"I also find the idea of a government agency prying into the sex life of 16 year olds more than a little creepy."
You will no doubt also find the idea of the education and health departments doing the same "creepy"? 12 and 13 year-olds given the immunisation against cervical cancer are asked if there was any chance they could be pregnant. School counsellors get intimately involved in situations surrounding the sex lives of adolescents. CYF, another "government agency" would also be closely involved with the sex lives of young people, and unfortunately, even children.
More generally, because I have seen other objections about case managers being involved in the 'new' policy,WINZ staff already deal with special grants for:
They also have to deal with difficult areas such as rape and incest when enquiring after the father of a dependent child, the naming of whom is a requirement for receipt of the DPB. They use their discretion over whether or not to impose a penalty for not complying if the aforementioned scenarios are involved.
I imagine then they are quite capable of exercising discretion over offering a referral to a family planning clinic or GP for the purposes of receiving free long-acting contraception.
11 comments:
Libertarians are all for small government until it involves a program intended to reduce the population of a group of people they don't like (which will never work anyway)
I have already explained why I support this move, although I agree with you it may not be terribly successful. But if it works in SOME cases it would reduce the economic and social downstream costs of children born to mothers who cannot support them independently. (That is not antithetical to wanting "small government".)
And for teenagers in particular it isn't about stopping parenthood, but delaying it. I'd want the same for my own daughter.
Yes - What Anonymous said -
When a particular group of people is targeted not to reproduce is should cause squeamishness.
It is redolent of eugenics and Nazism.
Of course we live in a culture that hates babies, hates people I think, which is why contraception and abortion are so sacred (they are evil in fact, a cultural poison).
We are so degraded as a people now - it disgusts me, our elites are a repulsive and decadent people who have created and grown the underclass with their own worship of sexual hedonism and perversion.
We are of course already involved because we pay for it all
So Andrei, You are quite comfortable for children to be born into circumstances that have a high possibility of endangering their life chances? Again, this isn't about preventing births full-stop but discouraging them until circumstances are conducive. I find your stance totally unreasonable and unreasoning. But that's not unusual.
I don't buy any argument that says DPB recipients are being targeted not to reproduce.
If anything they're being encouraged by this policy to reproduce at the same rate as the rest of us.
You know Lindsay - we are not going to ever
build paradise on Earth and BIG NANNY GOVERNMENT most certainly is not going to - the converse in fact.
All we can do is put forward our ideas - live our lives as, hopefully, good examples to our children and raise them to raise their families in an orderly manner by marrying well before conceiving.
And those in the underclasses who pick up from us this way of negotiating life - will leave the underclass!
I will be interested to see whether there is much change from offering free contraception. I would have thought a significant portion of those targetted have low future time orientation and will simply not use it.
If John Key & co weren't complete wimps, they would make contraceptive impants or birth control shots a condition of welfare entitlements.
"...low future time orientation"
Thanks M. Have been trying to verbalise this concept.
The problem has been that for a teenager, umpteeen years away (on the DPB) is, well, a shrug of the shoulders.
That's gone.
If John Key & co weren't complete wimps, they would make contraceptive impants or birth control shots a condition of welfare entitlements.
If John Key & co weren't complete wimps, they would just stop the entitlements.
Research reported here (Lindsay may be interested) demonstrates that the only effective measure is ending entitlements. Nothing else will work.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/teen_moms_how_poverty_and_inequality_cause_teens_to_have_babies_not_the_other_way_around_.html
Hey Lindsay, thanks for your post!
Although I agree generally with the points you made I'd point out that if WINZ did the job that they are already tasked with (Social Securities Act) child poverty in NZ wouldn't be a feature of news coverage. (WINZ are obligated by law to advise clients which include low income earners of entitlements such as Special Needs Grants for food, clothing, etc. They also have discretionary power to not recover money in cases of severe hardship. Sure, it could be just "bad parenting" but if that were so why are we seeing this throughout the country? Are we to believe they are ALL bad parents??).
If they have difficulty dealing with existing tasks at hand, why would they cope with even more responsibility?
If you wanted the best for your daughter would you really leave it all up to an overworked government department?
It isn't that I think that children should have no access to contraceptives, I just don't think WINZ is the agency to provide such a thing. Expanding government responsibility ultimately leads to a decrease in personal responsibility, this will be no exception.
Post a Comment