Mum of 9 Files Lawsuit Claiming Her Reproductive Rights Were Violated When She Was Sterilised Without Her Consent

[Earlybird]

This emotive story is beginning to gain national play, and is causing an ethical, moral, social and economic discussion in America.

Many say what the lawsuit claims occurred was/is barbaric, but the Mum's personal past has become a sticking point in the court of public opinion.

Background highlights:

• Mum had her first baby at 13, and quit school at the same time
• Mum has 9 children from four men - first two when she was a teenager, subsequent 7 were conceived while in 2 long term relationships.
• Mum has never been employed and receives financial aid from the state for 2 of the 4 children who live with her (the other 2 are supported financially by their father)
• Grandmother has custody of 3 of the children, who live with grandmother
• Mum has a litigation history having sued a chain of chemists in 2001 claiming they sold her an expired spermicide which failed to prevent a pregnancy (she won)
• - Mum was sterilised when she was 35, so in theory, had quite a few reproductive years ahead of her.

Part of why the story is beginning to get national attention is the overwhelming outpouring of angry public sentiment toward the Mum.

Extremists hail the doctors as 'heroes'.

More measured/moderate opinions are finding it difficult to defend the Mum because 'rights come with responsibility' and this Mum has been 'irresponsible' by continuing to have children she cannot afford to raise.

news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?&articleid=1222682&format=&page=2&listingType=Loc#articl eFull

What is your view?

it's such a sue-happy culture there, i can't imagine a surgeon doing this without her consent, tbh.

think more to this than meets the eye and more will soon be revealed.

ExP you may well be right, but its an important debate that has caused so much heartbreak throughout history so an important one.

The woman is obviously highly irresponsibe and puts herself before her children. To keep on churning out kids when you have no means or hope of supporting them financially - well that's a pretty poor reflection on her. I am glad that she cannot reproduce again. That said, the doctors were totally wrong to sterilise her without consent (if that was indeed what actually happened).

It is her human right to decide if she should be sterilized, the body does belong to her amd not the doctor or anyone else.

I can only imagine forcing someone to have a tatto or peircing against there will, which doesn't have the same effect as stopping you reproduce.

Vile and draconian

Yes but take your friend as an example Peachy, she already has 3 children, it's not like anyone is stopping people from having kids at all. In my line of work I have seen example of mother who have had 3 children taken into care due to their negligent parenting, who then go on to have another 3 or 4 none of whom they are capable of looking after well and who cost the state vast amounts of money to support, these are the sort of people I am talking about.

Ivykaty - IMO human rights do not trump all, they come with responsibilities and if you don't keep up your side of the bargain then you cannot necessarily expect to maintain all your rights.

My past line of work was similar to yours them Lemonade-worked for a children's charity.

I am not saying my friend (4 actually,twins in there) should ahve more, just that the rst of us have nio right toeprform surgery on her to prevent that.

it'snot about whther she should ahve mroe children, but whether we, as asociaty, have a right to judge ourselves better and able to take that decision on their behalf. It's a hugely difficult sitaution in SN and capacity ahs to be proven), in this case the capacity is seemingly there to take decisons becuase she is now doing OK.

human rights do not come with responsibilities.

There is no bargain.

It's a well documented grief response, lemonade. Terribly sad but very human.

Ideally you'd hope people who have been unable to care for their children would have access to the right sort of support to learn how to be good parents but that would take an awful lot of money, time and specialist resources (and of course it wouldn't work in every case anyway). So instead we get people having more babies in the hope they will be allowed to keep one.

Would be more humane and far cheaper in the long run to offer them intensive support along the line of the Family Nurse Partnership trial (only even more dramatic than that as FNP works with parents where the odds are stacked against them, not those who have actually had children removed) or the Dundee approach.

Anyway, none of this has anything to do with the case at the heart of this piece.

It would be wicked had the doctors sterilised her without consent. Expat's right that fear of being sued means you'd think the surgical team would have been darn careful about that. But you can never allow for human frailty, people - even clever people - and systems run by human beings fuck up all the time.

