton of cigs..don't you think? With some of these so called progressive commenters I'm saying WTF!!!
If a drug addicted mother is capable of deciding to abort or carry her baby to term while she is addicted, she is most certainly capable of deciding not to get pregnant in the first place.
The idea of coersion is very flexible here. It’s NOT coersion to offer feee abortions. It’s NOT coersion to pay for drug addicted babies to be born and supported for their whole lives? But it IS coersion to pay for long term birth control or voluntary sterilization? Turn it around. Is it OK for a person who pays their own bills to choose to get sterilizd? Is it OK for a person who pays her own bills to choose to have an abortion? Is it OK for a baby to be paid for and supported by their own parent? What’s the difference? Socialism is the difference. Socialized government for a number of reasons, none having anything to do with personal freedom or accountability, got involved in what should be personal and family decisions. Now government is deciding what decisions it’s dependents can make. What’s the rational? I don’t think it’s out of line to suspect the reasons have little if anything to do with personal freedoms or with compassion, and have everything to do with consolidation of power.
And, since sterilization is just fine w/ progressives I now see why our prez and Secretary of State hung the Chinese dissident, Chen, out to dry.
Whenever someone talks about "letting" people have children I've already heard all I need to know.
You can't "let" someone do something without first assuming that you have some authority to stop them from doing it.
This program isn't about eugenics, about removing certain "genes" from the population.
This program is about stopping harmful behavior NOW, about stopping crack babies.
Also, if addicts are badly placed to make life-altering decisions for sterilization, they are terribly placed to make life-creating decisions for babies. Which is worse: sterilization, or crack babies?
Sterilization is worse. Unless it's done freely, w/o coercion or inducement.
Must not be many Catholics around these here parts.
Just think; Diane Hendricks could have sterilized 1,700 women!
Thanks for the post. Clarity Sober Living for Women
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