In support of free sterilization

Things you need a license and/or parental consent for:
Driving a car
Driving a truck, motorcycle, etc.
Getting married
Getting a tattoo (before 18)
Getting your ears pierced (before 18)
Cutting hair professionally
Giving massages
Practicing medicine of any kind
Adding on to your house
Building a wall
Putting in a pool
Going on a field trip (before 18)
Selling liquor
Reproducing lyrics
Flying a plane
Being a dog
Owning a firearm
Shooting any animal
Catching a fish

Things you don't need a license or parental consent for:
Having a baby
Getting an abortion

Doesn't it seem a little strange to you? My husband can't even catch a goldfish at the city lake without being fined, but I could kill an unborn child with a walk-in appointment at a clinic. Or I could be a crack-head, mentally unstable, abusive person and be allowed to give birth to a child or multiple children that I would never take care of properly.

Shouldn't we have to get a license to reproduce? Shouldn't there be requirements, like being drug free and having a secure living situation and having the ability to make sound decisions and being able to use logic? I'm not talking about you need to be smart or good looking or rich or anything like that, I'm talking about your ability to love and care for and protect a child. I'm so tired of hearing the stories of people abusing their children to the point of death, of women selling their babies, of druggies who keep getting pregnant and have more and more children that they pawn off to whoever. My parents have a neighbor whose daughter is my age, and she now has three children who are all being taken care of by different people. She's not taking care of any of them, and it's probably better that way. But still. She's always on drugs, and it's a true miracle that the worst problem any of the kids has is ADD. She doesn't even know who the fathers of the younger two are. Has she heard of birth control?

So here's my thought, and I have no idea what the rules should be, but I think that the state should offer free sterilization, and enforce it in some cases. I know that enforcing it becomes a morality issue, but isn't letting repeat offenders continue to reproduce also a morality issue? Where do we draw the line? And what do we do with all of these poor, unwanted children?

Every once in a while I hear something that absolutely breaks my heart. Yesterday I heard a story about a woman in Riverside who beat her baby so badly that the paramedics who transported him to the hospital said they'd never seen such a severe instance of child abuse in all of their combined 32 years on the job. The baby was not expected to survive. This is the extent of the depravity of humans. I look at Judah, and yes, I get angry with him sometimes. But even when I'm angry and he's upset he looks at me so helplessly, and reaches out to me so trustingly, relying on me to offer comfort and to fix whatever's wrong, and I know that I could never betray that trust and that I would do anything, including dying, to protect him. How can you know that you are your baby's only hope, and then turn against him and totally destroy him? I don't understand at all.