What if we decided that welfare mothers have to get norplant

[Lord Zentei]

Anyway, I got to thinking; what would be wrong with requiring mothers on welfare to get norplant or some other form of birth control? Would having that as a condition of government aid be unreasonable? I don't mean to pick on women here either; if there was an equivalent for men, of course they should also be required to receive it. I'd really like to see what others have to say about this.

It is indeed unreasonable to impose such requirements on people who have to accept welfare: to eat or to undergo an unneccesary medicinal treatment. It undermines the liberty of the individual, and can all too easily lead to abuse.

Morever, what are you going to do with people who refuse? Allow their children to starve?

If you are concerned with bad parents, better to deal with such people on a per-need basis than install crypto-eugenics programmes.

[Dark Hellion]

I don't think that analogy really works since, for driving, you are tested and if you can't drive you don't get a license. I don't necessarily think that being poor immediately makes someone unable to handle the responsibility of being a parent. (although I may be reading your argument wrong-?)

Nope, I just didn't really explain it well. I don't know what I think about the OP yet, however I dislike the idea that a women's right to her body includes a "god-given" right to become pregnant. The fact that pregnancy is natural does not mean that it is something that we should do without considerable preparation. I dislike how so many people scream women's rights even when the women are hurting themselves, their family and society. Men and women should both be expected to be responsible for pregnancy.

[Kitsune]

I was thinking maybe the reverse would be a good idea.
How about giving a modest "bonus" for women on government assistance to go on some sort of birth control?

[weemadando]

I was thinking maybe the reverse would be a good idea.
How about giving a modest "bonus" for women on government assistance to go on some sort of birth control?

For the same goddamn reason that the "Vaccination" bonus doesn't work in Australia. Its the most irritating thing that I have ever come across.

The bonus exists to reimburse people who have their children vaccinated. That sounds good. But, after a lot of whining by morons, it was altered so now, you can just state that you have an objection to vaccinations for whatever fucking reason and get the money anyway.

If you're going to have a bonus, you have to ensure that there is no way for any fucker to loophole it.

[Astarial]

I was thinking maybe the reverse would be a good idea.
How about giving a modest "bonus" for women on government assistance to go on some sort of birth control?

For the same goddamn reason that the "Vaccination" bonus doesn't work in Australia. Its the most irritating thing that I have ever come across.

The bonus exists to reimburse people who have their children vaccinated. That sounds good. But, after a lot of whining by morons, it was altered so now, you can just state that you have an objection to vaccinations for whatever fucking reason and get the money anyway.

If you're going to have a bonus, you have to ensure that there is no way for any fucker to loophole it.

Have the only exception be for a medical reason - get a signed statement from a doctor that it would either interfere with other necessary medication or seriously fuck with her system.

Nitram: Yes, birth control does do things to a woman's system, but nothing that a pregnancy itself doesn't do (for the hormone-based ones, that is... I don't know of chemical BC that isn't hormonal, so please tell me if there is). And it wouldn't be for "daring to be poor," but to prevent them from having kids they can't support except on the government's money.

[Uraniun235]

I wonder if any of the squawkers in here would like to defend the idea of pumping a human being full of chemicals if they dare to be poor, because there's a one-in-ten chance they'll be a bad egg. Remembering that pumping people full of chemicals has side-effects.

Right, and as long as the costs to society of those side-effects are less than the costs borne of supporting children birthed by those targeted by this plan, it's net gain!


(This is not a serious defense, if the emoticon was insufficient indication thereof.)

[weemadando]

I was thinking maybe the reverse would be a good idea.
How about giving a modest "bonus" for women on government assistance to go on some sort of birth control?

For the same goddamn reason that the "Vaccination" bonus doesn't work in Australia. Its the most irritating thing that I have ever come across.

The bonus exists to reimburse people who have their children vaccinated. That sounds good. But, after a lot of whining by morons, it was altered so now, you can just state that you have an objection to vaccinations for whatever fucking reason and get the money anyway.

If you're going to have a bonus, you have to ensure that there is no way for any fucker to loophole it.

Have the only exception be for a medical reason - get a signed statement from a doctor that it would either interfere with other necessary medication or seriously fuck with her system.

