Unfotunately, while the idea might seem to have practical merit, for all too many people it raises the specters of Nazism and eugenics.
Now I get to say, again, back in the 20th century, :lol:-the early 20th, many countries, had compulsory sterilization programs, with the U.S. leading the way. This was part of a eugenics movement, designed to eliminate "undesirable" traits. The mentally ill, mentally disabled, epileptics and handicapped:deaf, mute and blind, were all targeted, as were blacks and Indians.-in fact, many women were sterilized by force, often without their knowledge when they were in the hospital for other reasons, such as childbirth. Ultimately, such programs were discontinued due to obvious ethical concerns, and such programs are now criminal.
There are, of course, other, simpler considerations to what you propose. Suppose you were married, Jarrod-perhaps you are, I don't know-and you and your wife, given the current economic conditions, had to get some assistance because you lost your jobs and couldn't get new ones. It happens.......now, suppose your wife also was three months pregnant-would she have to have an abortion to go on welfare?
Well said.
There is and has always been a basic dichotomy between what are seen as two fundamental concepts in the USA.
The first is reproductive freedom. We don't tell people how many children they can have - we certainly don't like it when we hear about China's (often brutally-enforced) One-Child Policy.
The second is not punishing children for the 'mistake' of their parents. Like it or not, the children of the aid recipient are not to blame - they didn't do it, and it's unfair to punish them; we in the US just don't do that.
Add to this the fact that we try to keep families together, we don't want to become a country that 'takes' and raises children on a casual or unnecessary basis, and then add the basic resentment many people have when they play by the 'rules' and are not rewarded the way they perceive people who ignore the 'rules' are, and you have a problem.
I don't see any answers here. Cut off aid, the children suffer. Take the children away, and our nation becomes something I don't want it to be. Enact laws on the number of children a person can have - or a person on any kind of public aid - again, a fundamental violation of reproductive rights that I don't want to see happen.
But I absolutely understand the anger and resentment against people who intentionally or even unintentionally abuse the system in this way.
In college, I knew a young woman who was barely out of her teens. She was attending college on the state dime, she had three kids, each by different fathers. She told us that this was intentional (she was not stupid or uneducated). By having three different fathers, she got maximum child support from each of them. She lived on public assistance, she loved and wanted her children and claimed to be a good mother to them, but she had no desire to ever work for a living and was very clear about how she was going to make that happen.
We were disgusted, of course, but she claimed she was no different from the factory worker who fell off a ladder and suddenly could not work anymore for the rest of his boat-owning, skeet-shooting, go-fishing-every-day life.
In any system of government largesse to the those we feel deserve our aid, there will be those who figure out how that system works, exactly, and then exploit it to their advantage. And to stop them, we'd have to stop the aid, which we previously devised because we did want to help the deserving.
you're right jarrod, it's not simple at all.
