Cash for vasectomy....

[Shinylight]

Eilonnwy, this isn't being forced on anyone, not drug addicts, black people, poor people or anyone. So I don't know how you came to the conclusion of it being racist, it most certainly isn't.

This is merely an organisation trying to save potential children of extreme suffering.

[Eilonnwy]

Oh, I forgot, because in a perfect world drug addicts make the best choices.

My point.




your head.

[Autumnlicious]

That simply does not follow, the fact that I am paid for work does not mean that I did not go to work voluntarily.

The difference is the particular vulnerability of the person with a drug problem, which introduces a particular debate about ethics that goes beyond that of normal wage labour.

I have a vulnerability to money. Specifically the lack there of.

Habitual drug users are continually relapsing - that's part of the definition of being a habitual drug user. Would you sacrifice an innocent child to satisfy your ideology? A lot of them who are borne by these broken (yes, broken as in aberrant, uncontrolled, a danger to self and others) people and taken care of most poorly, beyond the normal bounds of society's views of child care.

Preventing that would save both the druggie and potential children harm. The druggies who really intend to have children will have them anyways and not get vasectomies. The ones who aren't fried enough and realize that their faults, answering their question of would they make a good parent and noting their continual relapses and dependencies honestly - will knowingly make the appropriate decision for voluntary vasectomies.

Yes, people will make stupid decisions. But stupidity and chance of failure was never a reason not to try to make things better.

Or we could shout out eugenics and do nothing.

Just because the current system is flawed in some manner doesn't invalidate the entire system entirely. Fix it. If it is irreparable and the results are out of acceptable bounds, trash it and try again.

[downbeatplumb]

I've already been done, could have smoked some weed and earnt some extra cash. Damn

[Jaysyn]

I've already been done, could have smoked some weed and earnt some extra cash. Damn

I seriously doubt they are referring to soft drugs like marijuana, mushrooms, acid & ecstasy. If I'm mistaken, sign me up.

[LastPoet]

Oh, I forgot, because in a perfect world drug addicts make the best choices.

My point.




your head.

You are being over sensitive to this matter Ely, drug addicts aren't the paradigm for irrationality, drug addicts can still form wise decisions, their bias is on the drug of choice. And if one chooses to be neutered for the irrational motive to get another fix, then he should be neutered, as one can't surely on those conditions give a life with dignity to any child.

[Jaysyn]

Oh, I forgot, because in a perfect world drug addicts make the best choices.

Another good reason that they shouldn't be having children. BTW, vasectomies are easily reversible these days & about as invasive as a root canal.

[The Omnissiunt One]

Oh, I forgot, because in a perfect world drug addicts make the best choices.

My point.




your head.

If we can't trust them to choose to have a vasectomy, then we shouldn't trust them to raise children. Either you act paternalistically, or you don't. It's hard to see hwo restricting their options makes them more free.

[Anomalocaris]

Oh, I forgot, because in a perfect world drug addicts make the best choices.

One might think the consequences of an ill-judged choice to have a vasectomy to be considerably less severe, and impact fewer people for a smaller number of years, than the consequence of an ill-judged choice to expose their future children to the effect of drug addiction. Since the former precludes the latter, one might argue for accepting the possibility of the former in order to better forestall the latter.

[Existentialist]

This is in answer to everyone from Post #55 of this thread onwards as I haven't had many chances to answer posts in the last couple of days. Sorry to batch you all up like this - let me know if I've missed you out!

Attempts to de-nazify eugenics on the basis of superficial information sources, particularly citing such dubious authorities as Wikipedia, are convincing evidence of considerable emotional immaturity of de-nazification's main protagonists in this thread. This is not the first time that the political right in these pages have shown a failure to appreciate the ways in which all the words people use carry personal meanings based on legitimate political passions, subjective impressions and deeply-felt individual experience that no approximation to objective definition can emulate. The fact that this thread is still going strong having briskly swept aside some juvenile attempts a few days ago by some right-wingers to demonstrate the oh-so-horrific dangers of allowing people to use their own words is a testament to the value of personal freedom of expression against vicious reactionary censorship.

It is undeniable by anyone with an ounce of sense that eugenics became inextricably tangled with the nazis after 1933 and remains so to this day. Attempts to intellectually separate eugenics from the nazi experiment invariably arise from far-right motives. Support for the £200 bribe for reproductive surgery can only come from people who think about ethics in the same pitilessly concrete and ruthlessly logical, yet dehumanised and emotionless way that the 1930's eugenicists prided themselves in, many of whom were scientists. If the result of the relentless dictionary-thumping and demands for scientific evidence that never cease on these forums is that the rest of us "have to" stop referring to the undeniable marriage of eugenics and nazism, a marriage to which no wikipedia-loving amateur can plausibly grant a divorce, there can be no better case that dictionaries and encyclopedias should once and for all be thrown smartly in the trash can so that Left can talk to Right using words of our choice, instead of being compulsorily channeled through the notoriously inadequate cipher of the OED, Dictionary.Com, Wikipedia or any other relatively unimportant publication whose purpose was, in fact, only ever to inform, not to dictate, the political and ethical issues of the day.

Paying a person with drug problems £200 to be sterilised through an operation that is reversible only if the Tory spending review deems you deserving, only if you are assertive enough to demand the reversal and only if you are organised enough to attend the appropriate clinic on the appropriate day is hardly a convincing description of reversibility. On the medical side, the major personal and life-changing decision to consent to a vasectomy has been trivialised as the equivalent of root canal work. Show me a root canal filling on a healthy tooth that has a 100% success rate of reversal with full replacement of the nerve, pulp, dentine and tooth enamel, available on the NHS, and I will increase by a small fraction the respect that I have for that argument, which at the moment is zero. Let's instead have a look at the current commercial cost of vasectomy reversal. Here's one link, for example. 'Most vasectomy reversal centers charge between $7,000 and $10,000'. My taxes are supposed to pay for that, when the patient underwent the initial procedure as the result of a bribe? I don't think so.

I agree with Eilonnwy, this bribe is an attempt to control someone else's reproductive choices through coerced sterilization of people at their most vulnerable. I think it's a disgusting, repulsive, right-wing nazi con-trick, and the irony is that when its victims start settling with the NHS out of court, I'll be the one footing the bill. So don't involve me in your childlike word games. I oppose these payments.