Guest Post: David Garrett on Sterilisation

A guest post by David Garrett:

Sterilize child abusers – compulsorily if necessary

It is a cliché that while one needs a licence to own a dog, no such permission from the state is required to have children. The same illogical disparity applies when owners or parents abuse their charges: an abuser  can be banned from owing an animal for a period of years or for ever, but the state has no power to prevent abusive “parents” continuing to bring innocent children into the world.

The weekend papers contain two examples of this ridiculous dichotomy. A Sunday paper reports that one of the abusers of three year old Nia Glassie – the little girl who died after being put in clothes drier and   then choked by her grandfather  until her face went purple – is pregnant.  Oriwa Kemp, aged 22, apparently lives “ a transient lifestyle”, and will probably have her latest baby removed by CYF at birth.

Meanwhile down in the western Bay of Plenty, a farmer who broke some of his cows’ tails and hit them over the legs with a steel pipe causing fractures and “weeping lesions” has been sentenced to ten months home detention. Because his victims were animal and not human, he could have been disqualified from ever again owning or exercising authority over  animals. Oriwa Kemp can go on producing children until menopause, and many of the deluded clowns on the left will vehemently defend her “human right” to do so.

One of the earlier controversies during my brief political career arose from my  supporting a guest poster on this blog who suggested that incentives be offered to abusive parents to have themselves sterilized. That night, my “outrageous” comments led the TV news, with  my face superimposed over massed ranks of marching Nazi storm troopers, and shots of Auschwitz.

While I found that astounding – I was very naïve about journos in those days – I was even more surprised at the positive reaction my comments gave rise to, or more correctly, where they came from. I got numerous e-mails agreeing with me from people I had never met, but who made it clear they were not ACT supporters. One former friend – a leftie family lawyer with whom I had fallen out – wrote that all was forgiven because I had said publicly   “what someone needs to say”.

Now we have a government “white paper” – prompted by the Glassie outrage – which recommends “strategies” to combat child abuse. I have not read it, but judging by the media reports it contains nothing particularly radical or new. We don’t need white papers, or “further study” or “consultations with stakeholders” on this issue.  Someone in government needs to stand up and actually LEAD – and if it’s not someone in this lot it surely won’t be someone in the next, which looks likely to be a ghastly amalgam of Labour, the Greens,  Hone the Racist and Winston First.

We once led the world in  the introduction of what were then utterly radical social policies: pensions for the aged; votes for women; a comprehensive welfare state; free medical care for all. Most of those ideas were considered utterly outrageous at the time. Don’t take my word for it – have a look at reports of  the reaction of the medical profession to “socialized medicine” following the election of the first Labour government in 1935.

We could lead the world in social policy again. We could stop wringing our hands about child abuse, take a big breath, and say “Actually NO, everyone doesn’t  have the inalienable right to give birth to children. If you prove you are unfit to do so, we as a society will ensure you don’t”. Cue   howls of outrage from the left, including the sophomoric navel agonizing over “who decides”.

We allow ordinary people to decide the most weighty decisions – whether someone is guilty or not guilty of murder or other serious violent crimes – every day.  Those ordinary people are called “jurors”.  One  of those who sat in judgment on Oriwa Kemp wants the baby to be removed at birth and Kemp to undergo sterilization. The first will happen, the second won’t.

I cannot improve on the words of that (female)  juror as reported in the HoS:

“I think it’s disgusting, revolting, abhorrent…there are so many people in this world who would love to have children and can’t…and for [Kemp] to be able to go and get pregnant and pop them out whenever she feels like it is just mind blowing”

Right on, as we once said.  There are thousands dozens or hundreds of Oriwa Kemps.  Why do we allow this to continue?

DPF: The Nia Glassie case is arguably our worst. Nia was: “kicked, beaten, slapped, jumped on, held over a burning fire, had wrestling moves copied from a computer game practiced on her, spit on, placed into a clothes dryer spinning at top heat for up to 30 minutes, folded into a sofa and sat on, shoved into piles of rubbish, dragged through a sandpit half-naked, flung against a wall, dropped from a height onto the floor, and whirled rapidly on an outdoor rotary clothes line until thrown off”

Her family also waited 36 hours after she went into a coma before they sought medical help. Her mother went out clubbing (so enough money for that) while Nia lay dying in hospital.

My instinct is to execute, not sterilise, all those involved. But more rationally I can’t bring myself to support compulsory sterilisation (or execution)  – even for those who deserve it. I just can’t defend the precedent it creates in terms of power of the state.

I hope that the new law changes which will allow for an order that all future children be removed at birth, will discourage people like Oriwa Kemp from getting pregnant again. But considering her first born is in CYFS care, I suspect she knows this one will end up there also – but that wasn’t enough to discourage her from getting pregnant. I just hope her son or daughter when born, never find out who their birth mother was.