Category: Social Issues

History Repeats – Forced Sterilization

Chelsea at Reflections of a Paralytic reports on a UK case considering forced sterilization for a mentally-disabled woman.

The US has been there done that, and you can read all about it in this entirely secular book:  Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America’s Quest for Racial Purity By Harry Bruinius (Vintage, 2007).

Thought I had a review for you, but I can’t seem to find it.  But this blurb from a New Yorker review gives you the gist:

In 1927, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of sterilizing a twenty-one-year-old woman thought to be “feebleminded,” and Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote for the majority, “It is better for all the world, if . . . society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” This precedent led to the escalation of eugenics in the United States, and the coercive sterilization of more than sixty-five thousand people (many of whom were poor women). Bruinius deftly combines analysis of how the American quest for moral and social purity prepared people to accept pseudo-science as a basis for national policy with an account of the personal and intellectual development of eugenics’ most influential American advocates . . .

Highly recommend.  Really: Forced sterilization is a super bad idea.

 

self-bookmarking service, nothing to see

Well you might be interested.  Or not.  I’m bookmarking this link here because I’ve already been asked for it once and couldn’t find it forever.  Courtesy of the Curt Jester, but did I remember that?  No. I had to search through every single blog in my feed reader.  Now I’ll only have to search through every single post on my own blog, hehe.

What it’s about is an analysis of whether the Bishop of Pheonix was correct in his decision to withdrawl “Catholic” status from a local hospital.  (Famous case that you either know all about or else don’t care about.)  I being a person utterly ignorant of the facts of the case, and aware that there are multiple versions of “the facts” circulating, am employing my shutting-up powers to the full extent possible.  Which is not very much.

 

how God uses even the grumpy

[Grumpy would be me, not the long-suffering soul to whom I am wed.]

December is our month to send in charitable donations.  We do all gifts in one big batch, because it makes the deciding and record-keeping that much easier.

So the other night the SuperHusband and I sit down for our evening couple time after kids are in bed, and I’m roving through the topics, mostly just exercising my not-so-inner curmudgeon.  No lofty goals intended.  I mention this blog post about expat parties in Haiti.  My conclusion is this:  But really, we’re the same way.  I feel bad for all those poor people, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have my beer.

And SuperHusband, who is a generous and charitable person, says: I’m not sure aid to Haiti really helps.

I concede that there are no doubt problems in Haiti that no amount of aid will fix, but that certain projects, especially certain Christian humanitarian mission projects, are helping.

SuperHusband brings in North Korea.  If you send money to North Korea, it only supports the corrupt regime, and no starving people are saved.

I suspect he is probably correct, but point out that we talking about Haiti tonight, not North Korea.

SuperHusband says that UN aid to Haiti is helping maintain the status quo.

I agree, but observe that for all a UN water truck might discourage the local government from building its own water treatment plant, for the person who will be dead tomorrow without clean water, it might be nice to live long enough to agitate for reform.  But in any case, I am not proposing we send money to the UN.  I would like to send money to some Christian missionaries.

SuperHusband says that he does not believe change can happen from without.  That people must decide for themselves they want change.  Therefore, outside aid is not helpful.

Yes, I say.  I have discovered that every time I try to work through a major policy problem, I keep coming back to how the answer is Jesus.

Yes, he says.

And isn’t it interesting, I say, how the New Testament doesn’t tell us to send extra money to government aid programs.  But curiously, it does tell us Christians to provide for the poor ourselves.  Pure religion is this: providing for the widow and the orphan.

And he says okay.  Send some money to missionaries.

Day 2 @ OP: TV Kills

2nd day in the series is  up: Can Sitting Too Much Kill YOU?

The answer is yes.  But this was the alarming one – death by television:

These findings linking sedentary behaviour with poor health are far from isolated.  For example, a similar longitudinal study from Australia reports that each hour of daily television viewing is associated with an 11% increase in the risk of all-cause mortality regardless of age, sex, waist circumference, and physical activity level.

I’m feeling quite superior right now, since I’m not much of a TV person.  But heaven help me if ever they ever do a study on the dangers of reading.


