Maybe we should spade?neuter humans?

[KellyHabersham]

I don't necessarily agree with eugenics, but I do feel that if someone has (or carries a gene for) a serious medical problem, they should consider the risk of passing those issues on to their offspring. This being based in part on a family I knew in northern Arizona, and the fact that my daughter has (unfortunately) inherited some of my emotional problems.

[anakhouri]

If it's their choice, sure. But eugenics implies that someone else is making the decisions, for the betterment of the 'superior' people.

[bara]

Sorry.. havent replied. No I do not agree with eugenics. I feel it is immoral to say the least.

I was only expressing my dismay about the article I posted. I would like to see it offered to those that seem to keep having children but are completely unfit and unwilling to raise them.

[Jetfire]

while forced sterilization is a friggan nono... i'm all for people having to pass a test before they can KEEP any kids they have. kids deserve a proper upbringing, not a life where they're gonna be neglected by their drug-addled bio-parents.

That's a tough call to make. By taking the child away, you hopefully give them a better chance to have a good future.

But you also remove the results of what the parents did, meaning they can just popping out kids for giggles, because they don't have anything more to do with it.

[siead_lietrathua]

That's a tough call to make. By taking the child away, you hopefully give them a better chance to have a good future.

But you also remove the results of what the parents did, meaning they can just popping out kids for giggles, because they don't have anything more to do with it.

you can explain to the parents about sterilization as an option. and, frankly, if birth control pills would be cheap or free to use, that would help the problem a little.

yes, i know that BCP/ sterilization can both fail (.1% and 1/2000 respectively) but you can ALSO opt for a partial hysterectomy, where pregnancy is fucking neigh impossible without divine intervention. you can't grow a baby without a womb. they just don't recommend it for younger people because it can make menopause come early.

legally forcing shit on people is a major nono. but if you explain to a woman "hey, if you get this done, you won't have to worry about the whole preggers thing" they might go for it. from what every preg friend of me has said, it sucks what with the puking and backaches and angry. knowing you won't get to keep the kid loses alot of the incentive for gettin' knocked up
having the procedure covered by whatever the government healthcare is called would help too. if it was free or cheap people would do it.


@anakhouri: sorry, i forgot the multiquote button. i'm one of those people that think you need to pass a test to keep your kids. and, i'm also someone who damn well knows i'll fail it. which i should. if i passed the test it would be a horrid test anyone could pass.

[Sleepwalker]

The horror and crackdown on birth control/sterilization never seems to extend to the child. It's all about someone's reproductive rights, never about the responsibility of creating a human being. Apparently, there is none. Someone who has murdered 8 children, or raped or otherwise abused them, has just as much right to reproduce as anyone else. Because Nazis. Every other human right is subject to restriction, up to and including the right to live. Why breeding is the sacred cow of choice is beyond me- my best guess is expediency. People can ignore the results far more easily.

[TheHuckster]

Every other human right is subject to restriction, up to and including the right to live.

...and many of those restrictions are also controversial and debated.

Again, if you gave the government the authority to mandate that certain people should not breed, how do you enforce that? Do you round them up into clinics and forcibly get them snipped? Do you do random searches of their homes to check for babies or kids?

[Sleepwalker]

I presume the same way we enforce any other sentence, like jail time or executions. Once tried and sentenced, they could either cooperate or be forced.

Checking for babies isn't really relevant to the matter, since whether or not they are a fit caregiver of any resident children would be a separate question legally. Or do you mean to see if someone is reproducing after being told not to? I suppose that would be handled similarly to how drugs are currently handled for those on probation.

The interesting thing about reproductive rights is they currently are far less challenged than other rights. Like the right to live. As far as I can tell, it's because of the Nazi association. I personally am a bit skeeved at how the products of reproduction, ie human beings, are regarded when it comes to reproductive rights. It's perfectly legal to produce and carry a child you know is going to die in god awful pain over the course of 2 years. Completely inviolable. Trying to prevent someone from doing that makes you actually Hitler in people's eyes. How fucking weird is that?

