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There are far too many problems with deciding when and who needs treatment. We stamp many cases as "mentally ill" when they should simply be "criminal." There is a difference. This debate for the sake of life, demands we separate the obvious criminal from the mentally challenged. Say a Down syndrome person rapes someone; that person needs treatment and probably a separation from society. But just because one did this, you cannot say they all need treatment. Now someone may say, "that is the very problem; deciding who is mentally challenged and who is a criminal." Correct; but the very title of this debate, is a road we already traveled, a failed road at that. I am going to show you what happens when we take this slippery, assumptive way that says "every mentally challenged person is a threat or needs treatment."

If you have not attained a bit of grey hair on your knowledge bump, you may not realize what a barbarically ugly past this nation has concerning the mentally challenged. Uglier and much more recent then the barbaric slave trading of our past. I can tell you with first hand witness accounts; we have come a long way. I grew up next to one of our "State Hospitals" as they were called then. A big, castle like building with some pretty eerie qualities, once you found out what was going on inside. It started as an operation assigned a name, similar to the name of this debate, with what seemed like a good cause. But as time went on, parents and family members would simply get sick of someone "in the family" and dump them at the doorstep of these facilities. That's fine had they been out raping little boys and girls; however, most were simply "mentally challenged people," harming no one.

This was in the days of the fallout shelters and this particular hospital had entrances to theirs near my home. As a child I would sneak in and find my way to the wards where hundreds if not thousands of little kids were physically strapped to wheelchairs, bound to the walls, and in my mind, tortured beyond imagine. Some would just stare at me with a glazed look in their eyes. I know of one particular girl who I found out later, from a nurse, was dropped there because the parents were ashamed of the birthmark that covered half of her beautiful face. Can you imagine taking an otherwise normal child and putting her in a wheelchair, pumping her full of drugs, (as a means of babysitting) and leaving her there until the day she died? That is what they (we) did by the thousands.

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