Nitram: Yes, birth control does do things to a woman's system, but nothing that a pregnancy itself doesn't do (for the hormone-based ones, that is... I don't know of chemical BC that isn't hormonal, so please tell me if there is). And it wouldn't be for "daring to be poor," but to prevent them from having kids they can't support except on the government's money.

Far far far easier said than done. Can you imagine the politicians running screaming when the religious groups start shouting about women being forced to have contraceptive measures against their beliefs just so they can feed their children. It doesn't matter if the statement is a lie, but its very important to remember how people can react.

[Astarial]

For the same goddamn reason that the "Vaccination" bonus doesn't work in Australia. Its the most irritating thing that I have ever come across.

The bonus exists to reimburse people who have their children vaccinated. That sounds good. But, after a lot of whining by morons, it was altered so now, you can just state that you have an objection to vaccinations for whatever fucking reason and get the money anyway.

If you're going to have a bonus, you have to ensure that there is no way for any fucker to loophole it.

Have the only exception be for a medical reason - get a signed statement from a doctor that it would either interfere with other necessary medication or seriously fuck with her system.

Nitram: Yes, birth control does do things to a woman's system, but nothing that a pregnancy itself doesn't do (for the hormone-based ones, that is... I don't know of chemical BC that isn't hormonal, so please tell me if there is). And it wouldn't be for "daring to be poor," but to prevent them from having kids they can't support except on the government's money.

Far far far easier said than done. Can you imagine the politicians running screaming when the religious groups start shouting about women being forced to have contraceptive measures against their beliefs just so they can feed their children. It doesn't matter if the statement is a lie, but its very important to remember how people can react.

Yeah, but as was pointed out as a response to my first post, if you have religious reasons not to use birth control, you'll have religious reasons not to have premarital sex, too.

[weemadando]

The issue is, that people will refuse to spend money on it, but then claim that they have a reason not to just so they get those few extra dollars.

Religion is just another excuse.

[Superman]

Anyway, I got to thinking; what would be wrong with requiring mothers on welfare to get norplant or some other form of birth control? Would having that as a condition of government aid be unreasonable?

Gee, I don't know what could possibly be wrong with preventing the poor from reproducing.

People can be poor without welfare. I'm not talking about the poor. I'm talking about mothers who willfully have litters of children to keep welfare checks coming.

[CmdrWilkens]

All of which comes back to the point. ideally welfare would be targeted so that those through unfortunate circumstances are given enough money to support their return to productive society. Moreover in an ideal world those who attempt to use the system as a permananet adult umbilical cord would get yanked hard. The problme is designing a system that is both robust enough to support the number of users it must neccessarrily have (and when one looks at earnings versus cost of living that number could be substantial) and ensuring they will recieve their benifits while the slackers will be yanked back into reality. Including reproductive rights into the issue means the whole thing becomes a mess where nobody wants any solution acceptable to the other side much as the immigration debate has become.

Sure it would be great if we could create some sort of system to cap number of kids, reward those who have fewer and punish those who have more without actually harming the kids but I don't think anyone has yet come even close to a proposal that straddles that line.

[SirNitram]

Anyway, I got to thinking; what would be wrong with requiring mothers on welfare to get norplant or some other form of birth control? Would having that as a condition of government aid be unreasonable?

Gee, I don't know what could possibly be wrong with preventing the poor from reproducing.

People can be poor without welfare. I'm not talking about the poor. I'm talking about mothers who willfully have litters of children to keep welfare checks coming.

So for 10% of all mothers on Welfare(To say nothing of all women), you want to expose the 90% of mothers who are not doing this, and all the women on welfare, to 5 years of infertility, and all the side-effects of this drug.

You do not kill houseflies with 500 lb bombs.

[Astarial]

The issue is, that people will refuse to spend money on it, but then claim that they have a reason not to just so they get those few extra dollars.

Religion is just another excuse.

Which is why you don't allow that as an excuse.

[weemadando]

The issue is, that people will refuse to spend money on it, but then claim that they have a reason not to just so they get those few extra dollars.

Religion is just another excuse.

Which is why you don't allow that as an excuse.

It appears that you are missing the point.

[Pablo Sanchez]

People can be poor without welfare. I'm not talking about the poor. I'm talking about mothers who willfully have litters of children to keep welfare checks coming.

