Inmates offered reduced sentences for sterilization
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Vasectomies are offered for men and hormone implants in the arm for women.
Eh, I think the big feels are overblown. It sounds to me like a relatively small amount of time shaved off of a sentence and some people might view this as an opportunity to get free birth control rather than coercion.
It might help to know how much of their entire sentence 30 days represents. If they are serving 31 days, that is nearly the entire sentence. If they are serving six months to a year, it is a meaningful percentage, but not huge. If they are serving more than a year, this might seriously be a nit, an excuse to give them free birth control.
I am willing to hear reasoned arguments to the contrary, but I am failing to see what the big deal is.
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Not really, but that's basically what these prisoners are being told. Don't you think that's a bit de-humanizing?
The women are not being sterilized. They are being offered a fairly low hassle and reliable form of birth control.
I have personally known women who wanted to be sterilized at a young age and couldn't get it. I knew one woman who ended up pregnant for the third time out of wedlock by her alcoholic boyfriend after the medical establishment turned down her request to be sterilized.
Just because that is the opinion of the judge does not mean this is not going to be viewed as a genuine opportunity by some people whose lives suck so very fucking much that they can't seem to stay out of jail.
Fair enough. I was admittedly looking at it from a male perspective where a vasectomy is basically sterilization (albeit a form that can be reversed, at least on some occasions). Nonetheless, for an agent of the State to use the "authority" granted to him/her to push something like this strikes me as very wrong. These aren't just random people off the street, they're prisoners who are having their freedom used as a bargaining chip.
Also, and not to be glib, but there are other ways to avoid becoming pregnant, including at least one that is (biblical reports aside) 100% effective.
The article is brief, so maybe there is more to it than what has been presented. But an awful lot of poor people are victims of their circumstances who can't manage to change that because of the many ways in which they are disempowered snowballing to give them just no real control.
Last, I will note that one problem for women is that they can become pregnant from rape. If you are poor and a drug addict and generally not in control of your life, being lectured to "just say no (to sex)" is pretty insulting and can be completely unrealistic. The reality is that an awful lot of women deal with a lot of coercion when it comes to sex. Poor, powerless, uneducated women may be ill equipped to effectively fend it off, no matter how much they might desire to do so.
Given the recent headlines concerning sexual harassment of incredibly privileged women, it seems like I shouldn't have to point that out.
Fair enough. That is a slightly more extreme scenario, but one I should have considered.
Poor, powerless, uneducated women may be ill equipped to effectively fend it off, no matter how much they might desire to do so.
Hmm.. I mean, I get what you're saying, but at the same time, that sounds a bit insulting towards those women (assuming you are talking about something short of flat out rape). Even if you're poor, powerless, and uneducated, you still have agency, and the ability to make choices, no?
Anyway, none of this is meant to say that women in this position might not want birth control (or the men too as far as that goes). But I still stand by the assertion that it's wrong for a judge to use the position he's in to push a birth control agenda on people in a coercive environment. Making birth control available on a purely voluntary basis? Sure, I'm all for it. This? Still not so much.
Women generally have less agency than men. I have an unusually high degree of agency for a woman. I still feel like my life is a lot harder than it would be if I were male. In spite of my determination to exercise agency (or perhaps because of it), the world seems to slam an awful lot of doors in my face.
I think it is really disrespectful of such women to act like they want their lives to remain in the toilet. They probably don't.
But I still stand by the assertion that it's wrong for a judge to use the position he's in to push a birth control agenda on people in a coercive environment.
I guess I am less clear than you that this is simply coercive. The judge may have zero power to offer birth control on a completely voluntary basis. He may be seeing a need and trying to find a way to fill it.
The world seems to not be set up to just do the right thing for the right reasons and yadda. That seems to be a serious uphill battle. It seems far easier to try to slip a little good under the door in spite of the world by calling it "punishing bad people."
That doesn't mean the judge is right. It just means that I don't think the article really spells it out that well and I don't think it is as simple as people are painting it who hear it and immediately dislike the idea on principle.
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they aren't. Knee jerk rejections "on principle" are often a situation where worse options get chosen because they are more PC, not because they actually, in fact, are better solutions.
Perhaps not always as available as we would hope...
Words cannot even begin to describe how despicable this is.
Only from a very pedantic viewpoint. Practically speaking, that's what's going on. And the government doesn't need to be in the "sterilization" business at all. It's just not an appropriate role for government.
And never mind how de-humanizing this is: to be told, essentially, "you're such a horrible person that we want to make sure you never reproduce". Imagine somebody telling you that and think how it would feel. Now try having some empathy for these prisoners.
Genuinely curious why you find this so despicable though.
We're talking about the State coercing people into sacrificing their reproductive ability. If you can't see the problem with that, then our worldviews are so different that I can't imagine anything else I can say that would make any difference.
Incentivized via jail time is functionally equivalent to criminalizing non-compliance, even when it's characterized as a sentence reduction (it's equivalent to an across the board sentence reduction, with new imprisonment for those who do not cooperate.)
It is, in that sense, coercive.
> As I understand it it's already common practice to discourage people with genetic diseases etc from reproducing
Doing so in threat of imprisonment is also despicable.
> As I understand it it's already common practice to discourage people with genetic diseases etc from reproducing
Even were sterilization coerced by imprisonment for non-cooperation to acceptable when the person subjected to it had a diagnosed with a genetic disease (which, I should emphasize again, it is not), doing so because of the presence of a traits that has a loose correlation with a broad class of conditions, some of which have a genetic component, would still be significantly less justifiable.
1). This is not the same as criminalizing non-compliance because these people are not in jail for refusing a vasectomy. I do not agree with the Judge giving them the opportunity to get out early by surrendering their reproductive rights or my forgoing those rights temporarily in the case of women, these people are in jail for breaking the law not for refusing birth control.
2). I know that there are genetic conditions that cause serious birth defects and a life of unrelenting pain and suffering. I know that sterilization is offered by some in the medical community but I am unaware of anything like that being criminalizes. If it is that is in fact disgusting.
3). At one time people in institutions and those with mental retardation or mental illness have been sterilized without their consent. Times have changed and that is no longer acceptable in the US, thankfully, but even back when this was considered acceptable and widely practiced, it was not criminal for a family to refuse.
I think there's a difference between saying "If you don't undergo sterilization we'll imprison you." and saying "You're already being sent to prison, but if you undergo sterilization you don't have to go for as long." The latter is reasonably comparable to saying "Hi, I'll give you $X if you get a vasectomy."
>a loose correlation with a broad class of conditions
Anything but.
>some of which have a genetic component
Most of which.