General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Mother wins right to end disabled daughter's life [View all]jwirr
(39,215 posts)have a question. Where do you draw the line? My family also has five generations of bi-polar with many cases. But out of those 5 generations with probably 50 some cases only 3 were not able to function in a real life situation. Of those three one died in a mental institution, the other died living with my mother's family and my brother lives on our family farm with his wife and for the most part takes care of himself although in a very offbeat way.
If we take the suggestion that somewhere in that 5 generations someone should have been sterilized then 47 people who have a degree of the disease but have coped with it should not have been born. The eugenics movement did not set any limits - if you had someone in your family who was considered inferior then you did not deserve to exist.
I would not be here except for the fact that around the late 1930s this country put an end to most of those kinds of actions. My mother would have been sterilized because she was the sister of a mentally ill woman and had two mentally ill aunts.
I believe that individuals can make their own decisions regarding sterilization or the use of birth control but when it becomes a movement enforced by the state it is wrong.