Stupid is as Stupid Does

I have heard several people over the last several years throw out the idea that welfare recipients should undergo mandatory sterilization to keep them from continuing to have children and sucking the tax payers dry.  It seems that this idea has been met fairly favorably by many.  I myself have even been guilty of saying things like “Stupid people shouldn’t be allowed to breed.”  In my defense, I am mostly being facetious, but I think we have all felt that way at times.  However, something made me stop and seriously consider this matter today.  There was a news article on the internet about a woman who was raped in 1967 when she was only 13 years old, became pregnant and was then sterilized without her consent.  She was determined by the state of North Carolina to be “mentally inferior and promiscuous”.  She didn’t even realize that this had been done to her until later when she was married, attending college and wanted to have more children.

This, of course, led me to do more research.  I was absolutely appalled at what I found.  It turns out that the United States was the first country to undertake compulsory sterilization programs for the purpose of “Eugenics”.  Eugenics is the applied science which advocates practices aimed at improving the genetic make-up of a population, usually referring to human populations and it was very popular in the early 1900’s.   Proponents believed that people with certain hereditary disabilities such as deafness, epilepsy, blindness, mental illness or retardation, and/or physical deformities should not be allowed to marry or have children.  Laws were passed in 33 states allowing forced sterilization for people with these conditions.  While these laws were still active, over 65,000 individuals were sterilized without their consent.

While most of these sterilizations were performed in psychiatric hospitals or homes for the mentally disabled, many were also carried out on poor women in the welfare system.  All it took was labeling someone with a mental illness and they could be forced to undergo tubal ligations.  In many instances, the patients were only told the surgery was for birth control and were never aware that it would be permanent. 

So what exactly was it that made the United States have second thoughts on forced sterilization for the good of all?  Two words:  Adolf Hitler.  When Nazis were tried for war crimes after WWII, they claimed that American eugenics policies had inspired Hitler’s purification laws.  They couldn’t understand why we didn’t support their cause when we were, in essence, working for the same goals.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am 100% Pro-Choice.  Birth control is important.  I believe we need more education and easier access to birth control.  But I also don’t think that my government or any one else who thinks I may not be good enough should be able to make that decision for me.  Just look around you – how many of your family or friends might not be here today if these laws were still on the books and actively enforced?  What if someone told you that you couldn’t have any children because you were too poor, or take anti-depressants, or at age 13 you were raped and therefore must be promiscuous?  Where do we draw the line?

Now please excuse me while I go watch “Forrest Gump”.