Solution to teen pregancy: Sterilization?

A letter was printed in my local paper last week that was so outrageous I had to write a response. I don't expect them to print it so I'm posting it here. Below is the first letter that I'm posting in full without permission, followed immediately by my response. To understand what he's talking about at the beginning you'll need to know that 65 of 490 girls at Timken High School (local inner city school) are pregnant.

Obvious solution for teenage pregnancies: Sterilization
Thursday, August 25, 2005

Oh boy! Sixty-five more on the welfare rolls from one school, assuming, of course, that none of them gives birth to twins, triplets or worse. One pregnant teenager from one school used to be cause for a scarlet letter. Not anymore. By the way, it’s not the fault of Timken High School.

In “The ‘irresponsible’ should get blame” (Aug. 21), Rick Senften appears to be assuming teenage pregnancies are accidental and unwanted. He feels that these girls’ parents are not good parents. How does he know that the parents, if there are two of them, didn’t say, “Look at all the money the government will give you.” Like mother and father and father, like kids.

It appears these breeders are, in fact, very involved in their offsprings’ upbringing by teaching them what they themselves have come to realize about life in the welfare state. More babies, more money. (I must say they’re doing a fine job.) Just because these “parents” don’t emulate Ozzie, Harriet, June and Ward doesn’t mean they don’t have the best interests of their children at heart.

These kids can’t learn the Three R’s, let alone comprehend something like personal responsibility.

Their parents didn’t learn it, nor are they likely to miraculously wake up one day and decide to become productive members of society.

The real solution is obvious: sterilization. Save them from themselves. Save our country from them. No sterilization, no government freebies. Insist that these girls name their partner, validate with DNA testing, and sterilize him. There wouldn’t be bragging and chest puffing going on by these macho punks.

Taxpayers deserve to have their hard-earned dollars spent on something to solve a problem instead of throwing money at politically correct social programs.

Give us taxpayers a break. Cut tubes and taxes.

FRANK MANELLO JR.
JACKSON TOWNSHIP

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Editor,

Frank Manello Jr's irrational proposal "Obvious solution for teenage pregnancies: Sterilization" was the most thoughtless, non-sensical letter I've ever read in your paper, or any other.

American teens have less sex than other western nations, but have a substantially higher pregnancy rate. Why? Teens do not get pregnant as a strategic money making maneuver as Manello suggests. Teen pregnancy is directly linked to the quality of sex education and to poverty in an area, as a quick comparison of Timken and Jackson High School (Manello's area of town) would reveal. Our country would rather speak of sex as some abstract evil than face reality and openly deal with this huge problem.

I don't want to mince words here: Frank Manello is talking about initiating a state sponsored Eugenics program, which is defined quite simply as "The study of hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled selective breeding." Eugenics is not explicitly racist as some people think. It is systematically engineering a "better" society by forcibly sterilizing those with mental illness, low intelligence, or deformity. This was a big hit in Nazi Germany where they sterilized about 400,000 people who were deemed too costly for society to have offspring. When he uses words such as "breeders" to describe pregnant teens you hardly realize he's speaking of fellow citizens. Young, impoverished women of Canton take heed: Frank Manello has declared you unworthy to perpetuate the human species. When you stop viewing your neighbors as human beings and see them as burdensome commodities you have crossed the line of intelligent debate.

In the end his real motivation is revealed. He simply needs more tax cuts. Tax cuts during a time of war was not enough to sustain his lifestyle in Jackson Township. Like the welfare mom's he speaks of, he just wants more money and he'll sterilize you to get to it.

Matt Bors
Canton, OH