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Rau
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We need to be very clear that good Catholics might be doing the same.
Sterilization of severely retarded woman to prevent involuntary pregnancy?
- Thread starter HomeschoolDad
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Rau
Guest
I didn’t raise direct abortion. I described an act of marital relationships while taking a drug known to do serious harm to an unborn that might be conceived.
I made no statement otherwise.
Nothing in this discussion reflects on the child, only in whether adults act well or not.
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Rau
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Yes. Some drugs have an abortifacient property but that is not their purpose, nor the person’s motivation to take the drug.
This is an amazing article, and I do not find anything heterodox about its conclusions. He basically says the same thing I did, though limiting the scenario to temporary and not permanent sterilization. I started reading, and was nodding in agreement, but then the article got so dense, that I couldn’t even skim it, so I paged down to the summary conclusion. A full reading will have to wait until a rainy weekend when my son is with his mother (and she has asked me to keep him with me throughout the pandemic, so it may be another month or two).
I would only quibble that the author started in about using contraception in illicit non-marital relationships, and I came away imagining the author saying in response to Paul VI (quilibet matrimonii usus) “ah, but you said marital act, Your Holiness, you didn’t say one thing about acts that are not marital, right?”. I also can’t go along with his proposition that two spouses who have both become mentally disabled are not married anymore. Not clear where he got that. Many elderly couples both fall into severe dementia.
And I didn’t know they made chastity belts anymore. Learn something new every day, I guess.
Yes, but non-Catholics would just recommend that the woman have her tubes tied — “don’t keep doing that to yourself and to those poor children, just be at peace with the fact that childbearing isn’t in your future, and concentrate on being a good wife to your husband, and a good mother to the children you do have (assuming that’s the case)”. I can tell you what people such as these are going to say, before they even open their mouths — I grew up in a non-Catholic family.HomeschoolDad:
We need to be very clear that good Catholics might be doing the same.
Faithful Catholics, disbelieving in sterilization as they do, would never say something like this. It’s a more complicated scenario for us.
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ALittleBitCrunchy
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The actual rape.Allegra:
Then what is ?
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Lee3
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How do you know that for a fact?
You mentioned that she’s able to understand and use social media so she obviously has some cognitive abilities.
Cognitive abilities lie on a spectrum of sorts anyway, so how can you be 100 % sure that she can’t be taught things to improve her life and brain?
When you mention “retarded” do you mean she was born with intellectual disability or is there a known cause to her symptoms?
The boyfriend situation, is he a predator type, a guy also with a disability or just a “normal guy”?
From what you write it sounds like you are suggesting that’s she’s vulnerable to any type of guy that gives her attention and can’t filter out good, bad etc-is that right?
I don’t know the boyfriend, but is it/he necessarily a bad thing?
You know there are people with Down syndrome who marry or have boyfriends.
Sometimes they should be helped to live a fuller life instead of having low expectations for them…
I don’t think the bf should be chased away just on the basis that he is a man who is trying to get with her but instead the family should look at the type of guy he is.
(Obviously if he is a predator type that’s another story).
Did it ever cross your mind that it may be Gods plan for some people with Downs Syndrome etc to get married?
Even have children in some cases? Personally I think it’s beautiful.
If there is the possibility, then it’s better to support them with goals in life. Just wrapping in cotton wool could have counterproductive effect and even cause her to do what’s feared for her (ie: run off with any guy at the first opportunity).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...air-with-down-syndrome-possibly-one-happiest/
Couple with Down syndrome fights for parenting dream
Michael Cox and Taylor Anderton, a young Queensland couple with Down syndrome, say they are ready for babies and marriage, despite the pleas from their concerned parents, who doubt their children are emotionally and physically ready.
www.abc.net.au
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Lee3
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Also, if it’s a possibility that she could be raped where she is then this “home” is clearly shocking and negligent and the parents should not accept her to be there.
This seems more logical solution than drastic sterilisation.
This seems more logical solution than drastic sterilisation.
You don’t know the circumstances. She has to be given powerful anti-psychotic medications to tamp down violent outbursts. She threatened to get a gun and start killing the neighbors. Though her mother would never admit it, we are fairly confident that she broke her mother’s jaw.HomeschoolDad:
How do you know that for a fact?
You mentioned that she’s able to understand and use social media so she obviously has some cognitive abilities.
