September 23, 2008: Louisiana Lawmaker Considering Offering Poor Women Money to Have Themselves Sterilized

John LaBruzzo. [Source: Daniel Erath / Times-Picayune]Louisiana State Representative John LaBruzzo (R-Metarie) says he is considering a legislative proposal to offer poor women $1,000 to be sterilized. LaBruzzo says that poor people who receive government aid such as food stamps and publicly subsidized housing are reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent, better-educated people. Offering poor women money to have their fallopian tubes “tied” would lower their birth rates, LaBruzzo explains. “We’re on a train headed to the future and there’s a bridge out,” he says of what he calls potentially dangerous demographic trends. “And nobody wants to talk about it.… What I’m really studying is any and all possibilities that we can reduce the number of people that are going from generational welfare to generational welfare.” Such payments would be voluntary, he says, and might include other forms of birth control, including vasectomies for men. He would also consider tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income couples to have more children. LaBruzzo, who represents the same district that sent former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke to the Louisiana State House in 1989, is receiving criticism that calls his proposal racist, sexist, unethical, and immoral. LaBruzzo counters that since more white people are on welfare than black people, his proposal is not targeting race. “It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, he’s a racist,’” LaBruzzo says. “The hard part is to sit down and think of some solutions.” LaBruzzo is opposed to abortion in any form, and describes his sterilization program proposal as providing poor people with better opportunities to avoid welfare, because they would have fewer children to feed and clothe. [New Orleans Times-Picayune, 9/23/2008]