Would it be immoral to secretly sterilise a person?

[Globaluser]

A person you feel doesn’t deserve to have kids? A person who’s children are already in care? Would you, if you could?

So, in a nutshell:
Does anyone feel they could take away the right to have a baby from anyone who could potentially be a danger to a child?

Yabu - yes
Yanbu - no

FYI I’m asking because a friend thinks its wrong to make such a big decision on behalf of a person.

For me the argument is like capital punishment - it would be immoral in principle so should never happen but that doesn't stop the voice in my mind going "perhaps it would do the world a favour if X, Y, and Z were..."

There are however cases where it might be needed on medical grounds though. For example an emergency hysterectomy where an unconscious patient would otherwise die.

I agree with this:

You can be concerned with both.
**I agree plenty of people shouldn't have children. And should consider sterilisation.
I disagree they should be forced by the state. (or anyone else).

It's not an either/or situation.

I think it’s crazy how anyone can think that a child’s life/happiness is less important than a persons right to have more children.

It's not just 'the right to have more children', it's the right to body autonomy including in medical situations. That protects innocent children too.

My mother was abusive up to and including trying to kill me. I wouldn't say she should be sterilized secretly. I think she should have been given better support towards abortions (the lack of which being the only reason I exist, according to her own words) and in what contraception was available at the time. I think if there had been incentives or at least far lower barriers to sterilization, she may have taken it and there would have been 1-2 less child abusers, 3-10 less people, depending on how one looks at it.

I'm also a survivor of medical abuse. Among the worst was when I was 16 weeks pregnant with my first and I was sexually assaulted by penetration with a foreign object while in hospital. I was left a horrible bloody mess and nearly lost my first child. I sometimes think that was their goal, they said they wanted to teach me a lesson, and they didn't like my demographics one bit. I was a young immigrant woman who kept asking for things to be explained, and I've come across more than a few especially with my first who thought I was unfit. Social services became involved, but they ended up supporting me against the midwives especially when the midwives got caught out lying. It could have so easy gone the other way. I could have lost my son -- would I then have been in your sterilization programme OP?

In your prison scenario - I think the judicial system needs to revamp in a way to deal with people who, at the end of the sentences, are still a threat. It's a complicated ball, but I still think medical autonomy and knowing about what has been done to one's body is important. Even in the medical emergency a pp mentioned, they're told afterwards - secret ones can go years sometimes the rest of their life not knowing. Female sterilizarion and IUDs have potentially risky side effects, which are more risky if someone doesn't know about them.

For me the only issue is that there's nothing to stop it slowly creeping our from the obvious cases (drug users/alcoholics who have already produced multiple children with birth defects due to their addictions) to others (the disabled, people deemed 'too poor' to have children.

Whether they turn their life around etc is of no consequence as their right to have children comes second to the needs of the children. Also if this was theoretically going to cover people who already had multiple children - why in heaven's name would they need any more? They can be responsible again for the ones they've already got.

@BiBabbles what happened to you was absolutely awful. I’m so sorry.

There are arguably individuals who by repeatedly becoming pregnant produce harmed children even if they are adopted at birth, but to manage that without irrepairable harm to a wider range of vulnerable or "undesirable/ unworthy" women is incredibly difficult to manage to the point where it is to the greater good to respect bodily autonomy and not go down a route that has been abused in many societies.

Strange how discussion on this topic tends to revolve around the women's fertility, and not the men that play at least an equal part in the creation of an embryo (may be more responsible if there are rape/ coerced consent issues) and there are probably more men that are a hazard to society in this regard.

If a woman has a poor record on repeated forced adoptions, you don't want her to fear engaging with health and social services out of concern for secret procedures and babies of high risk pregancies and poor parenting would be at even greater harm if they are born secretly.

Interesting point @BogRollBOGOF

@Globaluser

Well, people don’t have children taken off them for not being abusive and neglectful, do they? 🧐

Urgh, I think it’s crazy how anyone can think that a child’s life/happiness is less important than a persons right to have more children.
Thats pretty damn heartbreaking is that!

