Yes

by Barbara Combs Williams

Created on: June 16, 2010

Forced sterilization is a hard pill to swallow. I don’t believe anyone should be forced into something that strips them of their abilities to reproduce. But sometimes circumstances force us to take a different view. Meet Jane Doe.
 
Jane Doe was sitting in the waiting room of her local health department. She didn't really need to take a pregnancy test because she has been pregnant enough to know what it feels like. This will be her fifth child by this person in six years.

Jane never finished high school and she barely managed to finish ninth grade when she became pregnant the first time at the tender age of fourteen. Like most girls she imagined herself in love and believed that love was reciprocated by the young man. Unbeknownst to Jane this young man had a history of "loving" young girls.

Jane lives in a small town in the Midwest. There’s nothing particularly special about this town. No famous movie stars or sports stars call this town home. People live there because their parents lived there and their grandparents lived there and so on. Jobs are of the typical kind, light industrial, schools, local government, small manufacturing, etc. Jane lives there now with her four children. She and her children subsist on government aid. Uneducated and without hope, Jane has nowhere to turn. Her parents live across town and since Jane is “pigheaded” as they say and “won’t listen to reason,” they have all but washed their hands of the whole situation.

Jane cries softly when the pregnancy test is confirmed and she is once again with child. She thinks of the only man who has ever “loved” her and she is finally angry. She is not angry with him but with herself. She knows her baby’s father will be angry with her and become violent. He has done this before. She believes that if she were smarter, more beautiful, had more money, then she would truly have his love and she and her children would prosper.
 
JJ is the town’s local Casanova. His given name is Jason but he thinks JJ sounds more macho. He comes from a middle-class family that prides itself on going to church every Sunday and requiring their children to do the same. JJ is the middle child of three. Nothing stood out about him therefore like many small town boys he sought to create some status for himself by being BMOC. He believes that every girl that he comes across should be honored to be in his presence and ready at his command to have sexual relations. JJ started impregnating young girls at the age of fifteen and now he is twenty-three and has eight children by three different girls, Jane Doe being one of them.

JJ sees nothing wrong with his behavior; in fact he is proud of his studding abilities. He believes that the girls should take care of birth control and real men don’t concern themselves with that. JJ barely sees any of his children and is certainly not a father to any of them. He only uses them to brag to his friends about how he is such a lover and player and these mothers of his children don’t deserve his respect and certainly not his financial or emotional support. He boasts to his friends of how he handles his women and smiles when he thinks on the pain he inflicts to keep them in line. His parents believe that these young women are trying to entrap their son into unwholesome relationships because in their opinion, “no self-respecting girl would be having all those babies out of wedlock.”

Forced sterilization sounds inhuman and infringes upon the rights of the individual. No one should be forced against their will, but in the case of JJ forced sterilization would save more young girls and women from becoming the victims of men like JJ and I don’t use the word victim lightly.

Men like JJ use and abuse and discard. Sterilization of JJ in this case is justifiable.

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