Michael Hampton is the brains behind Homeland Stupidity.  Homeland stupidity was created to protect us from government gaffes, bureaucratic blunders and incumbent incompetence.  I reached out to Michael last week and he agreed to write a guest article on our topic of the day ” Should You Need a License to Parent? ”

Here is what Michael had to say on the topic.

Elaine Riddick grew up in 1960s North Carolina with a violent father and alcoholic mother. When she was 13, she was raped and became pregnant. But when she delivered the baby, doctors acting under orders from the state also sterilized her.

“I didn’t know anything about it until I was 19. I got married and tried to have a child. The doctor told me I had been butchered.”

Elaine, now in her fifties and living near Atlanta, was a victim of early 20th century eugenics laws. At the time it was widely believed that the human population could be improved by determining who should and should not breed, and over 30 U.S. states and many other countries passed eugenics laws prohibiting marriage for, or forcing the sterilization of such undesirables as “the feeble-minded,” the disabled, homosexuals, “imbeciles,” anyone in a mental institution, interracial couples, anyone convicted of a crime, etc.

For such an irreversible act, eugenics boards required almost no proof. In Canada, immigrants were routinely sterilized based on IQ test scores when they had not yet mastered the English language in which the test was given. Elaine Riddick’s eugenics record seems to be based entirely on gossip, referring to “community reports” about her “promiscuity” and “inability to control herself.”

Eugenics eventually fell out of favor in the U.S., but not before forcibly sterilizing at least 60,000 people the government deemed unsuitable to breed. Oregon was the last state to repeal its eugenics laws in 1983. Many of the victims of forced sterilization are still alive today, but the shame and embarrassment keep most of them from talking about it.

Most horribly, Adolf Hitler imported American eugenics to Germany, first sterilizing over 400,000, then engaging in “euthanasia” of 275,000 more through 1945, and during World War II, engaging in the mass executions of millions. Killing the “unfit” as government policy was never implemented in the U.S., but many doctors and mental institutions did it informally anyway through neglect or poisoning. Thus was the lethal injection born. Had it not happened in Germany, it might have happened here.

Requiring parents to be licensed to have children goes far beyond 20th century eugenics. Even if one could decide that a class of individuals was unfit to have children, government is well known for screwing up anything it does, and a mistake involving forced sterilization cannot be fixed. We cannot travel this road again.

To hear more from Michael visit www.homelandstupidity.us