Strollerderby : sterilization

Tourney Time = Vasectomy Time

Jen Chaney — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:02:00 GMT

So far, Dick Vitale has not been featured in a pro-vasectomy public service announcement. But maybe it's just a matter of time.

Apparently the NCAA Tournament -- otherwise known as March Madness, the Big Dance or the best time-sucking sports event of the entire year -- has become the perfect time for men to get vasectomies. As the Chicago Tribune and other media outlets recently reported, more guys have been scheduling their snip-snip surgeries to coincide with the first round of college basketball action, mainly for practical reasons. If you have to sit around with a bag of frozen peas on your goodies, you may as well do it on days when television offers 12-plus hours of buzzer beaters and bracket busters.

This year, clinics and medical facilities in places like Minneapolis, Austin, Tex., and Eugene, Ore., attempted to capitalize on the trend by offering March Madness promotions. A clinic in Austin ran radio ads touting "Vas Madness!" And in Oregon and Minneapolis, some places offered free pizzas, sports magazines and, of course, complimentary bags of frozen peas to guys who elected to have the procedure. The Oregon Urology Institute even encouraged men to (ahem) "lower their seed for the tournament." Man, is there anything funnier than the intersection where college basketball comedy and medical humor meet?

Obviously it's too late to take advantage of this now, since the jumpshot-glutted first round of this year's tournament has ended. But tell me something, guys: if you're planning to have a vasectomy at some point, would you consider scheduling it around March Madness? Or do you think all this seed-lowering hype is a. amusing, b. offensive, or c. a distraction from what really matters at this time of year: the potential to win money from your co-workers?

Image: CBS via Newsday

Do We All Have a Right to Procreate?

Miriam Axel-Lute — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:48:00 GMT

Though we would rarely admit it, most of us, upon hearing about some abusive situation, have muttered about requiring a license to parent or "fixing" the offenders so at least no child will have to go through that again. But when push comes to shove would we really think either was a good idea?

Carter Dillard, writing in the Georgia Law Review, is not exactly recommending either (in fact, he speaks, rightly, of parental licensing schemes as "comical"). But he is, very seriously, arguing that there should be no fundamental right to procreate, that there is a duty on prospective parents to be "fit," and that courts should have the right to issue no-procreation orders in certain limited circumstances.

In the narrowest case that Dillard focuses on, it's hard to argue: If, due to egregious harm to previous children, a no-custody order has already been issued, such that any child born is immediately taken into state custody, wouldn't it be better for all to prevent such a pregnancy in the first place with a "no-procreate" order?

Trouble is, this seems to me almost as rife with problems as parental licensing. Much as Dillard wants to separate out the principle from how it would be implemented, I can't.

Dillard never manages to acknowledge that the state does a pretty awful job in most cases of determining "fitness" now, and often gets it wrong (in both directions). Some of that can't be avoided: We need to be able to take kids out of danger, even if we suck at it. But I heard in Dillard's writing a disturbing willingness to expand the definition of "fitness" tests to include finances (how much money is "enough"? does it matter how you spend it?), "pending neglect cases" (and if they were ruled to be unfounded, as many are?). It just seems like a clear slippery slope to pre-emptive sterilization of people who are different, poor, etc.

But even if we do set aside implementation for a moment, Dillard's argument that his "no-procreate" orders could be good for everyone by shifting resources from helping kids who have already been harmed to prevention rings a bit hollow.

For that to work, the no-procreate orders would actually have to substantially reduce the number of children born into abusive situations. But only a tiny fraction of the worst cases already have no-custody orders. And even then, how to ensure the order works? Foricble abortion? Sterilization? (Long sordid history of that already) Court-ordered Norplant (serious side effects for many people)? Criminalizing sex? Imprisoning people? Sending them to a convent?

The answer, of course, is you don't. You just say it, and if it's violated, it changes to a "no-custody" order and unspecified penalties are applied after the fact. Could that have a deterrant effect? Unlikely. At least for women, if carrying a pregnancy you know you're going to have to give up isn't a deterrant, it's hard to know what would work better. And most men in this situation are unable to pay the child support they already owe and any other penalties may suck for them, but it'll make it even less likely that they end up paying. Pregnancies are not always preventable, and in stressed families like this, are also rarely planned.

Would the orders make a point? Perhaps. But they're not going to make some huge difference in the number of kids who are born to "unfit" parents or who end up abused.

Here's what might work better:

If you want to put resources into prevention—of unwise pregnancies and of abuse—do it. Don't wait for some neat legal principle to make you feel better about it. Fund health care, birth control, abortion, good sex ed, parenting education, respite services, and domestic violence response, etc. and improve access to them. There's plenty of info out there about how to do these things well.
If you want to ensure that babies born to parents with a history of serious enough abuse that they already have a no-custody order in place aren't bounced around from foster home to foster home and maybe-maybe-not back to birth parents sometime (which I agree is not a good plan), make no-custody orders include automatic termination of parental rights for any child conceived after they are issued and allow the kid a permanent adoptive home from day one. It's still subject to errors in judgment, but at least you know it'll have real results. (And, frankly, it might be more of a deterrant than some random legal penalty.) (Note: This suggestion works when both bio parents have the no-custody order. What is the proper response when it's only one of them who is subject to such? I don't know.)

Ick.

Photo by walknboston.