Cognitive abilities lie on a spectrum of sorts anyway, so how can you be 100 % sure that she can’t be taught things to improve her life and brain?
Nobody knows. She was adopted from an orphanage overseas.
Yes, it seems pretty much that way. The boyfriend had enough intelligence to make his way out to our subdivision and go door-to-door insisting upon seeing her. I don’t know if he drove or took public transport.
None of the people involved have Down syndrome. I am very much an advocate for Down people — we had family friends in my childhood, who had a son with Down, and this made a strong impression on me. He was actually quite intelligent but that was back in the day when Down children were kept at home and not educated. That was wrong on many levels.
If the Church has no problem with Down people marrying and having children (whether two Down people or one Down person with a non-Down partner), then I have no problem with it either. Of course, non-Catholics would immediately say “that is good, just have them both sterilized”, but we would not, and could not, say that. To say “Down people may get married, have children, and those children may have Down syndrome as well” is yet one more sign of how we, as the One True Church, are a reproach to the unbelieving world, and that is ultimately the world’s problem, not ours. Having Down syndrome is not the worst thing in the world — sin is. I would like to see a world where Down syndrome is just another human difference, a difference of physical features and speech (Down people tend to have some degree of speech impediment) with some cognitive differences.
To look at what happens when the spirit of the world rules, look no further than Iceland. Intelligent people, prosperous people, beautiful people — and they abort almost 100% of all Down pregnancies. And you can never “get rid of” Down syndrome in any human population — it is a random genetic mutation that occurs in all races and ethnicities. There may come a day when all Down people are born to pro-life parents because… people who accept abortion, well, they’ll do what they want to do. I’m not sure how much of a “thing” religion is in Iceland — Catholics only make up 4% of the population, many of them immigrants (Poland et al).
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Lee3
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That’s really interesting.
Was she from Russia or a Ukraine? Perhaps her parents were alcoholic when pregnant with her or abused her as baby which maybe have caused her to not be able to emotionally regulate herself?
Does she visually look “normal” or can you tell there is some disability?
I’m just asking because I’m wondering what type of guys she would be attracting.
I think it’s pretty bad and telling that non Christians may feel that people with Down syndrome should be prevented from having children due to the risk of having a baby with Down syndrome or even aborted or sterilized yet they are totally fine with and make no negative mention of 80 - something year old Bernie Ecclestone fathering a baby at his age with all the health risks that are associated with it for the baby plus leaving the child fatherless??!
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SugarMagnolia
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This would be the perfect solution IF there were actual single-sex facilities, but there aren’t. Due to the new laws that protect “gender identity” anyone who “identifies” as a female will be housed with actual females. What many people fail to realize about “gender expression” is that a male with fully functioning male genitals who identifies as a female lesbian will be legally regarded as female and housed with actual vulnerable females.
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SugarMagnolia
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Even without considering Catholic morality, there’s a problem with contraception here. Contraception would protect her from pregnancy, but it would not protect her from sexually transmitted diseases, which are far worse than pregnancy.
Russia, to be exact, and the scenario you describe is entirely possible. The adoption was a mess. The parents didn’t know what they were getting in for. The young woman looks entirely normal, though her speech, demeanor, and topics of conversation make it immediately obvious there is something very wrong. She has fixations more appropriate to a very small child.
I have a hard time finding it a good lifestyle choice for an 89-year-old man to father a child. The man you mention is very wealthy, and obviously his child will never want for anything materially (if they manage the money right), but he won’t live to see his child grow up, and probably not even get through grammar school. No child should have to lose a parent that young. However, it is part of the “unwritten Catholic code” (or whatever you might call it) that there is no such thing as a conception of a child “that shouldn’t have been”, and once conceived, we do not second-guess the child’s existence. No faithful Catholic ever regards a child as a “mistake” or as an “oops”. This is yet another way that we stand as a “sign of contradiction” to the secular world, as well as to the oh-so-wise-in-their-own-eyes non-Catholic Christians who “plan their families”, dictating the timing and the quantity as though they were ordering pizza (would they dictate quality too, if it were in their power?), and “get themselves fixed” when they’ve “been blessed enough” (I’ve heard them refer to it this way).
I realize there is some scientific research that indicates older men may father children with more problems, but this is far from definitive, and many, many older men father children with no problems whatsoever. Men don’t have a biological clock in the same way women do.