Sitting Still. Bad Idea.

The slightly mis-named blog Obesity Panacea has put up the opening post in a week-long series on Sedentary Physiology.  Good blog.  Written for normal people, and covers the intersection between body weight, fitness, and health, from a what-does-the-research-say perspective.  Where “what the research says” is still a developing topic.

From a homeschooling perspective, the opening article validates one of my reasons-I-like-homeschooling: School kids sit still an awful lot.  And that doesn’t strike me as all that healthy. Referring here to the school schedule as it stands today, where kids spend more hours per day and days per year in class than they did in early years of public/town schooling. It’s not a contrast of home-versus-school anywhere and everywhere, but homeschooling versus how school is being done right now.   No reason the school situation can’t  change.

–> And in my neck of the woods, no one is walking five miles each way, either.  Or even half a mile.  When a new school was built by MIL’s house recently, within ball-throwing-distance of five or six neighborhoods, the road was rebuilt and expanded to handle the car traffic, but no sidewalk or crosswalk to be seen.  (In my case it wouldn’t help though — we live half a block from our nearest school, and must-drive distance to the next two options.  So the commute wouldn’t increase my kids’ exercise amounts.)

Funny story: This past Saturday at the “ADVENTure” parish program, by midday I had a kid ask if he could please stand through our class period, because he was “tired of sitting”.  I let him stand up front, near me, where he wouldn’t block anybody’s view.  Worked great.  He was calm and not distracting and both of us were happy.

More personal: Wow has it been annoying dealing with the new sedentary lifestyle of the foot injury.  Even with eating much less.  I remember the same problem when I went from grad school to working full-time as an accountant.  All that sitting.  Not easy to keep a body healthy that way.

Life is not wrong.

http://www.ieb-eib.org/fr/bulletins/bulletin-de-lieb-29-novembre-2010-41.html
(Article in french. H/t to Wesley Smith.)

Okay these types of cases tick me off.  I’m about to become a nasty ranting machine.  Skip on to some other blog now.

**********************************

The baby is born with birth defects.  The parents sue for ‘wrongful life’, on account how if the physician had properly informed them ahead of time, they would have killed the kid and been done with it.

Okay sure. So what is the remedy?  Do you just give the parents a .45 and show them a nice spot out back where they can shoot the kid?  Because that’s what they’re saying they missed out on.  Not real expensive.  One round and loaner weapon.  Slightly bigger hole to dig.

Yeah.  I’m being harsh.  You are suing because you *failed to kill your own child*.  Excuse me?

No.  No.  Not sane.

But what really really infuriates me about these cases are all the parents who accept their children just how they are, and get no help.  Lovely, isn’t it, how the people  who would rather their child were dead get a big court settlement, but nothing for the parents who actually want life and hope and good things for their baby.

It is evil.

****

And yes I read the original article.  The specific question being ruled on by the courts in this case was: Can the parents file a ‘wrongful life’ civil action on behalf of their child. You do the math.  Insanity.  Complete insanity.

Cholera in Port-au-Prince

Not cheerful reading:  http://goatpath.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/cholera-reaches-port-au-prince-as-victims-are-left-in-mass-graves/

Thanks to the Livesay’s for the link.

UPDATED to add:

Sanitation and the cholera panic from the Mangine’s.  Additional perspective, not graphic.

Here and here are photos of the RHFH Rescue Center’s Cholera House in action.

And if you are a Catholic Relief Services supporter, here’s their report on what they are doing to help curb the spread of the epidemic.

 

Blogging Against Disablism Day

Guilty again of meaning to blog and not getting to it.  (Not a disability, just a vice.  Enabled by meat life.)

But today is the day, and h/t to Katja for reminding me and the rest of us forgetful types.  Headquarters site is here.

And for blogging against disablism every day, I keep meaning to mention that William Peace has been on a tear lately.  Chock full of good threads — scroll down in look in particular for his observations about assisted suicide and euthanasia.  From a secular perspective, FYI.  It isn’t only we right-wing religious extremists ™ who think human life is worthwhile, no special qualifications required.