You are, more or less, suggesting that the government get more involved in eugenics through paying for voluntary tubal ligations. The reasons you cite for your proposed policy would make Sanger blush with pride.

The real problem is a moral one. The breakdown of the family has led to scores of illegitimate children and this has impacted poor communities more, especially African American communities. In my opinion, there are no unwanted babies . . . in fact, to adopt a domestic child (no matter the color), you must compete with other couples and be placed on a waiting list. My wife and I would very much love one of those “unwanted” children, but have quickly learned that the hoops to jump through and the money involved is staggering. And, even after you’ve done everything, you aren’t guaranteed an adoption. The term “unwanted child” is just plain, flat-out wrong false.

All in all, you really should rethink your proposal . . . after I read your diary, I was honestly a bit chilled and sickened.

Sincerely, mailloux

It would be more appropriate to see this one posted on a blog from China. If this country ever moves to enact the kinds of proposals you list here, then we will have lost the last bulwark that remains to us of our humanity.

People are not the equivalent of unwanted dogs and cats in an animal shelter. Women are not to be neutered as you would a mutt who you are willing to bring home for the kids. Your notion that this program would be entirely voluntary is naive in the extreme. At some point, if a door such as this is opened, participation would at some point become mandatory and would probably break along class and/racial lines.

Figure out ways to strengthen the family and to encourage more people to seek out God and abide by His wishes for them. Your “solutions” are no more than cold-blooded prescriptions for people to throw morality to the four winds and behave as they wish with no thought for consequences.

Channeling Swift to make a point, right?

take advantage of this, rather the upper middle class ones would.

Did you ever see Idiocracy? It might clear a few things up.

By offering a federal bonus for a medical procedure, you’re, A, using taxpayer money to fund family planning and, B, inviting government intrusion, not only on family life, but into medical privacy.

You talk like a liberal. I’m wondeing why you’re here. See, for Conservatives it’s not simply about, would this work or not? We have ethics.

For some reason I think somewhere I’ve heard this before.. them paying women to get their tubes tied just not on a national level. I think recently they just did something in for minors where they are paid as long as they are not pregnant. I think it’s one sick idea too but I don’t see much difference between Ender and what other politicans or whoever have done with this other programs. Maybe the other ones just didn’t articulate their crazy reasons behind their plans. I might not be correctt but hasn’t there been some force sterilization by the gov of some sort (maybe state?) here?

Ender I am not saying your ideas are OK. I think sterilization is wrong period and your way of thought is really bad too thinking that it’s better for people not to exist that for other people to struggle with how to help them or that people born in areas where crinimals come from should never be born. It’s really sick.

Rather than pay women to get tubal ligations, I suggest were require them, or vasectomies as the gender may be, for anyone who applied for tickets to the Michael Jackson Funeral World Tour, have watched the Jerry Springer show for more than an accumulative 35 minutes or are serving in the House of Representatives, Senate or any state level legislative body.

Coercion can take two avenues: brute force (e.g. China’s one-child program) or irresitable incentive (i.e. “making an offer one can’t refuse”). The later can arise from linkage of a “choice” for sterilization with access to other medial services, eligibility for other government benefits, denial of child benefits, etc..

But it’s government intervention that starts the rock rolling down the slippery slope. If you believe in free choice, then you’ve got to keep the hand of the government off the scales.

Of course if you believe that the means justify the ends, when they you’re on a roll – towards a totatlitarian hell. But “means justifying the end” is antithetical to conservatism.

Which side are you on?

posted this and got caught up in work and realized that people actually commented on it.

I am not a social conservative, though I am somewhat of a traditionalist. And I do not think a voluntary program is a slippery slope to Eugenics or Chinese style oppression.

I guess it is better to settle for women aborting their children (because God knows abortion will never be illegal again in US), or having crack babies terrorizing neighborhoods because no one ever took care of them, instead of neither one of those happening in a civilized fashion.

As for “Subsidy always leads to coercion” – I wish we did coerce the people on welfare to actually get off their butts, but somehow it never works that way.

I have no moral problem with sterilization by choice. Fiscal discipline is something non-existent in this country today, and family destruction is not something politicians can remedy.

And by reproductive rights, I mean the right to reproduce or not reproduce through moral means. I do not mean the right to kill an unborn child. The government should not be Incentivizing, de-incentivizing, prohibiting or encouraging, limiting or promoting human reproduction, for any reason.

It’s an individual issue and monetary gain should not be a consideration.

