BellaOnline Forums News and Politics Women's Issues paying poor women to be sterilized?

Has anyone seen or heard about this?
ABC News Article

What do you think?

We actually just started reading about women's health, which includes reproductive rights, in my women's studies class so it was odd that I found this news article the same day I started that reading.

I found the comments to the article interesting. All the various points of view.

On the one hand it could potentially save tax payers from having to support even more kids through the welfare system, or help pay for abortions through their taxes(???) It's also voluntary, so people have the choice to do it or not to do it.

On the other hand, some comments were equating it to a form of eugenics.

I guess MY opinion is more in line with this comment I found.



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Grrl, you are opening up a hell storm posting that here!!! Love it!! Offer it (whether birth control or tubals) gratis and there is absolutely no problem with the idea at all. The eugenics argument is assanine and I would like specifically to know how many "unwanted" children those who make it have adopted, care for, foster, are Big Brother/Big Sister to, put through school, clothe, make sure Santa visits, feed and love. Then I might be interested in hearing what they have to say about eugenics. Give me a reasonable plan/course of action on how to deal properly with every single child born to the constantly pregnant woman and we can entertain it. Fact of the matter is, these children are usually born to women indifferent to their own bodies. It is not love that brings them into the world, it is ignorance, apathy and poverty - and they are the ones who suffer for it.

I believe that this is another aspect of pro-choice. There are probably many women who would choose sterilization if they could afford to have the procedure. Maybe this will give those women the option.

Bravo! Makes perfect sense msbaby. Good point!

Msbaby, that was one of the questions associated with the LaBruzzo suggestion (which won't ever go anywhere, so it's really all theoretical). Would the $1000 go to the woman as a cash payment or as a payment toward the cost because certainly poor women who don't have health insurance won't be able to pay for the procedure with only $1000. Heck, my deductible is more than that - not that I'd be eligible since I don't live in poverty.

What I love and said on my blog is that in the CNN interview with LaBruzzo, the interviewer (sorry, I can't recall her name right now) shows LaBruzzo that the idea is based on a flawed theory - that paying poor women to have tubal ligations done is going to stop poverty when in fact more adults in La who live in poverty DO NOT have children.

Where I also have a problem is incentivizing wealthy women to have children. He doesn't go into that much, but from what I read the suggestion was to offer financial incentives to couples above a certain income level to have children. That I find more egregious.

It is indeed egregious to incentivize anyone to have children for any reason than they are ready to be parents. It's also laughable to think that anyone would be so stupid as to allow a person with no real involvement to convince them that they should give birth when the thought otherwise had not crossed their mind!

Voluntary sterilization will not eliminate poverty, but it might make things easier for impoverished families by reducing the number of children to care for when they are hardly able to care for themselves.

I would never wish away a child, but is it so wrong to not want more born into a situation filled with nothing but misery and hunger? If there were a way to keep any woman who didn't want to be pregnant from doing so, the money spent on food stamps and government assistance might be allocated for education.

As for the money falling short of paying for the procedure for women; wouldn't it be good for government programs like Medicaid to cover tubals BEFORE paying for several pregnancies? Oh, and here's a novel idea; vasectomies. They are much less expensive than tubals! ;-)

msbaby: again, totally agree with you. This topic is also going on over in the Baptist forum, although it's a little heated over there. I come mostly from an academic perspective....given my education and my life experience.....and spend my day conducting massive amounts of research on a variety of topics. The countries that have implemented state funded programs with regards to birth control have seen vast improvement in the situation. It is basically giving a woman the means to handle her body the way she wants, she can then raise her daughters to handle their bodies they way they want and so on. Poverty should not prevent women from having access to bc. Everyone says "what about the man" well yea, they should be responsible, but often they're not....but it's the female that bears the brunt of unwanted pregnancy. So I'm sorry, it is a woman's issue. I am shocked at the reaction this issue is getting. (there is a group of young men opting for vasectiomies just to protect themselves from "sneaky" women) You guys have a great week!

I would love to agree with this statement, but unfortunately there ARE people this stupid (and greedy) in this world that they would have children for the sole reason of getting money. They might convince themselves that it was the final decision maker - the thing that "tipped the scales", but it does come down to greed.

Back to the sterilization part: when I worked as a surgical tech (almost 12 years ago - wow!) we wound up having to do an emergency laparotomy on a 16 yr old girl due to an ectopic pregnancy that had ruptured. This is bad enough that she was only 16 - but she already had 3 children! According to her records, her first child was born when she was 13, that means she was pregnant when she was 12, and had pretty much gotten pregnant every year afterwards.

I don't know that paying for sterilization would have made a difference in this child's life. If her parent(s) were so lacking that they couldn't step in after the first pregnancy and go to a health clinic to find birth control, they might not have been educated enough to know about another option.

On the other hand, many people (although definitely not all) have more kids so they can get more money from the government without working. So if her family was this sort, then this incentive would have appealed to them.

Overall, I do not think there should ever be an incentive given for people to have children. There are too many little ones in this world already that are not wanted. A couple should make that decision on their own, having a child for love.

Incentives for NOT having children is actually a pretty good idea. If a person really wants a child, they are not going to be swayed by this bribe - and the child will definitely be wanted. On the other hand if a person takes the incentive, then they wanted the money more than a child- so it is better that a child not be in that home.

I hope that made sense.

It makes a world of sense to me! In fact, those of us who have faith have to realize that prevention will do a lot to make abortion a non-issue. It will be a better world when all babies are planned and born into a caring family.

[quote=]the female that bears the brunt of unwanted pregnancy[/quote]

I think I have posted before what I've been told by older women; Guys might have the fun and run but it sticks to girls.

I'm actually a proponent of universal healthcare, so I'd love to see a single payer system that covers all medical issues. I'd love to see Medicaid cover abortion. There are too many people who don't want those things, however, for me to think that it's going to happen without a huge fight.

As for paying for the tubals, I am opposed. Free healthcare? Sure. Offering what seems to be a large financial incentive for someone making minimum wage? No. The Manhattan Institute conducted a massive study in 2004 about the effects of welfare reform - essentially helping with work and educational attainment for families in poverty. They found significant decreases in poverty rates and in family size, suggesting that paying for sterilization is a permanent solution for what could be a temporary problem (poverty) given money used in other areas that would benefit entire families. See, even if you deny mom the extra $100 a month for an additional child, you still have mom and her current children who have to live. (Don't even get me started on dads.)

Further, the average family on welfare has 2.65 children, only slightly higher than for the general population. These discussions of "another mouth to feed" and "popping out babies" are standard conservative propaganda, but the numbers don't bear out the image. That's why LaBruzzo can't answer why he's looking at this option when 23% of families without children are in poverty while only 17% of families with children are in poverty. With the money to put this plan into place, the state of Louisiana could administrate a program that could benefit all families living in poverty by offering real, long-term assistance.

People not making a living wage is a more significant problem and leads to many working families still eligible for childcare subsidies. The average cost of full-time childcare for 2 children in the US is $15,600 per year.

In reality this type of plan doesn't take into account the realities of child poverty. It's using tired stereotypes to convince people to support it, regardless of what statistics actually show. Generational poverty as an argument has been debunked numerous times, but it keeps rearing its head. Are there individuals who live in generational poverty? Yes. Are they a large percentage of people on welfare? No.