John LaBruzzo recently proposed that low-income women be given $1000 if they are willing to have themselves sterilized, and a tax-incentive program to encourage college-educated people to have more children.
I see a few sides to this.
From a statistical perspective, LaBruzzo may be on to something. The highly-controversial conclusion made by the Freakonomics authors that the Roe V. Wade decision had a profound impact on US crime statistics supports this outlook. If fewer babies are born into high-risk environments, there will be fewer demonstrating behaviors that are a result of that high-risk environment.
From a common-sense perspective, I have to say “WTF are you doing proposing a law like that?” It’s unethical and immoral to target a specific socioeconomic group for cleansing from the gene pool. Personally, I think I’d oppose this measure on these grounds alone. We’re not offering more choices to people this way; we’re taking choice away from them for the prospect of a quick buck.
From an evolutionary perspective, my principal worry is much more about what modern medicine can do to cause people to reproduce who otherwise would have died before reproduction. I see a future in which humanity requires medicine and surgery to simply survive due to propagation of genes which were inhibited under millions of years of selective pressure. I believe the solution will be widespread gene selection, though, not sterilization-based eugenics.
What do you think?
The End of Rags-To-Riches
Isn’t the thing about America that makes everyone want to come here is that you can make something out of yourself? How will anyone be a “rags-to-riches” story if we sterilize the poor?
We would be without people like: JK Rowling Stephen King Oprah Winfrey Andrew Carnegie JD Rockefeller Larry Ellison 8^>
I could see making it mandatory to have a birth control patch or injection before receiving welfare. Every 3-6 months (or however long the birth control lasts), you have to either get another dose or go off of welfare.
I think everyone has the right to have children, so “sterilization” is too harsh for me. However, you shouldn’t be having kids if you can’t make ends meet financially. Birth control patches/injections are temporary, and I think if you made them mandatory to receive aid, more women would avail themselves of them.
Of course, what’s to stop a woman from getting pregnant and THEN applying for the aid. Maybe if a woman has applied for aid before, then has more children, and applies for aid again, a more permanent form of sterilization could be proposed, because for whatever reason (her fault or not), she’s having kids when she can’t afford them.
My $.02 Weed
My $.02 Weed
Splendid
It’s certainly not the government’s role to solve these kinds of problems. Sounds like an interesting idea for an NGO, though. Of course, socioeconomics isn’t the best criteria, necessarily; bad parenting would be better. (By which I mean neglectful or abusive.). You could make adoption easier, too.
NGO
How about we start our own version of the Ira Howard Foundation?
I volunteer to lead the organization if you volunteer to provide a few hundred million dollars of seed money 🙂
—
Matthew P. Barnson