In this morning's Herald, Fran O'Sullivan crawls out from under her rock and weighs in to defend David Garrett:
But a case could be made for incentivising parents who have already displayed they can't cope with the pressures of bringing up more children to undergo tubal ligations or vasectomies.According to O'Sullivan, coercion is "what governments do". And they've taken such measures before, sterilisng unmarried mothers to prevent the spread of immorality. Which apparently makes it all OK.The Government could simply make sterilisations free and provide additional targeted assistance to help them cope with their existing brood.
Looked at rationally, such grants could even be seen as economic in the long-run from the parents' perspective - as well as the Government's.
Plenty of middle-class parents stump up for the financial cost of sterilisation procedures once they have completed their own families.
Why shouldn't assistance be available to those who can't meet sterilisation costs?
Like the Dim-Post, I'm struck by the irony of O'Sullivan - a diehard NeoLiberal who opposes state intervention in people's lives (not to mention the welfare and health systems) - suddenly supporting it when it comes to sterilising the poor. It's a telling hypocrisy, and it shows that when push comes to shove, her "principles" amount to nothing; she's just another dirty racist and classist authoritarian.
As for the merits, free contraception (including sterilisation) is a basic part of any civilised healthcare system. It gives people control over their lives. What Garrett and O'Sullivan are pushing with their talk of "incentives" and coercion is the exact opposite of that - state control of our most private and personal decisions. And that is simply monstrous.
