Poll: Poll: Compulsory sterilization (hypothetical)

[infinity^infinity]

Hypothetically, let's say that tomorrow medical professionals definitively prove that people that are mentally ill have a one hundred percent chance of passing on their mental illness to their children. If a law was proposed in your state, country, province, etc. that would mandate compulsory sterilization for all mentally ill people to prevent the spread of their diseases, how would you vote on the proposed law?

I don't want constitutional rights to factor into your decision just a clear yes or no. Also you don't have to say what your decision was or can vote one way and say you voted the other way, I want the voting to be completely anonymous; and remember this is completely hypothetical.

By mental illness I mean Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Major Depression, etc. I am talking about the ones which usually end up putting a person in the hospital. Just to make things easier we can assume the Supreme Court will rule that the law is constitutional.

 

[Kahunaburger]

And "mentally ill" is defined how? It's a pretty broad category - seems to me like this law's open for abuse. But more importantly, infringement on reproductive rights is always a problem.

 

[DJDarque]

I would vote no. Sure it's fun to joke about how stupid people shouldn't be allowed to breed, but mandatory sterilization because of a mental illness breaks so many human rights, and is just so unbelievably wrong in general.

 

[thathaloguy117]

I'm not mentally ill, although a large portion of my father's ancestry is including one of my brothers. When I get married I won't have children with my wife, and would probably adopt one. However this law is very likely to get abused.

 

[Sir Rammington Steel]

I'd say no. Just let natural selection do its thing if you must. Also, I don't think that you can tell me to factor constitutional rights out of my decision making process. I mean opinions obviously come from a great many different factors. Religion, upbringing, how you're treated in life, your general stance on things to begin with. Naturally for many people the constitution is going to factor into things. People such as myself. An American.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I'd second the importance of defining "mentally ill".

Also, this has been done, on and off, up till fairly recently in the west.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Hell yeah, but moreso because we need some way to keep the population down however we can, and this would be a good start.

Maybe we should sterilize everyone...oh wait...

 

[doggie135]

They're still people with rights, right?
No, they shouldn't be sterilized.

 

[Richardplex]

Define mentally ill. I have ADHD, does that mean somewhere down the line I'm going to be sterilised? not that I'd care, I have no plans to ever have children, but still. I believe Hitler had some similar idea about people who aren't as superior as the rest of humans; he just didn't half arse it and killed them outright.

 

[AdeptaSororitas]

Uuuumm... Didn't America already almost do this during the Eugenics movement? Forcing poor, handicapped and/or violent people to become sterile, sometimes without their knowledge? Long answer short, I would vote this down, because most of those illness can be cured or managed.

 

[xorinite]

I'd be pretty amazed at the total overturning of genetics, to find that one half of a genome confers a 100% probability of an expressed trait.
If this did happen, there would be some serious questions about how this sudden change arose. It would have to be a modern and sudden development, to get past rigorous natural selection and all our current day knowledge about how sex confers traits via genetics, oh and all the people who have been born from mentally ill people to be perfectly sane.
I would naturally assume that we were under attack by some evil extra terrestrial intelligence, or some mad bond villain.
So.. maybe, temporary measures to prevent reproduction (implants and other reversible activities.) until we found the source of this sudden change. Also shifting to a structured economy to divert massive resources to determining and then combating whatever caused this.

 

[suitepee7]

By mental illness I mean Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Major Depression, etc. I am talking about the ones which usually end up putting a person in the hospital.

sorry, i have an issue with that statement. although many of these mental disorders require treatment in the form of medication, only a minority are serious enough to actually put a person in the hospital. and things like that, are why i would say no, because we do not know enough about mental disorders to make laws on them.

for example, you could have ONE schizophrenic episode in your teens, perhaps brought on by stress, maybe a parent meets an early end, and you are a schizophrenic for the rest of your life, even if you never have another episode again.

another example is that you would have to select which mental illnesses are ok to be passed down, and which ones are not. and therein lies another problem with classification, the fact that for many disorders, the symptoms overlap. bi-polar depression and schizophrenia have many symptoms which overlap, making it near impossible to truly diagnose them. also the classification manuals for defining mental disorders do not even agree, european and american diagnosis manuals vary to a huge degree.

