The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #132894   Message #3010916
Posted By: Ruth Archer
19-Oct-10 - 03:44 PM
Thread Name: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
"Two sides of the same coin?"

I do see what you mean, Emma, but I'm not sure I agree that a specific and targeted programme of a limited time period is necessarily the slippery slope into Eugenics. I'm also not sure that helping women to make smarter choices at a time in their lives when their ability to make good choices for themselves is impaired by their addiction will lead to class genocide.

I think that the needs of the children in these cases has to be paramount, and at the moment many children are suffering. A couple I know have adopted two of them. After they were taken from their addict mother and put into care, she continued to have kids. Two or three of them live with her now. I'm not sure which ones I feel more sorry for, the ones who are sharing her chaotic life as she careers through her addiction, or the two who were shunted around the care system, and back and forth out of her life as the state struggled to maintain their contact with their mother, throughout their formative years.

There is a lot of emphasis on a woman's right to have control over her reproductive system, and as a feminist I would agree in 99% of cases that this should be paramount, but when it comes to children's long term well-being hanging in the balance, I have real misgivings about what is happening currently and am trying to maintain an open mind about potential solutions. Because the current situation simply isn't working.