I’m not a good writer like the above and I agree 100% with all of what they said. People are not valuable as people or not because of what is on their parents tax return or if they are getting TANF payments or not. You have seem to have a concern for children that are abused and in poverty and that is good. The government paying for even more sterilizations is not the answer. I don’t agree with it but just to add there is already free birth control available for everyone in the US at health departments. Even when medicaid is cut off for some reason women can still got for “family planning” at no cost. It’s already funded big time.

You have taken the liberal side of things that blame everything someone does on their ubrining and gives people no personal respsonsibility. Plenty of people that grew up in less than ideal situations grow up to raise kids and be good citizens. It’s just the liberal side of things that blame every ill action on the neighborhood or people’s parents or lack their of or whatever. Now there are real skills that people may lack from not having someone to watch out and guide them but I’m talking about moral decisions here like being a crinimal or not.

Why don’t you look at some of the situations that are often involved in child abuse and abject poverty. Look at policies and what leads kids to be exposed to different men vs a stable family and what leads mothers to be away from their young children.

I need no further info to say that your proposal is outrageous, vile and not supported by your flawed premises about lower and middle income people.

You are better than this.

For this post, I’ll put aside all moral concerns raised (legitimately, IMO) by others above me. I will also ignore the “slippery slope” argument, which also has merit, IMO, and concentrate on the logical fallacies in your proposed solution.

The first fallacy is in assuming that the “unwanted children”, in the aggregate, are a net cost to the government, and to society, or that cost > benefit provided. A simple cost-benefit analysis shows that that is likely not the case. First, the economic benefits: the non-subsidized income of this group is likely >50%, or more than what they take in. Beyond this, the spending of this money also benefits the economy. Law enforcement is probably somewhere around 1% of GDP, and a large portion of crimes cannot be attributed to “unwanted” children, but rather, to others in the general population. Therefore, a case can be made that unwanted children put more into the system than they take out of the system (or that cost (cost of program to government + benefits of unwanted children + future benefits of “unwanted” children’s change in income + cost of increase in STDs)

BTW, these are just the problems that I can think of off the top of my head with you proposal. I’m sure that you mean well, but good intentions don’t make for good policy, as decades of failed progressive policies attest to.

The second instance in which your assumptions have led you down the wrong path is in the belief that “unwanted” children remain in their predicament all of their lives, or that, as a group, their income remains the same all their lives. In essence, this is the fallacy that anti-immigration politicians in the 19th century had, and I will demonstrate the flaws behind the argument the same way pro-immigration politicians did: people’s incomes change radically over the course of their lifetimes. Young people in specific will see their incomes rise as they get older, and as such, many of these “unwanted” children are very likely to be prosperous, under the American system! (BTW, a corollary to this argument can be used to prove that a system that allows slavery is not less economically efficient than one that does.)

The third is in your assumption that the recipients/benefactors of the policy would be those with “unwanted” children. In fact, we have to assume that there will be a large minority of people in the US who will use it for reasons unrelated to their economic straits, or the desirability of children, much as there is a large minority of the same for those seeking abortions.

Lastly, the increase in sexual activity will likely result in more STDs (as a result of one of the costs to having sex having been removed). Even without including indirect economic encumbrances (funeral expenses for increased fatalities, hours of labor lost, etc.), the increase in medical expenses alone as a result of this policy would have to be accounted for.

In other words, for your policy to be, on the whole, beneficial, this would have to be true: (cost of “unwanted” children – % money given for unnecessary operations [point 3]) > (cost of program to government + benefits of unwanted children + future benefits of “unwanted” children’s change in income + cost of increase in STDs)

BTW, these are just the problems that I can think of off the top of my head with you proposal. I’m sure that you mean well, but good intentions don’t make for good policy, as decades of failed progressive policies attest to.

Physicians won’t do a tubal ligations on a young woman unless she already has 2 children. It will end up like abortions clinics where the physicians try to keep it a secret that they perform them.

But, I would argue that its not needed. We already have STD’s that offer the same result for free.

You see the liberals promote promiscuous sex and encourage all sorts of sexuality in the media thereby ensuring that large segments of the young female population engage in sex with many partners (all while on the pill of course). This increases the likelihood of a woman getting an STD from one of her many partners that renders her sterile before she finally get’s married and decides to go off the pill to have children with her chosen husband Unfortunately for her, since she is now sterile, no children will be born. Repeat this result a million times, and you have the same result as your above idea. So, the liberal eugenics program seems to be working as intended.