Almost everybody has a story like that. More than once I've been in the supermarket checkout line, and seen the family ahead of me pay for their food items with stamps, peel a couple of twenties off a fat roll to buy their beer and cigarettes, then drive off in a car nicer than mine.

Now, there's thinking with your gut and deciding that this problem which you observed must be a serious issue and a Real Problem for America, and then there's thinking with your brain and realizing that this is statistically insignificant.

[weemadando]

People can be poor without welfare. I'm not talking about the poor. I'm talking about mothers who willfully have litters of children to keep welfare checks coming.

Almost everybody has a story like that. More than once I've been in the supermarket checkout line, and seen the family ahead of me pay for their food items with stamps, peel a couple of twenties off a fat roll to buy their beer and cigarettes, then drive off in a car nicer than mine.

Now, there's thinking with your gut and deciding that this problem which you observed must be a serious issue and a Real Problem for America, and then there's thinking with your brain and realizing that this is statistically insignificant.

Take it from me. Abuse of the welfare system to further personal gain beyond your reasonable entitlement is not statistically insignificant.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Take it from me. Abuse of the welfare system to further personal gain beyond your reasonable entitlement is not statistically insignificant.

Yes, thank you for letting us all know what the situation is like in Australia, since we're talking about the United States of America. I'm not going to dispute your claim, since I don't know much about Australia or your job, but I have to wonder if there isn't a sampling error present in your analysis. Which are you more likely to remember, the myriad welfare cases which are above-board and have few complaints, or the ones that are fraudulent and other problematic? I forget exactly what your job is, but doesn't it mainly focus on the latter anyway? That would skew your perception.

Here in the USA, bearing specifically on what I said about food stamps, the General Accounting Office found a few years ago that Food Stamp waste, overpayment, and fraud accounted for less than five percent of the total payout, and that 2/3s of that was due to errors on the part of the person disbursing the stamps, rather than the recipient. Here's that report in PDF. I'm comfortable with a loss rate of that kind--it's good enough for government work.

And the statistics about straight-up welfare abuse I cited earlier still stand up the same as before. Once again, I'm going to have to complain about the marked preference for anecdotal evidence that some people are showing in this thread.

[mr friendly guy]

Moreover in an ideal world those who attempt to use the system as a permananet adult umbilical cord would get yanked hard. The problme is designing a system that is both robust enough to support the number of users it must neccessarrily have (and when one looks at earnings versus cost of living that number could be substantial) and ensuring they will recieve their benifits while the slackers will be yanked back into reality.

How about we calculate how much is needed for them to eke out a living, and not a luxiourous one at that? This way, the extra welfare won't be really help the parents that much, so having kids just for the extra money won't be such a big incentive. Now coupled this with subsidised birth control. If they actually want to improve their standard of living, the best way would now be to actually get a job which pays better than welfare.

Lets also have welfare payments tied up to doing things like looking for jobs etc, which I am sure weemadando will tell you is what we do here for certain welfare.

Morever, what are you going to do with people who refuse? Allow their children to starve?

Assuming some parents are unable to provide the care for their kids because of inadequate government aid, would that not fall under the same heading of neglect? In which case the usual avenues ie taking neglected kids away from their parents apply. Couple that with subsidised birth control, and it will be a discentive for people like the woman in the OP to have more kids until they (if ever) can afford to care for them.

[CmdrWilkens]

The closest I've always thought was that welfare should essentially allow a family of a given size to meet a base cost of living for that size family. Essentially if a family says they live in zip code XXXXX then whatever the cost of living is there is the level of support they should recieve. Now this would be adjusted as, much as with unemployment, the recipients would have to show effort to attain employment and once achieved their welfare check would be reduced to ensure that they never have much less or much more than that (you'd have to monitor month to month because most folks aren't going to get full-time consistent work but rather part-time variable hours work).

We already have the COLI to get cost of living analysis so all we would need is a means of verifying family size, income, and home of record. With all of that it should be possible to implement such a system. The only quesiton at that point is how do you regulate the 10% or so who will have kids to try and abuse the system and that I'm still not sure about how to control that without hurting the kids.

