EVEN DRUG ADDICTS HAVE RIGHTS

Faced with drastic problems, it's always tempting to use drastic measures.

And the extreme case of the Oakland County cocaine abuser whose 13th child
was born with severe developmental disabilities, and is being kept alive
only by machines, is inspiring renewed talk of drug-testing pregnant women,
punishing them for passing drugs to their fetus, and sterilization.

But although drug addicts are generally incapable of caring for children
and should not have them while they're addicted, giving into the temptation
to legislate who can have kids is disastrous.

In 1942, when the U.S. Supreme Court said the government couldn't sterilize
repeat felons, Nazi Germany was performing wholesale sterilizations on
people it deemed unfit to have children. People still shudder at the horror.

As much as everyone wants babies to be healthy, the ability to bear
children is not given by government, and government doesn't have the right
to take it away. If addicts do not voluntarily use birth control and
severely neglect their children, then the government can step in and
terminate parental rights, as a judge may well do in the Oakland County case.

But government has no place deciding who should and should not have
children. History shows this solution has potentially cataclysmic results.