[HYHYBT]

It's also too close to the infant stories of Moses and Jesus. But the bigger problem is that reproduction is a basic biological function. Which others of those are licensed?

[Sleepwalker]

Living isn't a basic biological function? Death isn't? Sex isn't? All heavily regulated. You can legally be mechanically forced to breathe, and forced to stop breathing. Forced to stop having sex. In many places, forced to gestate and birth the new human. Calling reproduction an 'essential biological function' doesn't change anything.

[Kheldarson]

The interesting thing about reproductive rights is they currently are far less challenged than other rights. Like the right to live. As far as I can tell, it's because of the Nazi association. I personally am a bit skeeved at how the products of reproduction, ie human beings, are regarded when it comes to reproductive rights. It's perfectly legal to produce and carry a child you know is going to die in god awful pain over the course of 2 years. Completely inviolable. Trying to prevent someone from doing that makes you actually Hitler in people's eyes. How fucking weird is that?

If with the right to live, you're talking about the death penalty: that has to do with a cost-benefits measure of a life against the safety of society and the cost of keeping said individual alive. This is generally argued about with the idea that it may make us no better as a whole: the basic superhero question. If you're discussing the right to end a life as one choose (assisted suicide, living wills, etc.), then the argument is a question of informed consent on all sides, ideas on what's truly the best quality of life, and, like with the death penalty, do we have the right to play God?

Messing with reproductive rights, particularly in the idea of forcibly preventing another from permanently having the right to continue their line, ranks right up there. Do you want to be the one to say that no good can ever come from Joe Schmo down the street? That it isn't possible he'll change his life for the sake of a child, or that his progeny may rise above the conditions he hands them? How do we choose who gets to have kids and who doesn't before they have them? Do we rank by IQ? Religion? Economic status?

There are far too many issues with it, ranging from playing God to the whiff of discrimination to, of course, the idea of genocide ala Nazis. Of course people will avoid it.

[Sleepwalker]

Yet people perform that calculus when it comes to suicide and executions. That they don't when it comes to MAKING new humans speaks a great deal to the status of children in our society- still more property than citizen. 'The right to continue their line' masks that the only way they can continue their line is by creating human beings, who have their own rights. So, the right to make new humans, with the requirement to do it responsibly.

How do we choose to kill/imprison people? Even if they COULD rise above their previous actions? Somehow we manage to meet the standard of evidence, even if we raise it hgiher for more serious punishments.

I'm not really interested by 'the superhero question'. While it can make some very interesting tales, it is sourced from the censorship of the mid century. Superman didn't kill people because the censors didn't allow the creators to show him killing people.

[HYHYBT]

Yet people perform that calculus when it comes to suicide and executions

Would you mind clarifying the part about suicide, please? I'm not familiar with any situations where we collectively decide someone needs to commit suicide and then get them to do it. At least, not officially or well-supported; bullying doesn't fit here.

[Sleepwalker]

?

Prevention from suicide/punishment for failed attempts or assisting others- forcing someone to commit suicide(would it still be suicide?) isn't really an issue, since simply killing them is far simpler, and the end result is the same.

In regards to reproduction, the parallel would be restrictions on abortion, contraception and sterilization, of which there are many. My point is that these decisions ARE made that impinge on basic rights and biological processes, so just saying 'it's a basic biological process' has no meaning. It verges on the naturalistic fallacy, as if an action can be so 'natural' it falls outside the law, with the content of 'nature' being defined by cultural background and expedience.

Do you have anything to say about the portion of the posts not referring to suicide?

[siead_lietrathua]

guys, forced sterilization is not the only option out there for the problem of idiot parents. again, if you explained to the morons about it, and offered it as a government-paid-for procedure, people could choose to be sterilized.
they also need to remove the freaking stigma for a woman to choose to get sterilized. i've been trying to have it done since i was 20, and the docs keep telling me to "well what if you change your mind? better wait a few more years". now they just tell me i'm too big when they see i'm not changing my mind, despite their being people far heavier than me that have had it done. (they just already had kids)