The scant law on the question in conservatorship indicates what an outlier the Spears case may be. In 1985, the California Supreme Court denied the petition of guardian parents of a 29-year-old woman with Down syndrome who wanted her to undergo a tubal ligation.
Typically, a conservator has temporary control over the finances and even medical care of an incapacitated person... If a guardian fears that a ward will make financially unwise choices, “the remedy is not to say they can’t procreate,” said Sylvia Law, a health law scholar at New York University School of Law. “It’s unspeakable.”
According to experts in trust and estate law, the handful of cases in which a guardian, usually a parent, has asked a court to order contraception involved severely disabled children. “Such a child would lack the capacity to understand that a penis and vagina could make a baby,” said Bridget J. Crawford, an expert on guardianship law at Pace University law school. “And that certainly is not the Britney Spears case.”
Britney Spears is 39-years-old, so the conservator's decision that she cannot remove the IUD is very close to a determination that she can never have another child. She does have 2 sons, and the breakdown that led to the conservatorship happened right after she lost custody of them. I'm seeing that she was led to believe at the time that the conservatorship would help her regain custody. They are teenagers now, 15 and 14, so the time for living closely with them is also ending:
Posts
4 comments:
Birches writes:
Everyone I've seen has been sufficiently horrified by the fact that Britney Spears is being prevented from conceiving, but similar things are happening to lower income women all the time. If a woman gives birth on Medicaid, IUDs and long lasting birth control like DepoProvera are pushed on them under the guise of helping them to realize their life goals. At my Suburban OB/GYN, they don't even offer Depo, but for poor women at other clinics, the fact that a woman on it might never be able to conceive again isn't seen as a negative. They might not need to see a judge to remove the IUD, but I guarantee they're going to receive some pushback if they show up for removal. Even I've felt that pushback with younger women providers. I'll admit to receiving a Oral Contraceptive prescription I had no intention of filling just to avoid a lecture from providers who've been brainwashed into believing that patients are incapable of managing fertility without medical intervention.
Joe writes:
So according to women activists and most liberals, not enough birth control is really bad, but too much birth control is worse? Which is it? The point that might be made is that the poor women Birches references can't afford to feed themselves or their own families.
Britney Spears has a net worth around $60M which is actually surprisingly low to me. I wonder how much skimming has been done over the years. If you keep telling people they are crazy they just might tend to believe it.
Saint Margaret Sanger believed in birth control and abortion to thin out the undesirable races, blacks first and foremost. How is she considered a hero rather than a virulent racist?
K writes:
There are the precedents for Britney's case. In the case of Skinner v. Oklahoma it was decided that the state could not order forced sterilization even of prison inmates. And it has been decided that the mentally ill will not be permanently committed to asylums in order to prevent procreation. These are the precedents for Britney's case.
But in the case of Briteny Spears her "guardians" have evaded these precedents. First, she is not a criminal, she is in what amounts to a behavior modification program. Re-imagined policing will introduce similar programs in place of the crime/punishment model. Thus, she is an early example of how such programs might work. This entertainer has no fixed punishment, no fixed length of sentence, so she can effectively be given a life sentence by her controllers as long as it is never specified as such. Second, she can also be effectively sterilized over her reproductive life span which would be illegal if she was a criminal or in an asylum. People have not noticed (because it has not mattered) but, like public health officials, behavior modifiers, the neo-police. have no legislation controlling their actions. As a result, as we see in Britney's case, these behavior modifiers or neo-police are rising in power and can engage in activities which are banned in the context of the treatment of criminals or the allowable behavior of police, jail guards or wardens. So now that missing legislation matters. We should enact statutes providing criminal penalties for the crimes of public health officials or behavior modification specialists or re-imagined neo-police officers. That which is illegal for elected officials or police or judges or parents should be illegal for them.
cubanbob writes:
How is it possible that a 39 year old woman that is a multimillionaire, earned her money by working, is competent enough to continue working and earn big money somehow needing a permanent conservatorship? A conservatorship is by nature of not long duration so why is this still in effect? There appears to be an abusive situation the the courts are allowing. There hasn't been any credible evidence that Spears is today incompetent and needs what amounts to a guardianship.
Post a Comment