Catherine Rampell
N.Y. Times
September 29, 2008
The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that a state representative is “studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied.”
Representative John LaBruzzo, a Republican from Metairie, is reportedly worried that “people receiving government aid such as food stamps and publicly subsidized housing are reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent, better-educated people who presumably pay more tax revenue to the government.”
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He wants to discourage poor people from reproducing, and thereby, he says, multiplying the social services burden on the state. (He is also apparently researching ways to encourage wealthy, highly educated residents to pop out more babies, but I imagine the sterilization piece of the plan will be more controversial.)
Lots of countries have pro-natalist policies because they’re worried about shrinking birthrates, and a few (such as Israel) have put in place pro-natalist policies targeting certain subgroups.
But it has been a long time since anti-natalist policies fell out of favor in the West. And I am not sure I have ever heard of any modern fertility policies based on economic cut-offs rather than more openly eugenicist criteria like race or mental soundness.
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