Saturday, January 15, 2011

A Difficult Topic

Hypothetical situation:
(We'll call her) "Ally" and her sister (and possibly her baby brother) are autistic. Ally's mom has a developmental disability. HER three or four siblings do too. Ally's grandparents also have disabilities.
What do we do with a situation like that? How can we prevent such a strain on governmenal resources? Historically they used to (by government order) sterililize all children with disabilities, saying they did not want their genes to be passed on. Many might think this is a good way to go about it.
But think about the logic:
A person should be sterilized because they are not a fit parent. They woud basically be children raising children.
BUT then who's to say who is a fit parent? I know plenty of non-disabled adults who are unfit parents. So then say we stretch that out to include them. Then instead of an invasive sterilization we say "it is now illegal for anyone to reproduce who is not fit to be a parent." Now we will need a check list of all of the qualities that dictate a person is a "fit parent." Now we have to track down anyone wanting to become a parent, so that we can test to see if they are parent-capable. But then (woops) a teenager gets pregnant. Now what? Do we force abortions?
What kind of a world would that be? I can name a few countries that might be similar to...

So instead of that, OUR country does not discourge unfit people from having kids. They simply take the children away...and put them into group homes, where sitters change every few hours (many of these sitters hate their job). SO now a child spends the rest of his or her life sitting in a corner of the room rocking back and forth and drooling on themselves...
What can WE do.
I guess we're not called to fix the whole system.
I guess we are caled to love.
So maybe that's a good place to start.

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