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Sterilize the Unfit Says British Professor
LifeSiteNews ^ | 8/31/10 | Hilary White

Posted on 08/31/2010 4:06:07 PM PDT by wagglebee

LONDON, August 30, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The mentally and morally “unfit” should be sterilized, Professor David Marsland, a sociologist and health expert, said this weekend. The professor made the remarks on the BBC radio program Iconoclasts, which advertises itself as the place to “think the unthinkable.”

Pro-life advocates and disability rights campaigners have responded by saying that Marsland’s proposed system is a straightforward throwback to the coercive eugenics practices of the past.

Marsland, Emeritus Scholar of Sociology and Health Sciences at Brunel University, London and Professorial Research Fellow in Sociology at the University of Buckingham, told the BBC that “permanent sterilization” is the solution to child neglect and abuse.

“Children are abused or grossly neglected by a very small minority of inadequate parents.” Such parents, he said, are not distinguished by “disadvantage, poverty or exploitation,” he said, but by “a number or moral and mental inadequacies” caused by “serious mental defect,” “chronic mental illness” and drug addiction and alcoholism.

“Short of lifetime incarceration,” he said, the solution is “permanent sterilization.”

The debate, chaired by the BBC’s Edward Stourton, was held in response to a request by a local council in the West Midlands that wanted to force contraception on a 29-year-old woman who members of the council judged was mentally incapable of making decisions about childrearing. The judge in the case refused to permit it, saying such a decision would “raise profound questions about state intervention in private and family life.”

Children whose parents are alcoholics or drug addicts can be rescued from abusive situations, but, Marlsand said, “Why should we allow further predictable victims to be harmed by the same perpetrators? Here too, sterilization provides a dependable answer.”

He dismissed possible objections based on human rights, saying that “Rights is a grossly overused and fundamentally incoherent concept … Neither philosophers nor political activists can agree on the nature of human rights or on their extent.”

Complaints that court-ordered sterilization could be abused “should be ignored,” he added. “This argument would inhibit any and every action of social defense.”

Brian Clowes, director of research for Human Life International (HLI), told LifeSiteNews (LSN) that in his view Professor Marsland is just one more in a long line of eugenicists who want to solve human problems by erasing the humans who have them. Clowes compared Marsland to Lothrop Stoddard and Margaret Sanger, prominent early 20th century eugenicists who promoted contraception and sterilization for blacks, Catholics, the poor and the mentally ill and disabled whom they classified as “human weeds.”

He told LSN, “It does not seem to occur to Marsland that most severe child abuse is committed by people he might consider ‘perfectly normal,’ people like his elitist friends and neighbors.”

“Most frightening of all,” he said, “is Marsland’s dismissal of human rights. In essence, he is saying people have no rights whatsoever, because there is no universal agreement on what those rights actually are.”

The program, which aired on Saturday, August 28, also featured a professor of ethics and philosophy at Oxford, who expressed concern about Marland’s proposal, saying, “There are serious problems about who makes the decisions, and abuses.” Janet Radcliffe Richards, a Professor of Practical Philosophy at Oxford, continued, “I would dispute the argument that this is for the sake of the children.
 
“It’s curious case that if the child doesn’t exist, it can’t be harmed. And to say that it would be better for the child not to exist, you need to be able to say that its life is worse than nothing. Now I think that’s a difficult thing to do because most people are glad they exist.”

But Radcliffe Richards refused to reject categorically the notion of forced sterilization as a solution to social problems. She said there “is a really serious argument” about the “cost to the rest of society of allowing people to have children when you can pretty strongly predict that those children are going to be a nuisance.”

Marsland’s remarks also drew a response from Alison Davis, head of the campaign group No Less Human, who rejected his entire argument, saying that compulsory sterilization would itself be “an abuse of some of the most vulnerable people in society.”
 
Marsland’s closing comments, Davis said, were indicative of his anti-human perspective. In those remarks he said that nothing in the discussion had changed his mind, and that the reduction of births would be desirable since “there are too many people anyway.”

Davis commented, “As a disabled person myself I find his comments offensive, degrading and eugenic in content.

“The BBC is supposed to stand against prejudicial comments against any minority group. As such it is against it’s own code of conduct, as well as a breach of basic human decency, to broadcast such inflammatory and ableist views.”



TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: eugenics; moralabsolutes; prolife
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“Most frightening of all,” he said, “is Marsland’s dismissal of human rights. In essence, he is saying people have no rights whatsoever, because there is no universal agreement on what those rights actually are.”

The left doesn't believe in human rights.

1 posted on 08/31/2010 4:06:16 PM PDT by wagglebee
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To: cgk; Coleus; cpforlife.org; narses; Salvation; 8mmMauser

Pro-Life Ping


2 posted on 08/31/2010 4:07:11 PM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee

Margaret Sanger would be proud.


3 posted on 08/31/2010 4:07:41 PM PDT by Uncle Miltie (Stimulus. 0bamaCare. Cap and Tax. 9/11 Victory Mosque. TARP. Amnesty. Summer of Recovery.)
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To: 185JHP; 230FMJ; Albion Wilde; Aleighanne; Alexander Rubin; Amos the Prophet; ...
Moral Absolutes Ping!

Freepmail wagglebee to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.

FreeRepublic moral absolutes keyword search
[ Add keyword moral absolutes to flag FR articles to this ping list ]


4 posted on 08/31/2010 4:07:58 PM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee

maybe he should be sterilized and also my X


5 posted on 08/31/2010 4:08:43 PM PDT by barbarianbabs (Liberty 5-3000)
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To: wagglebee

Individual rights. Big difference.


6 posted on 08/31/2010 4:09:07 PM PDT by Bosco (Remember how you felt on September 11?)
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To: wagglebee

Sterilize unfit professors.


7 posted on 08/31/2010 4:09:11 PM PDT by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: wagglebee

Who decides what is “fit?”


8 posted on 08/31/2010 4:09:24 PM PDT by ronnyquest (There's a communist living in the White House! Now, what are you going to do about it?)
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To: wagglebee

How about sterilize all libs and commies? :)


9 posted on 08/31/2010 4:09:39 PM PDT by alice_in_bubbaland (Professional Politicians are a Threat to the Republic! Remove them on 11-2-10!)
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To: wagglebee

I’d guess that many academics are out of shape.


10 posted on 08/31/2010 4:10:26 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: wagglebee

Let us begin with Marsland....is that what he is saying? Let him lead by example. Idiot. Does he know anything about the history of his unique idea?


11 posted on 08/31/2010 4:10:44 PM PDT by Texas Songwriter
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To: alice_in_bubbaland

I second that!


12 posted on 08/31/2010 4:10:52 PM PDT by MissyMack66
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To: wagglebee

Freakin’ nazi’s.


13 posted on 08/31/2010 4:11:55 PM PDT by Mr. Jazzy ("I AM JIM THOMPSON and moderates make me PUKE!!!")
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To: wagglebee

I can see an upside to all of this. I mean, I’ve got a little list... ;-)


14 posted on 08/31/2010 4:12:03 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Uncle Miltie

So would the rest of the nazis.Thats really all those people are.


15 posted on 08/31/2010 4:12:07 PM PDT by HANG THE EXPENSE (Life is tough.It's tougher when you're stupid.)
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To: wagglebee

He’s bucking for a job in obamacare.


16 posted on 08/31/2010 4:12:23 PM PDT by clintonh8r ("Let them eat lobster cake." Michelle Antoinette, vacation #6.)
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To: wagglebee

Ah, but who gets to decide?


17 posted on 08/31/2010 4:12:35 PM PDT by RichInOC (No! BAD Rich! (What'd I say?))
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To: wagglebee

How or why does a basically decent society promote people like this professor to a position of teaching it’s young and unlearned?


18 posted on 08/31/2010 4:13:21 PM PDT by 1raider1
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To: alice_in_bubbaland
How about sterilize all libs and commies? :)

By complete appendage removal, please. I really hate leftists who love Viagra telling me about evil drug companies, can you help me out here?

19 posted on 08/31/2010 4:14:20 PM PDT by Rashputin (Obama is already insane and sequestered on golf courses or vacations so you won't know it)
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To: BykrBayb; floriduh voter; Lesforlife

Ping


20 posted on 08/31/2010 4:14:35 PM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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