For “child protection”

A British sociologist and health scientist argued recently that the ‘unfit’ should be sterilised because they are not able to raise children responsibly. Professor David Marsland, of the Brunel University, London, and the University of Buckingham, commented on Aug 26 on the BBC Radio 4 series Iconoclasts – a program touted as a place to “think the unthinkable”.

Marsland’s definition of ‘unfit’ includes drug addicts, alcoholics and people with psychological problems. He stated on the program that they should be permanently sterilised in order to prevent abuse and neglect of children, when these conditions persist for over five years in the individual. He added that “Perpetrators should be prevented from producing any more children and from multiplying their victims,” he said.

Janet Radcliffe Richards, professor of practical philosophy at Oxford, said there are serious problems about who makes the decision to sterilise, and the abuses. She said: “I would dispute the argument that this is for the sake of the children. It’s a curious case that if the child doesn’t exist, it can’t be harmed. And to say that it would be better for the child not to exist, you need to be able to say that its life is worse than nothing. Now I think that’s a difficult thing to do because most people are glad they exist.”

However, Radcliffe Richards refused to categorically reject the concept of forced sterilization as a solution to social problems, saying that there “is a really serious argument” about the “cost to the rest of society of allowing people to have children when you can pretty strongly predict that those children are going to be a nuisance.”

Marsland concluded that “we’re not short of people, so we don’t need to use this right [and] even if it is a right, we’ve got rather too many people.” ~ BBC Radio 4, Aug 28

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Michael Cook

Michael Cook edits BioEdge, a bioethics newsletter, and MercatorNet, an on-line magazine whose focus is human dignity. He writes from Sydney, Australia.

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