Sterilization of severely retarded woman to prevent involuntary pregnancy?

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Why would her mental status affect the morality of contraception?
Downs children get married and have kids. Mentally ill people get married and have kids. Some people do not get married and have kids. Some people get raped and have the children conceived through violence. the notion of sterilization of another -whether short or long term-seems contrary to the value of life, both of the young woman who is still a sexual being and of any potential children, whether or not she is capable of raising them on her own. It almost seems as if people are dabbling with eugenics in this thread
 
Why would her mental status affect the morality of contraception?
Downs children get married and have kids. Mentally ill people get married and have kids. Some people do not get married and have kids. Some people get raped and have the children conceived through violence. the notion of sterilization of another -whether short or long term-seems contrary to the value of life, both of the young woman who is still a sexual being and of any potential children, whether or not she is capable of raising them on her own. It almost seems as if people are dabbling with eugenics in this thread
It’s not eugenics. It’s the good of the woman that is at issue here, and also the very real likelihood that any child conceived, would be adversely affected by the psychotropic drugs that the woman has to take. This also assumes that any pregnancy would be involuntary.

The woman has the mind of a 5-year-old child. Even if the drugs she takes did not endanger any unborn child, there is something deeply disturbing about contemplating a woman in her circumstances marrying and having children. What could be said of the man who would marry her? If he were of normal intelligence and mental soundness, this would come across as a kind of psychological pedophilia (she is in her early 20s). If he were mentally slow, it would then become a question of “just how mentally slow is he?”. She is beyond “mentally slow”. There are some people with Down who are so high-performing that their only visible difference is one of physiognomy and impaired speech. Her situation is not anywhere near that good (though she is not Down and has a normal physical appearance).

In any case, I am not going to be in the business of defending one’s “right” to have children outside of marriage. (A single woman having been raped is obviously another matter entirely.)
 
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HomeschoolDad:
But if she fell pregnant, you would then have a child who could never be cared for,
Why would the child not be cared for? Why couldn’t they be adopted to 2 loving parents?
That would always be possible, and would really be the only alternative, unless the grandmother were willing to take on the responsibility of raising the child. The girl is in no position to help anybody, including herself. She has to take massive amounts of various drugs to control her anger and rage. It’s pretty bad — she once threatened to shoot various neighbors. That’s how she ended up in the institution. It’s a horrible situation.

Far better for the girl to be kept away from men who would take advantage of her, or from fellow mentally disabled men who aren’t much better off than she is. Again, horrible situation.
 
also the very real likelihood that any child conceived, would be adversely affected by the psychotropic drugs that the woman has to take.
I know YOU know this, but, we don’t require married people to avoid children because of birth defects, even fatal ones. We would do our best to provide the best care for a child abnormalities.
 
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HomeschoolDad:
also the very real likelihood that any child conceived, would be adversely affected by the psychotropic drugs that the woman has to take.
I know YOU know this, but, we don’t require married people to avoid children because of birth defects, even fatal ones. We would do our best to provide the best care for a child abnormalities.
I realize there is something very deep in the “Catholic DNA” that says the conception and birth of a child is always a good thing, regardless of the conditions or circumstances. I don’t deny that for an instant. We as Catholics are not allowed to second-guess our own existence, or that of anyone else — “that person should never have been born” (or conceived, if you will). You will hear this sentiment in the secular world all the time.

This said, I would never recommend that a person, who can reasonably foresee that a child of theirs would have massive problems in life, shouldn’t forego having children, and never bring them into the world in the first place. Again, the secular world would say “amen, brother”, but many faithful Catholics would take pause. I am sure you are aware, as well, that there are some ultra-traditionalist Catholics who refuse to use NFP, and refuse to abstain entirely, rather, they accept whatever children they have, whenever they have them, no matter how many they have. As long as I’m not asked to help support these children, I am entirely good with this — the fathers of these families often have very good jobs, and women who want to have a lifestyle such as this, seek out “high-quality” men who can afford to make this happen. I say, the more traditionalist Catholics in the world, the better.

But not to digress. If a person chooses to bring a child into the world, even though it can be reasonably foreseen that this child is going to have great problems or challenges, I’m not going to get in the way of that. “Not to judge” cuts both ways. But, on the other hand, if a person says “if I ever bear (or father) a child, they’ll have problems, their life will be very difficult, they’ll be sick (or impaired, or disabled, or whatever), I think I’ll just remain childless” — as long as they don’t use immoral means to this end — I don’t have a problem with that either. I think this could fall under the rubric, echoed by three Popes, of “grave” or “serious” reasons to avoid pregnancy. It’s much more than “I just don’t want children”.

