STERILIZATION FOR THOSE ON MEDICAID Is sterilization for those on Medicaid, correct? Or is it unethical? This is a topic that for many years has been controversial. History of sterilization for women without their consent goes way back when U.S. women of color were victims of forced sterilization. Some women were sterilized during C-sections and they were never told. Other women were threatened with termination of welfare benefits or denial of medical care if they didn’t consent to the procedure (Garcia, 2013). In the late 1970s, in an effort to protect women’s reproductive rights, federal legislation preventing sterilization of women without their consent was passed. One of the most important features of this legislation is that it applies …show more content…
Pearce made a comment on a radio show stating the following “You put me in charge of Medicaid, the first thing I’d do is get female recipients Norplant, birth-control implants, or tubal ligations,” according to the Phoenix New Times. He also mentioned that people out there who need help should get it from the family, church, and community, not the government (Lavender, 2014). Eugenics programs have tried for many years to force sterilization for both men and women who are not financially capable to raise more children on their own, without the government’s help. Eugenics programs are mass birth control programs used to reduce the birth rates of certain classes, castes or ethnic groups (BBC, 2014). It’s illegal to sterilize a person either a man or women just because they depend on the government’s helps, in this case, Medicaid. It violates that person’s right for autonomy. People have the right to seek, accept, or refuse sterilization and respecting a person’s right for autonomy means that no one can force them or impose sterilization for them (ACOG, 2007). Programs and certain people will still continue to try to change this right for autonomy as the years pass, but as for now, it’s unethical and illegal to do so and there’s no limit to how many children a person who is on Medicaid can
According to Zastrow (2014), women burdened by unwanted children cannot receive proper job training (p. 560). If women who are already struggling have children, they will not be able to afford childcare, resulting in staying home and not working. Therefore, these women and their children are trapped in a vicious poverty and welfare cycle. Studies have shown that women who are denied access to an abortion are more likely to face financial hardships and receive public assistance after the denial. Women denied the procedure are three times as likely to end up below the federal poverty line, in comparison to women who are able to obtain care (The EACH Woman Act (H.R. 2972), 2016). Additionally, the children suffer especially if they live have to live in poverty with unmet needs. If there are bans on funding, women do not get the final say regarding their family structure. They do not have the autonomy to limit their families to the number of children they desire and can physically and emotionally manage to pay for. Because its effects resonate beyond the policy realm, there has been discontent with the Hyde Amendment since it was enacted in the
The United States has also used sterilization on individuals , in the case mentioned above this also was used on the native Americans Without their consent , and also on the mentally incapable. In all cases of forced sterilization in regards of the right or wrong of it is wrong , anything that is forced is considered non consensual. just like any other item that could be done to a person without the individual 's consent it is against the law on almost all cases. As mentioned before the United States has acted in many not necessarily constitutional ways in regards to reproductive rights , another occurrence in which the United States violated the reproductive rights of many is during the time frame which the United States forces native americans onto reservations and when the native american women went to give birth at the birth clinic the medical staff would assist in the birth then after the child had been born they would unconsensually sterilized the Native American women this activity allowed the united states government to control the amount of future reproductions that could take place in given native american
“It is my conviction that taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for abortions or advocate or actively promote abortion either here or abroad,” Bush stated in his memorandum to reinstate the Mexico City Policy. However, the policy does not state that funds will be withheld if the US taxpayer’s money is used; it states that monies will be withheld if abortion services are offered at all, even if it is not US money. Douglas Johnson the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee states, the “government will no longer..try to legalize abortion in countries in Latin America, Africa, and Muslim countries in which people are strongly opposed to abortion and believe in the protection of unborn children.” What Johnson fails to recognize is that in countries where abortion is legal women’s rights are being compromised. U.S. Representative Christopher H. Smith expresses his feelings in his article “A Congressional View: The Unborn Must be Protected” (Global Issues Electronic Journal) by stating, “Abortion is child abuse.” Smith also comments that when the policy was previously in effect it had no affect on the family planning money received by NGO’s. It may not have affected the money received but it did affect women who were denied the option of abortion services.
The author identifies some of the federal and state legislators that are also opposed to the Medicaid expansion in the writer’s district. US Senator John Cornyn says that the Obamacare Medicaid expansion program is formed to be wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive to the nation (Cornyn, 2010). According to US Senator Cornyn, “The $3.4 trillion federal taxpayers spend on the Medicaid program is a target for waste, fraud, and abuse. Instead of fixing these problems, the President’s new health care overhaul includes the largest expansion of the broken Medicaid program since its creation in 1965: it’s only going to get worse from here” (John Cornyn, 2010).
"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."-Sarah Palin (Kurtzman)
The Texas Women’s Health Program has start off on a foot of controversial opinions, personal ideals, and questionable authority, and with these comes thousands of critiques, arguments, and overall complaints for the program as a whole. The two prominent sides to this story, those who are for the bill and those who are not, both have their own motives and reasons for their beliefs, and I am not different. Biases exist in any opinion, and they become more evident in accordance to how controversial that opinion is, yet I will try my best to break down arguments to their core evidence to best formulate and improve my own opinion.