Well, people don’t have children taken off them for not being abusive and neglectful, do they?

Actually, they do. What then OP?

Baby removed from vulnerable mother 'unlawfully'

baby was taken away for four months over a single bruise (DM link

PARENTS FOUND INNOCENT OF CHILD ABUSE AFTER THEIR BABY WAS REMOVED AND ADOPTED – an explanation

Entirely forced as decided by the state - no

Strongly encouraged in some groups where LARC isn't an option but the risk of pregnancy is of significant risk to their health whether that's direct consent or consent from somebody with power of attorney or similar - OK

@Globaluser
On what grounds would you consider it to be moral?

Well, people don’t have children taken off them for not being abusive and neglectful, do they?

Well yes, they do, @Globaluser. What makes you think the courts are infallible?

The thing is - who decides on the grounds for sterilisation?
Some people on here think - quite understandably - that brutally violent parents should be prevented from having more children.
Some people might think disabled people shouldn't have children. Others might decide obese people are too much of a tax on our health service and create a cycle of obesity.

Who chooses? Who has that right?

From the original post
Does anyone feel they could take away the right to have a baby from anyone who could potentially be a danger to a child?

Absolutely everyone has the potential to be a danger to a child. Everyone!

So then you are looking at who meets the risk criteria, this could be past history of abuse all the way through to race and single mothers (the arguments started the same.) This is hugely open to systematic conscious and unconscious bias.

How in the world would that be ethical?

I wish my cousin would get sterilised.

6 kids;the 3 eldest who are all boys were dumped into foster care as soon as baby number 5 (a girl) appeared on the scene.

She said she couldn't cope with the 3 eldest.

6 months later she handed over child number 4 to his dad (also thé dad of the girl).

When her DD was 6 she got herself pregnant by another bloke and when she was heavily pregnant she dropped her DD off at her dads for the weekend and never bothered to pick her up again.

She doesn't see any of her eldest 3;sees number 4&5 every other Saturday.

Ive absolutely no doubt when the drug addict she's with buggers off she'll get pregnant again and probably dump off child number 6 to foster care.

She's 38 so unfortunately has enough time to pop out a few kids who'll eventually become unwanted.

@thenewduchessofhastings

I'm sure there's plenty of people that we would hope get sterilised! But forcing secret sterilisation upon someone is a different matter.

Not sure how the voting works because other posters are reading the options differently to me . From :
So, in a nutshell:
Does anyone feel they could take away the right to have a baby from anyone who could potentially be a danger to a child?

Yabu - yes
Yanbu - no

No I could not steriliser someone so 'no' which you state is YANBU.

However I think it maybe meant the other way round......

Have changed my vote to answer YABU to the title of the opening post.

Well yes I’m my thoughts of course I would feel like that about some terrible human beings - but I wouldn’t want that put into practice in real life, that’s just incredibly wrong.

This has happened formally in India and Nazi Germany, and informally in parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East where women and girls from rivil tribes / cultures / religions often get violently tortured after rape to ensure they can never give birth.

There are some people who for their own well being it would be better for them to never have to go through pregnancy. If ds was female it is something that he would simply never cope with. If reliable contraception was not for some reason an option then sterilisation would need to be considered but this would be a major best interests decision involving many professionals.

There are some people who should never be allowed near children but what you are proposing is a slippery slope.

I don't trust the state with this. It is a no from me.

A LOT of countries have done this. I believe Sweden and Canada are amongst those that routinely sterilised people with learning difficulties, up to the 1970s, because their governments took the view that these people would not make suitable parents.

And of course the adoption of babies born to unwed mothers, whether they wanted this to happen or not, was the social norm in the UK up to and including the 1960s. Because society judged them 'unsuitable' to be parents.

Then there were Ireland's Magdalene Laundries.

Removing babies from mothers deemed 'unsuitable', condemning those women as inherently deviant, then controlling their lives in such a way that they could never reproduce, is hardly a new idea.

This is an utterly abhorrent practice.