Posted on 01/05/2005 6:04:48 AM PST by Hawk44
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) - A Family Court judge who last year stirred debate about parental responsibilities ordered a second drug-addicted woman to have no more children until she proves she can look after the seven she already has.
The 31-year-old mother, identified in court papers only as Judgette W., lost custody of her children, ranging in age from eight months to 12 years, in child-neglect hearings dating back to 2000. Six are in foster care at state expense and one lives with an aunt.
The youngest child and two others tested positive for cocaine at birth and all seven "were removed from her care and custody because she could not and did not take care of them," Judge Marilyn O'Connor said in a Dec. 22 decision made public Tuesday.
"Because every child born deserves a mother and a father, or at the very least a mother or a father, this court is once again taking this unusual step of ordering this biological mother to conceive no more children until she reclaims her children from foster care or other caretakers," O'Connor wrote.
In a similar ruling last March, O'Connor ordered a drug-addicted, homeless mother of four to refrain from bearing children until she won back care of her children. The decision, the first of its kind in New York, is being appealed.
Wisconsin and Ohio have upheld similar rulings involving "deadbeat dads" who failed to pay child support. But in other states, judges have turned back attempts to interfere with a person's right to procreate.
O'Connor said she was not forcing contraception or sterilization on the mother, who had children with seven different men, nor requiring her to get an abortion should she become pregnant. But she warned that the woman could be jailed for contempt if she has another child.
The New York Civil Liberties Union maintained that the opinion cannot be enforced because it "tramples on a fundamental right - the right to procreate."
"There is no question the circumstances of this case are deeply troubling," said the group's executive director, Donna Lieberman. "But ordering a woman under threat of jail not to have any more babies ... puts the court squarely in the bedroom. And that's no place for the government."
Wrong. The court is not in the bedroom; it's in the delivery room.
Your post reminded me of something....
LBJ generally gets the blame for the welfare system but that isn't quite so. Waaaay back in the 1950's I had an older cousin who worked for the City of Chicago's 'Welfare Agency' (can't remember the proper name, maybe ADC?). But back 'then' there weren't any federal or state welfare agencies and the cities handled 'it'.
Point being, she would relate stories of field agents finding out that a lot of the 'mothers' would BORROW kids from neighbors when they knew a field interview was coming. Finally some agents realized, "hey I just saw those two kids in apartment 'X', are they REALLY yours."
I'm not kidding, these people would swap children to 'up' their monthly take based on the numbers of children one had.
I believe it! Remember how many "dependents" disappeared when the IRS started requiring Social Security numbers? I think it was something like 20%. Something about "public" money, coming or going, seems to ZOT any moral sense people have!
If support for the genuinely needy came from their church community, or their ethnic community, or grass-roots charity, then people would know the truth about situations, and would also know and care for the people involved as human beings.
Our Founders may not have thought through the harm caused by "depersonalization," but they were thinking right when they made no provisions for government "charity."
Norplant in the water supply
Your posts have cut straight to the heart of the matter. This entire wretched story, from the addict to the abandoned children become wards of the state to the judge to the venom on this thread are all products of nanny-statism. Oh thank you FDR, oh thank you LBJ, oh thank you liberal Democrat scum for taking us down this road of "feel-good compassion."
Tie her tubes and she can screw all she wants.
You've nailed it more succintly than I did. Add in the hot-button issues of smoking, AIDS, illegal immigration (partly), seatbelt use, and much more.
These are all things we attack one another over, because we're missing a key point: "They" who are taking our money are not AIDS patients, illegal immigrants, drug-addicted mothers, or comatose nidgets who didn't wear their seatbelts ... THEY are GOVERNMENT. Government is taking our money; it's that simple.
Forcibly, against her will, sterilize her?
We're not talking here about a Momma who loves here children dearly, is trying her best, struggling to keep her family together, and is down on her luck. This is a woman that used cocaine while she was pregnant and did not take care of her children. This is a woman who, once her own children were taken away and given to strangers to raise, did nothing to try and get them back. She has provided absolutely no stability for any of the children, each of whom have a completely different father.
Why should she have "the right" to do that to yet another child?
I wonder why giving birth to innocent, addicted crack babies, and not being willing or able to care for them properly, isn't called child abuse and worthy of stiff jail sentences. Seems like cruelty to me.
You would think it would be at least neglect.
I don't think advocating having government butchers chop people up is a very good idea.
Its been tried:
Nobody is telling her to stop having sex, just to stop putting her children in that position. Children are not a right, they are a responsibility.
What the heck does this have to do with goverments chopping up human beings? How did you make that leap?
Yes it is.
Now if only more people could see it :-)!
Won't work for people like the woman in this story. She'll keep right on having babies, and without the government stepping in to take the babies away from her, they just won't get fed or get any other basic survival needs met on a regular basis. She doesn't care what happens to them. She never wanted them in the first place. She had them because she's spending all her time and money on drugs, and when she can't pay for the drugs whe want, she sleeps with the dealer to get a freebie. I'm definitely an advocate of minimalist government, but in this case that means the government needs to step in and stop her from having babies, because it takes a lot more government to keep taking them away from her and maintaining a huge foster care system.
Yep, that apporoach would be a lot cheaper and alleviate a lot of suffering.
Thats not going to sit well with the gay community
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