A college classmate of mine, whose family had serious genetic issues — he was basically OK, but both his brother and sister were gravely impaired — told me that if he ever married, he would have himself vasectomized, so that he could never father children and pass on these genes. I told him that I couldn’t agree with his methods, but I entirely understood his reasoning. (He wasn’t Catholic, though he would attend Mass with me from time to time.) If I were a priest, and a penitent came to me with a scenario anything like this — as long as they were willing to follow the Church’s teachings — I would tell them to be at peace.
 
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Why would her mental status affect the morality of contraception?
If the woman has no decision-making capacity - by which I mean she cannot meaningfully choose a sexual relationship - and is in an odd situation where rape is a real concern, it is understandable that actions might be considered to defend against a potential rape. After all, it is allowed to seek to prevent conception after a rape has occurred.
 
If the woman has no decision-making capacity - by which I mean she cannot meaningfully choose a sexual relationship - and is in an odd situation where rape is a real concern, it is understandable that actions might be considered to defend against a potential rape.
Sterilization and/or contraception are not defenses against rape.
I wonder if one might use an similar argument, similar to that which is quoted, to contend that, as schoolchildren lack the decision making capacity to meaningfully choose a sexual relationship, it is appropriate for their parents to put the on contraception?
I don’t think that these arguments work - the orientation seems to be against the consequences (in terms of pregnancy) of sexual activity.
Contraception is not a preventative for sexual activity.
I
 
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I know YOU know this, but, we don’t require married people to avoid children because of birth defects, even fatal ones.
If a woman is taking a medication that (a) acts as an abortifacient, or (b) was known to be a great risk of serious birth defects - would it be morally good to continue marital relations?
 
Sterilization and/or contraception are not defenses against rape.
They are defenses against a potential consequence of rape. Your may be asserting that they are not moral? As noted, contraceptive actions after (and during for that matter) a rape are morally accepted.
I wonder if one might use an similar argument, similar to that which is quoted, to contend that, as schoolchildren lack the decision making capacity to meaningfully choose a sexual relationship, it is appropriate for their parents to put the on contraception?
Im not sure I’d agree with your assessment of kids, but my issue was more the risk of rape.
 
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Im not sure I’d agree with your assessment of kids, but my issue was more the risk of rape.
Rape is carnal knowledge without consent.Legally, we discuss the age of consent. Below a certain age, we talk about sexual activity as rape.
I am suggesting that your contention that the incapability of a woman in question to give knowledgeable consent could be amoral justification for contraception/sterilization could be, could logically be extended to children, particularly in communities with high levels of sexual violence or the sexual exploitation of children.
Parents, or even the rapist themselves, one might contend, could defend contraception or sterilization prior to occurrences of rape as a just-in-case argument which seems to me to be the point of the o.p.
I am not endorsing this position; rather I am suggesting that the logic seems to conntct the two arguments.
 
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Sterilization is what we do to animals to prevent them from breeding. This woman, flawed as she is, is still a human. She deserves to be treated as such.
 
Neither can she consent to being surgically sterilized. The only moral solution is to remove her from danger. Pregnancy is not the greatest possible harm of being raped.
 
I don’t have my copy of Jone around, but he addresses this in a very clear manner. A couple is not required to, nor do they commit sin, to have relations and conceive a child even if they know for certainty that child will be miscarried or die at birth.
 
You posit an interesting question. I seriously doubt that the vast majority of people in these forums have enough training in Moral Theology to answer - with the possible exception of several priests. And I am not even sure they have enough training, as this is a very selective set of circumstances.

It sounds rather like a question which should be addressed to the National Catholic Bioethics Center.
 
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TheLittleLady:
I know YOU know this, but, we don’t require married people to avoid children because of birth defects, even fatal ones.
If a woman is taking a medication that (a) acts as an abortifacient, or (b) was known to be a great risk of serious birth defects - would it be morally good to continue marital relations?
I don’t have my copy of Jone around, but he addresses this in a very clear manner. A couple is not required to, nor do they commit sin, to have relations and conceive a child even if they know for certainty that child will be miscarried or die at birth.
If this is permitted under traditional Catholic moral theology, so be it, but I wouldn’t do it, that’s all I can say. I’d abstain first.
Pregnancy is not the greatest possible harm of being raped.
Then what is?
ncbcenter.org

