Can forced sterilization ever be ethical?
A British court still needs to decide whether to authorize the sterilization, at her mother’s own request, of a mentally disabled woman (see e.g. here and here). Reading only the headlines and initial paragraphs of the news entries devoted to the case, one might become worried that we are seeing here a resurgence of an abhorrent practice that gained much favour in the first half of the 20th-Century, in countries like Germany or the United States: i.e. the compulsory sterilization of the mentally retarded for eugenic purposes. However, it is important to look at the particulars of this case in order not to be misled. The 21-year old woman, referred to as P, is pregnant with her second child, and her mother (“Mrs. P”) says that they “can’t carry on supporting more and more children”. She also said that after the birth of her second child her daughter would have “a complete family” (a girl and a boy). But her mother is worried that she will soon fall pregnant again, in which case the child will have to be given away for adoption – something that her daughter, she says, is unable to understand, yet an outcome that would cause her much distress were it to happen.
Reacting to the case, bioethicist George Annas, from Boston University, commented that “this is eugenics if they are doing this because she’s mentally disabled. This decision needs to be made based on the person’s best interests, not the best interests of society or her caregivers.”