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Government Seizes Newborn from Mentally Disabled Mom 22 Hours After Birth

JeanneSager — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:29:00 GMT

I'd like to say it was the unthinkable that happened to Barbara Gamble this week. Canadian authorities seized her sixth child just 22 hours after the little girl, Savannah Nicole Elizabeth, was born. It was just what Gamble and boyfriend Vince Kinney feared would happen.

In the weeks since first sharing their plight with a reporter from the Vancouver Sun, Gamble and Kinney have been the hot topic in Canada. They've become the poster children as much for poverty as for the rights of the disabled. The Canadian government has yet to allow the British Columbia residents to take home one of their children - because Gamble has an IQ that's classified her as "mentally handicapped." She's been quite literally referred to as "too stupid to parent."

She may never be able to take proper care of her children, according to some psychiatrists called in to evaluate her, and officials have said it would cost as much as $6,400 (Canadian) to pay for 10 hours a week of in-home support for Gamble during the first three months of Savannah's life. Gamble lives off government assistance herself, although Kinney (who has an IQ in "normal" range) works as a security guard. Both regularly rack up bills that far exceed the money coming in, and welfare officials have questioned the couple's understanding of their limitations.

Although my initial reaction was to let them take their kid home and just keep a close eye on the situation, a look at a mother in a similiar situation who spoke out in support of Gamble last week gave me a greater appreciation for the government's case. Equating the moms' intelligence to that of a 12-year-old, I realized, leaving a baby with a 12-year-old every day for the rest of his/her life would be grounds for child endangerment or child neglect here in America. A wait-and-see attitude on behalf of the Canadian government in this situation would be tantamount to turning a blind eye to possible child abuse.

Still, I've been holding out hope that before Savannah's birth and subsequent seizure, someone would have pitched in to offer some help for these parents. That someone would step in and work with Gamble to help her understand why having child after child is not the answer. Even a 12-year-old can be taught that in life there are rights and there are privileges. Barbara Gamble has a right to make decisions about her own womb. But parenting is still a privilege. The children she's already delivered are alive - somewhere - they should be the focus of her efforts to be a parent, a chance to show what she can do. Savannah is here now too, and if Gamble wants a chance to be her mom, she needs to put her first.

Image: Vancouver Sun

Can a Mom be 'Too Dumb' to Parent?

Too Dumb to Parent: Part 2

La. Legislator Says: Let's Pay the Poor to Stop Making Babies

Mentally Impaired Mom Loses Seventh Child To Foster Care

Amy S.F. Lutz — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:04:00 GMT

How did a story about a kidnapping evolve into a raging debate about state-sponsored sterilization in the Philadelphia media?

It started when two-month-old Shaniyah Grantby disappeared last Saturday. Her mother, Tiesha Pitts, 26, had let another woman take Shaniyah to the store, and that woman - later identified as Clarissa Hanton, 23 - never brought her back.

When Shaniyah was found Monday, it seemed like a happy ending. Until it came out that Tiesha entrusted her child to someone whose full name and address she didn't even know. And that she waited more than 24 hours to report the baby missing.

So the Department of Human Services placed Shaniyah in foster care temporarily while they investigate the family. But maybe DHS already knows enough: Shaniyah is Tiesha's seventh kid, and it turns out the other six are all in foster care.

Tiesha's mother, Ernestine Pitts-Rainey, said that Tiesha has "the mind of a 12-year-old," and suffers from emotional and developmental disorders.

This revelation enraged many Philadelphians who had been rooting for Shaniyah's safe return - an anger reflected in comments on local websites covering the story: "Why was this woman not stopped from procreating by her own parents . . . Norplant was a wonderful thing," wrote one reader.

A fair question. Shouldn't Tiesha's mother have put her on some kind of long-term birth control before she was 18, knowing what she knew about Tiesha's disabilities?

Another reader stated, "The state of PA does have the right to make this young woman be sterilized because she is mentally challenged." And although the thought of forced sterilization makes me queasy, I have to admit I can't think of a better solution in a case like this. Tiesha is only 26. If she continues to pop out babies at the current rate, she could easily have ten more children - kids whose safety might be comprised while under her care, and, should they be placed in foster homes, would face a terribly uncertain, difficult road. Never mind the strain on already stretched public resources.

Philadelphia Daily News photo

Doctor Quits After 6 "Sterilized" Patients Get Pregnant

Alisyn — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:33:00 GMT

Doctor Roman Hasil, a Czech gynecologist living and working in New Zealand, has resigned from his local District Health Board, after 6 of the 32 women he supposedly sterilized, reported new and unexpected pregnancies.

Dr. Hasil performed what is known as "key-hole" surgery, which involved placing metal clips on both fallopian tubes in order to prevent the egg from reaching the womb and being fertilized. This kind of laparoscopic operation is "the easiest operation in the world", he told the local newspaper, the Wanganui Chronicle.

But apparently, not easy enough. In February, a woman who had had the surgery but became pregnant came forward to the DHB, prompting an audit of the number of women who had been sterilized there, and how many had become pregnant from August 2005 to October 2006. Six have been found - so far.

One of Dr. Hasil's colleagues at the DHB says the failed surgeries show a lack of "proper supervision" (a requirement during the first 12 months foreign doctors work in New Zealand). But one of the doctor's former colleagues in the Czech Republic says it's not about supervision - he claims Dr. Hasil could not perform even the most basic procedures.

As the audits continue, the hospital admits it made "a major blunder," but since Dr. Hasil voluntarily resigned, no one is sure what action can be taken against him. A hospital spokeswoman says "really the whole focus of this has been the women."