MSOB129_Catholics_and_Acceptable_Uses_of_Contraceptives.pdf

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This Catholic expert seems to disagree with most posters here.
That is a very tasteless cartoon in the sidebar (even if it does elicit an involuntary snicker), but the Congo nuns example was exactly the analogy I had in mind. I didn’t use it in the OP because it’s apocryphal, but the principle is the same — rape is not a conjugal act ordered towards procreation, it is a savage, violent crime against the human person, by which pregnancy can occur due to the nature of the act. Throttling, beating, or torturing a person cannot result in pregnancy. Rape can. Even if it lacks an element of violence — even if the young woman, in her state of impaired volition and not comprehending the consequences, calls her predatory “boyfriend” and has him to come pick her up while mother is at the grocery store or in the bathtub, and then he indulges himself — it is still not truly a human act performed with free will, because she can’t perform that sort of act. Is she to be kept prisoner for life to protect her from her impulsive, impaired choices? To raise yet another question, could she licitly be given “Plan B” (assuming it’s not abortifacient) when she gets home and her mother finds out what she did? If she can be given this, then what’s the difference? We give rape victims “Plan B” under the assumption it is not abortifacient. Nobody says “that’s contraception, you can’t do that”. Again, what’s the difference?

I don’t have an easy answer to this scenario. The larger secular society does. Do we follow their lead in this instance? In their defense, their solution is entirely reasonable if you don’t believe there is anything particularly evil about sterilization and contraception — as they do not.
 
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neither sterilizing her nor putting her on contraceptives is going to solve the problem of her getting raped or coerced in to sexual activity, not to mention potentially contracting a sexually transmitted disease, in fact, it may even exacerbate the problem if others were to know that she could not get pregnant, that may be the one thing holding someone back out of fear of being found out that they are taking advantage of her

it seems like society is so fixated on not bringing an “unwanted” child in to the world, that they forget that in cases like these, that’s actually not the worst part of it, she needs to be protected so that this has almost no chance of happening in the first place. we can do much better than just simply cutting out someone’s internal organs or pumping them full of hormones that they don’t actually need and can be risk factors for other diseases
 
The thing is, the baby that would be produced because of a rape committed no crime. That baby still deserves a life just as much as anyone else. Sterilization would prevent any sort of life to come from that woman. Yes, it would have high chance of being disabled like the mother. Yes, the mother would be unfit to raise it. But that gives us or anyone no right to treat said woman like and animal and sterilize her just because her offspring may have the same problem as her.

It would literally be eugenics. We would be no better than Nazis. As others have stated. The problem is said woman is in a bad place where she could get raped. Instead of sterilization, thus making any potential rape unable to produce offspring, remove said woman from that unsafe area to begin with.

Remember, everything happens for a reason. Even seemingly bad things happening to people can be for a greater good down the road. Suffering in this world is inevitable.
 
The thing is, the baby that would be produced because of a rape committed no crime. That baby still deserves a life just as much as anyone else. Sterilization would prevent any sort of life to come from that woman. Yes, it would have high chance of being disabled like the mother. Yes, the mother would be unfit to raise it. But that gives us or anyone no right to treat said woman like and animal and sterilize her just because her offspring may have the same problem as her.

It would literally be eugenics. We would be no better than Nazis. As others have stated. The problem is said woman is in a bad place where she could get raped. Instead of sterilization, thus making any potential rape unable to produce offspring, remove said woman from that unsafe area to begin with.
No quarrel that any potential child conceived would have committed no crime (and neither would the mother, psychologically and spiritually, she is a child below the age of reason). Just for what it’s worth, I don’t know if her child would be disabled or not. Her mother has never chosen to share whether it is something genetic or an injury in utero or while being born. (The girl is adopted.) This is not a question of eugenics — the danger would exist, and the likelihood of unwanted pregnancy would be there, whether the child would be disabled like its mother or perfectly normal. That’s beside the point. We know these people, we do favors for each other as any good neighbors would and should do, but we are not totally “up in each other’s business”. I do care for the woman, I have known her ever since she was a young child, and I just don’t want to see her circumstances be any worse than they already are. She is happy and has a simple life at home. I’d like to see it stay that way.

I am totally agreed that the far better solution would be to keep her away from any potential harm. These people not being Catholics, it is very possible that she is already on ABC, or has been sterilized, for the reasons discussed in this thread. Not suggesting that we should let nonbelievers and secularists norm our religion for us, but they would read a thread such as this and say “those crazy, fanatical, narrow-minded people — the solution is obvious”. Not agreeing, just telling you what they’d say and think.
 
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