Medicare and Medicaid are two of the United States largest broken systems, which must sustain themselves in order to provide care to their beneficiaries. Both Medicare and Medicaid are funding by a joint effort between the federal government and the local state government. If and when these governments choose to cut funding or reduce spending, Medicare and Medicaid take the biggest hit. Most people see these two benefits as one in the same, two benefits the government takes out of their pay check to help fund health care. While the government does deduct a sum from paychecks everywhere, Medicare and Medicaid are very two very different programs.
Starting in the mid-1960s, some erosion of the anti-abortion laws began to take place. But these efforts have not been supported by many of the more vocal groups who are trying to do something about excess population growth; to them, compulsory birth control and compulsory sterilization are apparently more palatable than voluntary abortion.
Although compromises based on reasons for abortion have been incorporated in laws such as the Hyde Amendment, which restricts Medicaid funding for abortion to so-called “hard” cases, many people now focus on time-based restrictions. This idea is more realistic and practical than banning abortion all together since there would still ...
Health care and what people are legally allowed to do with their bodies have created controversy galore throughout history. A particular point of debate is the topic of birth control and the government. A dangerous couple, it raises the question of who should have control over contraceptive laws and what controls involving them should be put in place? Currently, under the Obama Administration, the Affordable Care Act and “Obamacare” have been created. One of the sections of this new plan creates a mandate which requires private businesses to provide insurance that covers birth control costs. The government should not be able to force businesses, and therefore the American people, to pay for birth control via health insurance because it violates the First Amendment and would create a financial burden for an already struggling country.
Abortion is in the limelight once again. It has hit every American’s T.V. and doorstep in the past few years and the debate is heated. The new health bill, ‘The Affordable Care Act’ or otherwise known as ‘Obama care’, has made abortion an issue once again with its new expansion of abortion coverage. This shouldn’t be an issue, but the fact that this bill is going to guarantee that all new health insurance plans provide coverage for Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved contraceptives without the co-pays or deductibles. This has outraged over forty profit-making companies which have already filed lawsuits against the Affordable Care Act (ACA) because it goes against the companies’ religious beliefs. But whether or not one is for or against birth control because it goes against the natural reproductive process between a man and a woman, birth control is for much more than simply preventing pregnancy. There are legislative acts that allow pharmacists to deny a woman her birth control because of their own religious beliefs (Pheo152, 2009). At least 14% of women use birth co...
Lack of proper benefits and healthcare also keeps many of these women from being allowed to access abortion or contraceptives and in many cases if they’re already lacking the resources to obtain those, then its going to be that much harder for them to raise a child without those necessities. This absence of healthcare and benefits covering abortion or contraceptives is because many corporations and employers with pro life political views, or who are fiscally greedy have chosen not to provide women with that type of healthcare according to recent findings (Brown, 2013) (Associated Press, 2008). These corporations have had much support from the pro-life advocates and conservative politicians. In recent years Republican politicians have voted and pushed for employer discrimination rights against female employees using contraception or who’ve had abortions regardless of what laws are in place or what public opinion is. They’ve pushed for female employees to be required to notify employers if they’ve had an abortion or intend to have one or if they are using contraceptives or other similar services,
It is very sad to see that sterilization went on for so long. Many people, including myself, are in the dark of the horrible things that have gone on in the history of America and the world. I hope that we now have and will not succumb to this kind of thing ever again. The era of forced sterilization is an evil time and should have never started. It seems that we left sterilization in the past, but is it really? There has been talk that California forcibly sterilized their women inmates in their state prison up until 2010; even though it was outlawed in 1979. Let’s hope that America and the world have moved passed that, but there is always a chance that we could revert back to old ways.
Although abortion has been legal for more than 30 years, the Roe vs. Wade decision is currently in jeopardy of being overturned by the Bush administration. Weddington divulged her personal fears about the decision being overturned by the court on any grounds. She stated that the damage will be long lasting and many women will suffer. Currently, there is a big effort by those opposed to abortion to give the fetus rights. Recent Bush administration regulations want to declare that a fetus is a child under the government's State Children's Health Insurance Program. This change would refute one of Weddington's arguments in Roe vs. Wade that the government has never treated the fetus as a person.
When one contemplates the concept of eugenics, few think of modern contraception and abortion when in reality they are one in the same. The American Eugenics Society, founded in 1923, proudly proclaimed that men with incurable “conditions” should be sterilized. However these conditions were often none that could be helped, such as, one’s intelligence, race, and social class (Schweikart and Allen 529-532). The purpose of the society was to create the perfect class of men; elite in all ways. Likewise, Margaret Sanger’s feminist, contraceptive movement was not originally founded with this purpose. It was marketed as a way to control the population and be merciful to those yet to be born, again determined also by race and intelligence. The similarities in purpose actually brought the two organizations together to form a “liberating movement” to “aid women” known today as Planned Parenthood (Schweikart and Allen 529-532). The name may sound harmless, but the movement hid a darker purpose, to wean out the lower and less educated in order to create a perfect class.