Chlamydia can run asymptomatic and undetected for years. After it may be too late to save the woman’s fertility.
herpes is forever and contagious. Well, I have no wishes at all to contract it.
So I believe that for me, in my situation, a baby would not be the worst. You have perfectly the right to your opinion, except that you are not a woman and should not assumed it to be the absolute “truth”.
And we compare a baby with a STD? Urg!
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jeannetherese
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I think that the loss of innocence which accompanies having one’s body broken into and not being able to stop that from occurring is far worse than a pregnancy, which might or might not result from this act.
An std which may result from this violence might pose a lifetime problem as well as a life threatening problem: some stds are linked to cancer in both males and females, and, of course, others were addressed in previous posts.
It seems that a pregnancy viewed as undesireable by some, might be labelled improvident-are the words being conflated?
There are power differentials between rapist and rape survivor and there are power differentials between those who would sterilize and those who would be sterilized. Either way, the woman seems to be physically dominated and is not consenting.
How do you go about defining provident versus improvident pregnancies?
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Minks
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@Lee3
Almost every question you asked in your first post had been answered upthread.
Almost every question you asked in your first post had been answered upthread.
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Again, I think this gets back to what I refer to above, something in the “unwritten Catholic code” — and I do believe there is such a thing, there are “Catholic things” that are not explicitly brought out in any catechism — to the effect of “there is no such thing as a conception which was a mistake or which shouldn’t have been”.HomeschoolDad:
I think that the loss of innocence which accompanies having one’s body broken into and not being able to stop that from occurring is far worse than a pregnancy, which might or might not result from this act.
An std which may result from this violence might pose a lifetime problem as well as a life threatening problem: some stds are linked to cancer in both males and females, and, of course, others were addressed in previous posts.
It seems that a pregnancy viewed as undesireable by some, might be labelled improvident-are the words being conflated?
There are power differentials between rapist and rape survivor and there are power differentials between those who would sterilize and those who would be sterilized. Either way, the woman seems to be physically dominated and is not consenting.
How do you go about defining provident versus improvident pregnancies?
I am not advocating total dominion over one’s fertility — married people must always be open to the possibility, however remote, that any conjugal act could result in a pregnancy (assuming nature allows for this), and anything less than this is a slap in the Face of Almighty God — but I would remind myself and everyone else here, that bringing a child into the world is a massive commitment of time, work, money, and resources. Kids don’t raise themselves. Kids don’t feed themselves. Kids don’t educate themselves. I would advise any engaged couple “are you ready to have a child come into your life nine months after the wedding night?”. If the answer is anything other than “yes, absolutely”, they really need to postpone the wedding, or even walk away entirely, until they are in a position to answer this with a “yes, absolutely”. Non-Catholics (as well as Catholics who are faithless in this matter) say “we need time”, “we need to get on our feet”, “we need to wait until the time is right”. This is not God’s plan for marriage. You want to get married, you want each other (in all ways), but you don’t want a child. Not God’s plan.
So, yes, there is such a thing as an improvident pregnancy. If it happens, you deal with it, and great things can come from it. But that doesn’t mean that all the resources needed properly to raise a child are just going to fall out of the sky.
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Gab123
Guest
If watches television all day and is on the Internet, and has the mentality of a 6 year old, then someone should stealthfully make sure that what she has access to nothing but good influences; Lives of the Saints, Bible stories, audiobooks, holy reminders, heaven, hell, purgatory, love for neighbor, missionaries at work, inspiring music, how to pray, etc. She’s not someone to be sterilized like an animal; she’s someone who has been put specifically in time within a specific circle of people, in order to provide them an opportunity to grow in holiness and gain merit through Christian love which is self-sacrifice.
Begin non-stop novenas for specific milestones. Also, send her picture and first name to good convents, especially those who have perpetual adoration, and specifically request fir prayers for her.
The worst possible thing is to allow her to fill her mind with all the poisonous noise that is Hollywood and the Internet. hopefully they can somewhat control what she feeds her mind with and has access to.
Write to Dr. Ray Guarendi about it.
Begin non-stop novenas for specific milestones. Also, send her picture and first name to good convents, especially those who have perpetual adoration, and specifically request fir prayers for her.
The worst possible thing is to allow her to fill her mind with all the poisonous noise that is Hollywood and the Internet. hopefully they can somewhat control what she feeds her mind with and has access to.
Write to Dr. Ray Guarendi about it.
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