We did it for decades at the behest of nurses, doctors, social workers, the intelligentsia, and the Supreme Court of the United States. The reasons were simple, but multifaceted. They claimed they knew through science and the social sciences that idiocy is hereditary, and that idiocy is one of the main contributing factors to criminal and deviant behavior, pauperism, and that children from those social misfits (typically poor whites, African Americans, homosexuals, the physically and the mentally disabled-all of whom were seen as one and the same) would only suck the goodness and resources of society. Through sterilization, education programs, and other social programs, it was assumed that you could effectively mold society into a more perfect race.
Of course, what resulted were intentional power grabs by the professional class, where it was deemed necessary to hound families, take their children, deem them and the parents unfit for society, sterilize all of them. Sterilization could be done through a series of completely unrelated questions, all because the staff involved thought it absolutely necessary to destroy any chance for procreation. Before the practice was actually sanctioned by the Supreme Court of the United States, doctors could literally ask mundane questions like "do you like movies?" and follow it up with "do you mind having an operation?"-without ever mentioning what it was they were going to do. Since sterilization was an accepted procedure for other illnesses, guess what the doctors or functionaries of the state pushed? The person would then have granted consent to sterilization. In decades down the road, after the Supreme Court decision was granted, doctors and social workers would convene with each other to determine whether or not this person or that person should be granted the right of having children. We have recordings of such professionals saying things like, "there's no way another child could make it in this family"....and then either lie about the procedure, or never mention it to the person involved. In North Carolina, we have scores of people that were never told that they were having such a procedure, their signatures were forged, but nevertheless, sterilization occurred anyway. After Supreme Court sanction of the practice, sterilizations throughout the United States soared. Certainly both government and the professional class wanted money spent on such procedures.
You could say, "oh well, this is so different." But I would say, is it? The thrust of the sterilization movement did not affect white middle class, heterosexual, non-disabled people, and massively impacted poor or working class, homosexuals, colored people, or the disabled. Same population this is targeting, with the same rhetoric. "They know about it." But will they, actually? Have you ever found yourself battling for your rights because of a social worker's crusade against you? My family was nearly broken up when a concerned social worker got it in their head that they needed to separate our family, put my brother in an institution in another state, for the good of the family. He did it by strong-arming my folks, all illegally, certainly. It was a somewhat common practice in the region. Threatening families with benefit cuts, breaking up family etc etc. Once a judge got wind of the process they had gone through, that person eventually found themselves out of a job (of course, later going on to another similar position).Have you ever been the victim of accident or mistake at the behest of a lower-level government employee? Even in the schools, you wouldn't believe the crap that is pulled out of a misguided sense of social justice. As someone who has, or is intimately aware of enormous overreaches of legal power in regard to matters not at all unfamiliar to the experiences of the past generations, it would be folly to assume we could trust these people again with power they haven't employed in decades.
Lastly, would you really want that as our moral policy? Consider the population that is not going to be affected by such a policy. Do you think they would be so willing to have their reproductive ability severed once they are conferred with a benefit in the public or private sector? I would assume not. Why? Because our human dignity is thus violated. Consider what you are telling many people: pull yourselves up by your bootstraps, die trying, or get government benefits while you cannot have children. You force people to choose between total pauperism or a violated body.
You know, I am really intrigued that a collection of liberals and libertarians would feel in support of this. You ask the libertarian whether or not he has a right to own a gun, he will answer in the affirmative on the grounds of protection, recreation, and hunting. Now, protection is something no one would want to have to employ, and in many cases they do not have to. In most cases, they use it for recreation..an expensive toy. But when you ask certain libertarians on this site whether or not they support the government regulating whether or not you have children because you are receiving public funds, and suddenly their fervent protection of human dignity and liberty dissipates entirely. They don't sacrifice something potentially superficial like gun ownership, no, they support damaging your own body so you cannot do what human beings have done since the beginning of time and consider it one of the most important hallmarks of their lives. If you were to ask many of the libertarians if they want to ready access to booze, toys, and money, they all say yes, but ask them if we are granted the liberty to be parents, they say no. Such decadence and hypocrisy is astounding. Then there's the liberal. Usually the defender of the oppressed, supporter of the social net, haven to the social movements against oppression. On this site, apparently, some liberals have forgotten the indignities suffered by the traditionally oppressed at the hands of government, the intelligentsia, and the professional class.
Now both groups are starting to support one of the biggest human rights violations in the past century alongside the Holocaust itself. This isn't a joke. The last sterilization occurred in 1981, a mere 5 years before I was born, 7 after my brother. Had my brother and I been alive in North Dakota in the 1960s, I would have possibly been sterilized, and my brother certainly would have. Some are doing it out of fear for resources being spent, others out of the belief that some are less than human, others still with the belief that humanity needs to progress and this is how you do it. Is this the policy you folks truly want?