But would she be ok if she had another 4?? I think in some instances we as society do have to say actually we do know better and that enough is enough. Of course if people are going to support themselves entirely then by all means have as many as you want but IMO it would be reasonable for the state to say for example they won't support more that 4 children in any family (notwithstanding multiple births)

(I know of a case in a British hospital where the surgeons got two patients confused and carried out a hysterectomy on the wrong one. Ever so fortunately for them they just happened to claim they discovered something wrong anyway that would have required a hysterectomy anyway. )

Lemonade, even if that were a desirable course of action, how on earth would you go about it? I don't think it is anyway, but even if you think it's fine, it would be impossible to enforce. Unless you are going to carry out surgery by force or leave babies to starve or remove them from their family because you don't like the cut of their mother's jib. None of which should be acceptable in a civilised country.

so lemonade do you think all female prisoners should be sterilized? as they have all been irrisponsable and so should be striped of their human rights?

Rights may wellcomewith responsibilities depending on how you see it (ethics module at Uni,head exploding at the memory of Singer etc) but responsibilities can't be retrospective atany cost.

It seems the children are being cared for;we have no evidence to suggest they aresuffering. The three she still has care of are within a very (goodness I hate the word) 'normal' family unit.

We have no way of knwoing what her relationship with the others are- she may well ahve good access and a decent relationship but could not have raised them then, possibly again (and if wec an speculate about litigation etc we can speculate on this as well) due to the damage done by whatever caused her to be sexuallya ctiveand having abbies by 13.

She is behaving responsibly now, AFAWK. We have no evidence otherwise.

And even if we did,carrying out procedurs without express permission is how we treat animals.

ivykaty - given the families i deal with it would be a fairly good idea to sterilise men in prison as some seem to have an ability to come out for a month or two and father 2 or 3 children in that time!!

but saying the state wouldn't support more than 4 children just punishes the children which is hardly humane.

I don't think any society that likes to think it is based on the freedom of the individual would ever advocate forced sterilisation in modern times.

The responsibilities you refer to are called "laws" and if you don't uphold them you are convicted and are punished. It is not against the law to have any number of children.

We do not operate on people who break the law (as far as I know!) without their consent and so we certainly shouldn't be doing it to people who we are just disapproving of.

(although agree in this case there's probably more to the stroy than meets the eye)

You see kewcumber - If the children don't get born then they can't be the ones who are "punished" as you put it.

edam - you have pointed out the vast cost of supporting some of these people, IMO society does not have the resources and money to support the child bearing whims of some of these people, of course we could divert resources but where would you like to take the money from?

IMO having children is an enormous responsibility and not a right.

She was sterilised without her consent - WRONG. Whatever her right/wrongdoings.

If the doctors did this without her knowledge/consent, it was/is unarguably wrong.

But.....

The 'right' to have children comes with responsibilities. Too many consider their rights, including that of procreation, to be absolute and unfettered, while failing to acknowledge and live up to the responsibilities those rights entail.

This woman should not be castigated for being on welfare, nor does she deserve hate mail.

In this day and age, far too many of us are dealing with (or on the brink of) real financial hardship, and will be grateful for any safety net afforded us. We should be a caring and compassionate society that helps those unable to provide for themselves.

That said, I feel it is irresponsible (socially, economically, and ecologically) for someone who cannot provide for herself and must live on welfare to continue to choose to have children.

Having a child is (at least) an 18 year commitment to provide love, shelter, food, clothes, nurturing, education, etc. Her expectation that society will step up and assume the task she is unable to complete on her own is wrong. She is not entitled to continue having children she cannot provide for.

Her right to procreate should not require society as a whole to assume financial responsibility for her children. Is that the law? No. It's a question of fairness and doing the right thing.

But to go back to the story that has prompted the debate: as stated earlier, something doesn't add up. I doubt two doctors got together and hatched a scheme to secretly sterilize this woman. They must have at least thought they had permission from her.

A brilliant post, Earlybird.

And I agree with you on that last post entirely.

lemonade - actually yes we do have the resources to support these children, we do it all the time and though you might not accept it the rest of us are hardly (on the whole) living on the breadline whilst funding it.

The number of people who have more than 4 children and the state pay for the support of all of them is (I'm guessing here) hardly the most expensive part of the budget deficit. At least (imvho) not yet at a level to be forceably operating on people.

I have known one person in the whole of my reasonably long life so far who was in this position - and I grew up in a deprived part of the UK. One out of thousands of people I've known. I felt sorry for her children and yes, I felt angry with her for her lifestyle. I still didn't feel that wrestling her to the ground and chloroforming her for surgery was an appropriate response though...

It's entirely possible that she was sterilised without her consent - it does happen.

kewcumber - in my line of work i come across many families like this who fail time and again and the level of support they need to be successful isn't there as it is so prohibitive. That is one of the reasons we have a large and growing underclass

Lemonade - in which case is sterilisation a reasonable option?

IMO yes