Strollerderby : enforced sterilization

Ten-Year-Old Does 90 MPH While Adults Party In the Back

JeanneSager — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:54:00 GMT

That's it. I'm not going out on the road with my kid again until I buy a tank. Maybe I should vote for McCain after all - he'd probably love to see us all driving them. OK, the venom is gone. On to the story.

A 10-year-old, driving 90 MPH down a Tennesee highway, flipped a van over the weekend. Why weren't any adults watching when a child climbed into the driver's seat and took the wheel, you might ask? I know I did. The answer didn't make me feel any better. A man and a woman were in the back of the van when it flipped, along with another 10-year-old and a 6-year-old.

Just wait, it gets worse.

The man, Randy Lewis of Bristol, Tenn., told police he'd had 15 beers that night plus some liquor. The woman, Paula Elaine Evans, was reportedly shoveling pills into her mouth as fast as she could when the cops arrived. Police would not tell the media if Lewis and Evans were the boy's parents. For his sake, I hope not. Lewis has been charged with seven violations, including third offense DUI and felony reckless endangerment while Evans faces charges of either child abuse or child neglect. Both are in jail while the three kids are in state custody.

Really, where do you begin with this one? I'm all for assigning someone as DD when you've had a little too much (or you know, two and a half cases too much) to drink. But my vote's for someone who can see over the steering wheel. Then there's Lewis' history. This was his third driving while intoxicated charge. And his duds at the arraignment? A shirt that says "By This Dad a Beer."

How about we just buy him a vasectomy?

Image: Fox News

Source: Kingsport Times-News

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Texas Judge Orders Woman to Stop Bearing Children

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JeanneSager — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:34:00 GMT

Think you're done having kids? How about moving down to the Big Easy - where they're considering a plan to make it a little easier to really put a stop to childbearing.

A Republican (natch) State Legislator in Louisiana is mullling a move to offer $1,000 to every woman who will tie her tubes or to men who will undergo a vasectomy. His reason? The economy. "We're on a train headed to the future and there's a bridge out, " Rep. John LaBruzzo told the Times Picayune. Excuse this liberal mama her line crossing moment, but some of his ideas for a "bridge to somewhere" (sorry, I just had to) have merit.

No really. We constantly kvetch about poor people popping out babies that then live off the system (us), but has anyone offered up a means for them to STOP? Tubal ligations, vasectomies . . .they don't come cheap. Even those of us who have health insurance often end up paying a few hundred dollars between the co-pay for ambulatory surgery, the pain pills, the co-pays for the before and after visits with the doctor.

It's also one of the few measures that puts the onus on both sides of the zygote. It's all well and good to tie a woman's tubes, but if he's still got swimmers, that means babies can still be made - just not with her. It makes it harder to say that the government is being sexist when they're willing to pony up the same cash to snip him as they would to tie up her childbearing days.

And coming from a politician who is pro-life, it's a reminder that there wouldn't be nearly as many abortions if women weren't having unwanted pregnancies to begin with. An ardent supporter of a woman's right to choose, I can still acknowledge that for all the women who seek an abortion because it's the right choice for them, there are abortions done because a woman either chose not to use birth control and had an "oops" or her form of birth control failed. A tubal ligation has a pretty high success rate - one in 200 women may become pregnant after the procedure - while the vasectomy has even better numbers - 1 or 2 in 1,000 women get pregnant after having sex with a man who's gone under the scalpel. Sounds better than a thin layer of very breakable latex to me . . .

Yes, this is what they call sterilization, folks. But instead of lining people up and putting the proverbial gun to their heads, this would be for volunteers only. Which makes it hard for me to understand how this could be termed "racist," "Nazi" or any of the other epithets hurled LaBruzzo's way since he threw out the idea.

It's offering people a choice - for once.

Image: Feminist Women's Health Center

Texas Judge Orders Woman to Stop Bearing Children

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Texas Judge Orders Woman to Stop Bearing Children

JeanneSager — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:29:00 GMT

It's not government enforced sterilization, but it's pretty darn close. And I'd like to shake the hand of the Austin, Texas judge who told 20-year-old Felicia Salazar to keep her legs shut. At least he's trying.

Judge Charlie Baird has ordered the end to childbearing as a stipulation of the Texas mother's 10-year probation sentence on charges of injury to a child by omission. Her boyfriend, Roberto Alvarado, 25, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for beating the couple's then-19-month-old daughter last year. At the time, Salazar did nothing to protect the litte girl, nor did she seek medical treatment for her daughter's injuries.

Both parents have severed their rights to their daughter, who has been in foster care since being discharged from the hospital. The Texas legal community, meanwhile has been debating the constitutionality of Baird's order. If Salazar were sentenced to 10 years in prison, they say, she would naturally be kept from getting pregnant by the nature of confinement. But Baird didn't sentence her to prison. He's given her probation - outside with the general public - and added this as a condition. Texas judges are permitted by law to append probationary sentences, although there's no precedent for this sort of condition. There is, however, a Wisconsin case upheld by that state's Supreme Court, in which a father of nine was ordered to stop spreading his seed after intentionally failing to pay child support. That too was a condition of his probation.

Salazar's attorney is still debating the options, but I'd tell him to quit while he's ahead. Could the case be overturned? Maybe. But his client apparently doesn't know how to be a parent, why give her a chance to screw up again?

Source: Austin American-Statesman

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