*Gulp*

Should the Mentally and Morally Unfit Be Sterilized?

The idea that the mentally unstable, drug addicts and women incapable of rearing children should be sterilized is not new. But is it right?

A professor in the U.K., David Marsland, argues that the only way to prevent the abuse and neglect of children is to stop them from being born in the first place. Marsland says law enforcement and social workers should be able to recommend sterilization and the courts should be able to enforce it.

In the U.S., judges have occasionally used the threat of sterilization and even castration to punish defendants. Oklahoma had a law that allowed the sterilization of certain felons. That law was eventually struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1942, according to The New York Times.

In another case, a mentally unstable woman fatally poisoned one child and had another child on the way. A judge proposed to sterilize her if she had any more babies. The threat was never carried out after objections from civil liberty organizations, the defendant’s lawyer and even the prosecutor, according to the Times.

But in the end, would it be that horrible to protect potential children? Or is the cure worse than the disease?