TL;DR no, no, dear god no. we don't know anywhere near enough about mental disorders to make laws based on them, especially laws regarding life.

 

[dagens24]

Shit, why not just kill the mentally ill? It'd be a lot cheaper and you'd still have the same solution.

Come to think of it, crime is a pretty big problem to. In the U.S., a large portion of convicted fellons are black/hispanic, so let's sterilize them to so they won't spread their crime genes.

The moral of the story is that compulsory sterilization is NOT a solution to any problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leilani_Muir

 

[dagens24]

Also, I hope that the people who vote yes are forcibly sterilized so they don't pass on their dumb.

 

[Pegghead]

I'm sure I could find hundreds of people on this forum alone who'd find some reason as to why I shouldn't have children, so who am I to judge?

 

[Saelune]

Ehhh...alot of people will sya this is terrible, but is it really? I would probably vote in favor of it, but it still has to be reasonable. Might have to have huge debates and discussions on what does and does not count.
I wouldnt want a severe mental disabillity.

 

[Liudeius]

Lots of those are not actually that debilitating with proper medicine.
Also, my mother is bipolar, technically she's not my biological mother (not step either though), but she is completely normal thanks to proper medicine. Well she panics easily, but I'm not sure that it's because of the bipolar disorder.
So no for those in particular, although I wouldn't be against incentives to get sterilized for the more serious ones (free + some money) if there were in fact a 100% chance of passing it on (which there isn't so I wouldn't).

I would however be for compulsory sterilization of the severely mentally handicapped. I think I heard somewhere that it is illegal for them to have sex to begin with in some places (because they are not seen as mentally fit to say yes), but regardless it does happen, it is hereditary in many cases, and they aren't exactly fit to raise a child so it would probably be taken away anyway or raised with the oversight of someone else.

 

[Iron Lightning]

By mental illness I mean Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Major Depression, etc. I am talking about the ones which usually end up putting a person in the hospital.

Well, if the mental illness is severe enough that it would hospitalize someone then I don't see these mentally ill people being very successful at reproducing in the first place. If they do manage to reproduce, then they're likely stable enough to function with relative normalcy and thus are not much of a problem.

 

[BabyRaptor]

Um, I'd have never been born. Not sure if that would be a good thing or not.

Personally, I'd say make it an option. Make the procedure free for people who either A) have the mental judgement to make the decision themselves or B) the people legally responsible for the person in question. If it's wanted, by all means allow it. But don't force it on anyone.

 

[notimeforlulz]

Hypothetically, let's say that tomorrow medical professionals definitively prove that people that are mentally ill have a one hundred percent chance of passing on their mental illness to their children. If a law was proposed in your state, country, province, etc. that would mandate compulsory sterilization for all mentally ill people to prevent the spread of their diseases, how would you vote on the proposed law?

I don't want constitutional rights to factor into your decision just a clear yes or no. Also you don't have to say what your decision was or can vote one way and say you voted the other way, I want the voting to be completely anonymous; and remember this is completely hypothetical.

By mental illness I mean Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Major Depression, etc. I am talking about the ones which usually end up putting a person in the hospital. Just to make things easier we can assume the Supreme Court will rule that the law is constitutional.

1. It's a proven 50% probability by genetic factors.
2. It's proven that the predominant cause of mental illness is social factors as well as genetic factors, so you yourself could be carrying the gene, and never suffer the illness.

It's disgusting that 40% of people voted yes on this. When people with the illnesses you mentioned are statistically less violent and proven BETTER people (commit less crime, more honest, etc) by scientific studies than they themselves are.

To those 40%! From someone with schizophenia, go fuck yourself, endearingly, cunts.

I'm not mentally ill, although a large portion of my father's ancestry is including one of my brothers. When I get married I won't have children with my wife, and would probably adopt one. However this law is very likely to get abused.

Read my post about the factors there brony, then get your dick out and get multiplying. If you're worried about it you should look up symptoms as it takes a long time for the diseases to develop, and if you catch it early enough, treatment is easy breezy.