“The 31-year-old mother, identified in court papers only as Judgette W., lost custody of her children, ranging in age from eight months to 12 years, in child-neglect hearings dating back to 2000. Six are in foster care at state expense and one lives with an aunt.
The youngest child and two others tested positive for cocaine at birth and all seven “were removed from her care and custody because she could not and did not take care of them,” Judge Marilyn O’Connor said in a December 22 decision made public Tuesday.”
This is problematic. Clearly this woman is not currently capable of serving as a mother, but when the court ventures into territory like this it is treading on dangerous ground.
Until she beats her addiction I am not convinced that anything like this will stick. What happens if the only way she can acquire more drugs is by using her body. She could get pregnant that way.
Or in a way that is more disturbing to me, what happens if she has sex while completely sober, uses appropriate birth control and it fails. Does she have to go to jail then.
I don’t like the gov’t to be in people’s bedrooms.
It is a slippery slope, there are some real good arguments for forced sterilization of some people. The problem is that once you open that door there are so many potential pitfalls.
What we need to avoid is that and especially the next step: Forced sterilization and Nazi Eugenics.
And, before one states that such action is unthinkable in America, remember this:
“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
— Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in Buck v. Bell, 1927http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/freedomline/current/in_our_opinion/un_sterile_past.html