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May 09, 2004
SIX OF ONE...
One of the luxuries (or drawbacks, I guess) of being politically passionate is that you're not often saddled with "I don't know what I think about that" syndrome. Very rarely does any news story come along where you don't know what your opinion is. If it makes you seem a little closed minded, it also makes it easier to blog.
One of the few stories I am smack in the middle of came out of Rochester, New York this week. A family court judge was faced with a pair of utterly horrendous parents -- if you can even call them that. "Wastes of oxygen who unfortunately procreated" would be a more appropriate term. Here's all you need to know about these two cases for retroactive abortion: when faced with a court hearing to determine whether they could keep their children,
Neither parent attended the proceeding or secured legal representation. The mother waived her right to a lawyer, and the father never showed up in court.
The mother was found to have neglected her four children, ages 1, 2, 4 and 5. All three children who were tested for cocaine tested positive, according to court papers. Both parents had a history of drug abuse. It was not immediately clear if the father had other children.
A case worker testified that the parents ignored an order to get mental health treatment and attend parenting classes after the 1-year-old was born.
Clearly, these two barely meet the definition of human, much less "parent." I'll go on record as saying that I think they're both wastes of perfectly breathable oxygen that the rest of us could use, and if tomorrow morning should find them gone from this earth, the world would be a better place. As for the judge, she did what I suspect many or most of us might be inclined to do in this case. She issued an order barring them from having any more children.
Monroe County Family Court Judge Marilyn O'Connor ruled March 31 that... "The facts of this case and the reality of parenthood cry out for family planning education," she ruled. "This court believes the constitutional right to have children is overcome when society must bear the financial and everyday burden of care."
The judge is not forcing contraception on the couple nor is she requiring the mother to get an abortion should she become pregnant. The couple may choose to be sterilized at no cost to them, O'Connor ruled. If the couple violates O'Connor's ruling, they could be jailed for contempt of court.
My first reaction is that the couple shouldn't even have the choice, they just ought to be sterilized as a method of protecting the public. And I have to say, keeping people like this from having children doesn't bother me one bit. When people like this just keep popping out child after child, even when they're on public assistance and even when they clearly cannot afford to have more but do... well, I guess I feel like if I'm going to have to pay child support, they should at least be my children.
But I'm already finding myself going, "Whoa!" Because once you've set a precedent that it's legal to order someone to not reproduce, you open up a Pandora's box. First of all, what I just said above about people who can't afford children... did I just really endorse a eugenics program in which the poor are not allowed to reproduce? How very Hitlerian of me! And worse yet, if you make this a legal precedent, then who gets to decide what the standards are for procreation? It's all well and good to say that crack addicts shouldn't reproduce... but have we opened the door for an opinionated or bigoted judge to start adjusting society according to his or her prejudices? First crack addicts, then violent felons (no argument so far)... then maybe people with less violent criminal histories, or the mentally ill... then could it go as far as certain ethnicities? Could it even go as far as lifestyle choices or political beliefs? (I've listened to Pat Roberston, George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, Ralph Reed and some of the other way-out-there nut cases from the Christian right, and I honestly believe that some of them would think the world might be a better place if those durn liberals could be eugenicized out of existence.)
Now, is there a logical progression between keeping crack-addicted welfare drains from having children and the awful thought of saying "all blacks/Jews/Hispanics/liberals/whatever should not be allowed to have children?" Not really, no. That's a stretch. But my point is that once we have made the decision that some persons -- anyone, even crack-addicted losers like the despicable morons in this case -- can be barred from having kids, then we have given someone... a judge, the voting public, whomever... the right to make a decision and pass the judgement on who is worthy of procreation and who is not. And once we've given away that right to anyone, even when it's clearly for the public good... well, I really worry about that precedent.
Then again, I remain firmly convinced that these two people must be stopped from ever breeding again. They're endangering their children, they're endangering anyone else's kids who have to go to school with their children, and they're eventually endangering society with the generation of future drug-addicted felons they're popping out. So I honestly don't know what I think of this case. I like the judge's actions toward this couple, but I hate and fear the precedent it sets. Not to mention the level of arrogance it shows on my part to believe that I as a white-collar, upper-middle class, well-educated yuppie -- with no children of my own, yet -- could presume to determine who is acceptable as a parent and who is not.
So what do you guys think of this -- both the decision of the judge and the larger issue? I'm really curious as to what other people think of this subject.
