Eugenics Program Pits Past Against Present
This is a curious situation. A bleeding heart liberal, Representative Larry Womble (D-Winston-Salem), and House Speaker Thom Tillis (R-Mecklenburg), seem to think taxpayers should give money – reparations of a sort, if you will – to survivors of North Carolina’s eugenics sterilization program. Maybe. What is the situation? Why should money be given? The question, like so many of these type questions, has to do with making judgments and restitution for actions done previously, based on today’s perceptions.
In 1929 the state of North Carolina started the sterilization of certain people. Some of these were mentally ill; others were poor, uneducated, or had epilepsy. One can imagine the bureaucracy associated with this authority. Following rules laid down by others, they made decisions to sterilize people, much like we do dogs and cats today. It’s simple enough. The reasons seem legitimate. No one worries that the dogs or cats can’t have babies, as that is the purpose of sterilization. So why the concern today? Where is the problem? Weren’t the thoughts behind this program those of a liberal state following best-known practices? It’s hard to say. Then there is the question of: Who were the subjects and why were they chosen?
My guess is that they were already closely associated with state social services. My guess is that these people have already been receiving money from the taxpayers to care for their upkeep, because the reason they were sterilized is they were deemed unable to care for children because of personal disability or situation; the same circumstances that today would land them on the public dole. But today the process is to let them have all the children they want, and then the state takes the children away if the parents can’t care for them properly. One can suppose it is so much better for the taxpayers to pay for these children than for potential parents to not be able to have them.
The whole situation brings to the front a particularly peculiar relationship between government and the people.
It is obvious some people have a difficult time in our society of playing by the rules. They end up homeless, poor, in mental institutions, or in jail. In each case taxpayers are exhorted and forced to give up their earnings to support these people who are unable to fend for themselves. But if they are living off others why should they be allowed to procreate, making more babies to be fed and housed? Additionally, what sometimes happens is, since they are unable to care for these children properly, their children are taken away. Is this the function of the poor, the homeless, the mentally deficient: To make babies for the foster care system or for adoption? For those others not taken away, is it to have children whose ambitions and surroundings are those of the welfare state? This is the dilemma. Was it the purpose of the sterilization program to avoid those very situations?
I’m sure we need another program for state-paid do-gooders to inject their opinions and changes for ‘improvement’ into these situations. But from another perspective it seems that many of the programs we already have are the problem.
There are two sides to this situation: on one are the recipients of social assistance, and on the other are the taxpayers. The latter are the ones paying and should have some limitation on their responsibility, or else they become nothing more than a slave. Yet the idea of sterilization of recipients of this aid seems abhorrent to some. What is the problem? Why should someone who is on the public dole not be subject to this limitation?
If one objects to the idea of sterilization of those who are receiving public assistance, then perhaps one needs to examine the whole of the welfare programs. What are we actually trying to accomplish and are the programs we have meeting those goals? Is temporary birth control for someone receiving social assistance a good idea? No? You think not? Government shouldn’t have that kind of power? Then perhaps the taxpayers shouldn’t be responsible for paying for their upkeep and government shouldn’t have the power to make them.
The question then becomes: What power should government have and why is the ability to tax someone for someone else’s benefit any different than stopping someone from having children for which the taxpayer will have to pay?
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