A Dutch plan to force contraception on female drug addicts ‘to protect children’ shows how liberal ideals can turn deeply sinister

A former judge has submitted a proposal that would allow courts to force contraceptive implants or injections onto women with a drug problem or mental health issues. This isn't child protection, it is backdoor eugenics.

The Dutch. They're such a liberal and forward-thinking bunch. They were pretty much the first to make smoking marijuana legal, more or less. Prostitutes can sell their wares down pink tinged alleyways, and it's perfectly legal. 

Now they've come up with a novel scheme to ‘prevent child abuse’ .... by forcing vulnerable women to use contraception. Child protection officials can apply for a court order to force a woman who has a drug addiction to be given a contraceptive implant or injection. The idea is to prevent women who cannot look after their children from conceiving them in the first place.

Hang on a sec though, that doesn't sound very liberal. Does it? 

And it's not some loony fringe thing. It was lodged with the Dutch House of Representatives by the Standing Committee for Compulsory Contraception by a former family court judge by the name of Cees de Groot, and is backed by former Cabinet Minister Heleen Dupuis. 

Dupuis, who was chair of the Netherlands Association for Disability Care, said it was an ethical choice to stop women who wanted to have children but were unable to raise them. “It’s choosing the lesser of two evils,” she said. 

The current Health Minister Hugo de Jonge backed a similar plan in 2016 when he was in charge of healthcare in the city of Rotterdam. The measures were, he said at the time, “a very complex and sensitive subject.”  

“The situations in which some children come into the world are downright harrowing,” he added, “that’s why I support the prevention of vulnerable parenthood.” 

‘Hundreds’ of women with a mental illness, a learning difficulty, a history of abusing children or are infected with Hepatitis B or C would also make it on the list.The forced contraception would be for a given length of time, until the problem has gone away. 

Makes sense? 

But why stop at contraception? Why not just get it over with and do what we do with cats and dogs and have these women spayed? Problem solved, no?

Why, for that matter, stop at girls with learning difficulties? Why not follow through and prevent women with genetic disorders from having kids?

Why stop at women? A scalpel on some pretty useless men would solve a lot of the world's future problems too. I can think of a few ‘volunteers’ straightaway. 

Fat people cost public health systems a fortune, don't they? Smokers? What about people with ginger hair, bad breath...And hey, there are almost eight BILLION people on planet Earth, we are constantly being told that our little blue and green ball cannot sustain all these folks. Well then, here's the solution, at a stroke. 

Those forward-thinking folks in Holland, they've cracked it.Of course, of course, of course! 

Obviously, all that is abhorrent, nuts, insane. 

The Dutch proposal like so many of these ideas, comes from an instinct to do good. Part of the impetus for the proposal, said de Groot, was that a prostitute with a diagnosed mental illness was planning to deliberately get herself pregnant because clients paid more for a pregnant woman.

That is, to pretty much everyone – other than the disgusting men who want that service – pretty damn sick. And maybe there should be a truly fierce law to deal with that twisted client. But there are already systems in place to separate vulnerable kids from terrible parents. And, indeed, 70 percent of vulnerable women already cooperated with voluntary contraception anyway, added de Groot. But the remaining 30 percent were a problem. “In practical terms child protection has to become involved,” he said. 

Adolf Hitler and his horde of Nazi doctors went some way down this path of course, their eugenics ideas made it the duty of the German state to biologically ‘improve’ its people. Aside from the horrors of the extermination camps and mobile gas vans, 400,000 people were sterilised against their will. 

Yes, do-gooders should be able to do good. Up to a point. But, surely, when you start deciding when another human being can or cannot breed – whatever the reason – then she is being treated just the same as a pet or livestock. Down some paths, government should just not go – however good the intentions. Ever.

Like this story? Share it with a friend!