Apropos of my recent post on the connection between social Darwinism and Nazi eugenics programs, here's an opinion piece from the British newspaper The Daily Mail. The title: "Why we should sterilise teenage girls ... temporarily at least."
The idea is that temporary "contraceptive jabs and implants" should be administered to all girls between the ages of 12 and 17. This would put an end to young teenage pregnancies.
Who came up with this alarming notion? A "government minister" by the name of Dawn Primarolo. Accirding to Wiki, she's the Minister of State for Public Health in the current Labour governmemt.
The Daily Mail's columnist, Fay Weldon, sees nothing wrong with Primarolo's idea. Quite the opposite. It's "rather sensible." Quoth Weldon:
We are moving into a science fiction age in which life itself can be created in a test tube, and it seems that, before long, perfect babies could be bred at will, largely free of hereditary disease and illness.
So, in my view, there is little point any more in feeling shock-horror at the idea of mass sterilisation.
Far from "shock-horror," Weldon feels we should view the proposal as the vehicle for a plethora of "social improvements."
Once you stop your under-20s having babies, there's no end to the social improvements you could make.
If girls go on to college instead of minding babies, fewer children overall will be born. The more educated a girl, the fewer babies she is likely to have - education and fertility rates being in inverse proportion.
The maternity services, now so very over-stretched, would be better able to cope. Young mothers would not have the priority they now do when it comes to housing, and accommodation would be set free for those unfortunates clamouring on the waiting lists.
Education would benefit, too. Classrooms would be less plagued by fatherless lads whose ambition it is to cause nothing but trouble.
Why, it'll be a utopia! The sole drawback is "gender unfairness." But that little problem, too, can be solved.
Shouldn't boys under 17 have their tubes tied, too? It takes two to make a baby.
What's sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. Perhaps the Government should start thinking about how that would work.
Seventeen comments have been left by readers. Only one is sharply critical.
If anything contravenes a person's human rights it would be this. It is a shocking proposal and a disgrace.
A couple of others raise questions about the idea. But the majority of comments are strongly positive.
Should be compulsory, for all the reasons given.
I agree, except I would extend the age of sterilisation from 12 to 20+ years.
Brilliant! Someone has FINALLY said what needs to be said.
I love it. Keep them sterile until they marry. No more unmarried trollops with kids by various fathers living off the taxpayer. Better still, keep them sterile until they pass an intelligence test.
Finally! Someone who speaks some common sense!
I think it sounds like a brilliant idea. Saving the girls from themselves. We could use it in Australia. I think it's amazing what science can do and would do a lot of good if it became mandatory for 14-17 year olds. Imagine how many ways it could change society!
It wouldn't exactly hurt the causes of managing our overpopulation and climate change crises, either!
Incidentally, there is no overpopulation crisis in Britain, where the birth rate is barely at replacement levels. But concerns about overpopulation and everybody's favorite bugbear, global warming, are merely a tissue-thin screen masking the real intent behind this proposal. In two of the comments, the actual neo-Hitlerian agenda comes goosestepping into the open:
There is one ethnic minority group who have ALWAYS had children out of wedlock. It's part of their culture. Their men rarely stay around to bring up the children. They have been able to gain access to all our welfare benefits without giving anything back. They will refuse to have this implant for fear of losing their gravy train. We all know who they are, but are afraid to say anything for fear of being called racist. If we could implant them and then all the white Vicky Pollard's, plus any drug addicts, we'd save ourselves an awful lot of money. Then we could start sterilising all the young men these girls associate with.
And:
Please stop the yob culture from reproducing and raising yet more feral animals to blight the UK.
So here we go again. Reread the quotes in my social Darwinism post, and you'll see the same attitudes, the same mindset, the same philosophy at work. Something must be done about the "inferiors" who are reproducing too fast. Their human rights are irrelevant since they are hardly human at all. They're "feral animals." Anyway, the good of society is what counts. If we can build a better species through forced sterilization and test-tube babies, how can we let some outmoded concepts of personal freedom stand in our way? Anyone who objects simply lacks common sense, or the stomach to do what all thinking people agree is plainly necessary.
Besides, what could possibly go wrong?
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(Hat tip: Ace of Spades, Doubleplusundead)