[Justforfun000]

This is one of the toughest issues I've ever come across. I've tried to figure out a way to deal with it in the past (mentally) and I kept running into brick walls. There are so many variables and as many posts here show, it's damn near impossible to cover everything and be fair to everyone. The thing is you DON'T want to take away a woman's reproductive right, especially forcibly and triply so if it involves potential side effects through hormones. You DON'T want to take away children from their mother. You DON'T want the kids to starve and you also DON'T want to make them suffer by giving them the barest bones to live on with nothing ever extra for hockey, going to the zoo, etc. It's a BITCH of an issue and I can't even begin to know where to start to solve it.

[Lord Zentei]

Morever, what are you going to do with people who refuse? Allow their children to starve?

Assuming some parents are unable to provide the care for their kids because of inadequate government aid, would that not fall under the same heading of neglect? In which case the usual avenues ie taking neglected kids away from their parents apply. Couple that with subsidised birth control, and it will be a discentive for people like the woman in the OP to have more kids until they (if ever) can afford to care for them.

If the avenues put in place to deal with child neglect can handle it, then that would be the way to go to begin with - on a per case basis, of course - rather than forcing people to make a choice between receiving welfare and undergoing unwanted drug treatment. In such a case, the plan in the OP is not only draconian but unneccesary.

[Howedar]

Almost everybody has a story like that. More than once I've been in the supermarket checkout line, and seen the family ahead of me pay for their food items with stamps, peel a couple of twenties off a fat roll to buy their beer and cigarettes, then drive off in a car nicer than mine.

Now, there's thinking with your gut and deciding that this problem which you observed must be a serious issue and a Real Problem for America, and then there's thinking with your brain and realizing that this is statistically insignificant.

Take it from me. Abuse of the welfare system to further personal gain beyond your reasonable entitlement is not statistically insignificant.

Usually when people claim that something is "not statistically insignificant", they back up that claim with, you know, some statistics.

[brianeyci]

I'd like to comment on the idea of workfare, or welfare only for working mothers. I don't think that would work, for the simple reason that raising a child properly is a full time job.

I don't mind the idea of hitting men hard who like to fuck and forget though. If you fuck and have a kid, the couple is responsible for the kid, and especially the man who was fool enough to have sex without thinking of the consequences. I know men will not like me for saying that, but some men are pigs and saddling them with a huge bill to raise a child is no problem as long as the mother is actually using the money to raise the child. If a woman "tricks" a man into fucking her, then shits out a child, then raises the child properly while giving the man the middle finger, well the man is shit out of luck. Should've thought with his brain instead of his dick.

As for fucking for money, the problem can be solved by greatly diminishing welfare returns for successive children, and inspections by social workers (who are overworked, but hire more: there's a glut of women who want to be kindergarten teachers, and this could be a perfect career for them.) Bill the man, hard, before even considering welfare.

As for Norplant, enough has already been said, but it would not work. Invading the body is a terrible no-no.

[Dendrobius]

A serious question: why is reproduction regarded as some sort of unalienable right for all females? I haven't read anything in this thread so far which addresses this, all the discussion so far seems to take this as a given and go from there to find a solution.

I personally would like to see zero welfare being given to any parent who can't afford their kids. I do not see why if you can't get it together enough to support yourself financially you should be allowed to raise a kid. However I can see that this would never work since you'd be penalizing the kid for the stupidity of the parent/s. It's a necessary evil, but why is it that people make it sound like as if it's some sort of moral obligation for the govenment to spend my tax money which I earnt and give it to these people? Why are things being taken away from my family and given to them?

[Lord Zentei]

A serious question: why is reproduction regarded as some sort of unalienable right for all females? I haven't read anything in this thread so far which addresses this, all the discussion so far seems to take this as a given and go from there to find a solution.

That's because it is a red herring. The issue at hand here is one of forcing people to choose between welfare and an unwanted drug tratment.

I personally would like to see zero welfare being given to any parent who can't afford their kids.

Funny, usually people see it the other way around. Otherwise, what's the point of welfare? Give it only to those who can afford their kids?

I do not see why if you can't get it together enough to support yourself financially you should be allowed to raise a kid. However I can see that this would never work since you'd be penalizing the kid for the stupidity of the parent/s. It's a necessary evil, but why is it that people make it sound like as if it's some sort of moral obligation for the govenment to spend my tax money which I earnt and give it to these people? Why are things being taken away from my family and given to them?

You don't need to force people to undergo drug treatments if you have child welfare services to deal with neglectful people who don't do their jobs as parents.