The author seems to be rather backward in his thinking.

-----Original Message-----
From: VICUG-L: Visually Impaired Computer Users' Group List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Martin Courcelles
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2004 10:43 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: a news article


This is a bit off topic, but I thought some of you may find this article of
interest if not scandalous.
This was taken from the business and finance Newspaper in Zimbobway.

The blind beggars and birth control

Mbulawa Moyo
8/26/2004 9:14:49 AM (GMT +2)

Birth control, or fertility management as I would prefer to call it, has
never been a source of absolute comfort, be it in religious circles or the
medical
profession. It has not managed to achieve unanimity among even the most
ardent of its advocates for the simple reason that it has often raised more
questions
than answers in the realms of morality and medical ethics.

It is an emotive subject in whose name some horrendous crimes have been
committed throughout the world but notably in the United States where these
crimes
have included the burning down of family planning clinics and the murder of
doctors who have chosen to make abortion, as a form of birth control, their
life’s work.

Which is why, even before you have heard what I have to say on the subject
today, you need to be fortified against potential shock by stating quite
frankly
that what I am going to suggest today could well be regarded in some circles
as radicalism. In fact the overly sentimental and the squeamish might recoil
from it as downright inhuman.

The over-sensationalist and those given to over-dramatisation might even be
tempted to compare the suggestion to Adolph Hitler’s shocking "final
solution".

But in reality, readers have to be rest assured that it is none of that.
Rather, it is a well-intentioned proposal founded on what I believe is
firm-footed
realism as opposed to starry-eyed and largely populist idealism.

It is one of those measures that must be viewed as necessary evils because
its adoption would result in what is often referred to paradoxically as
"being
cruel to be kind".

The plight of blind beggars with an ever-increasing number of children who
have made the streets of our major city centres their permanent places of
abode
has been ignored for so long it appears our national conscience has now come
to accept their pitiful mode of existence as normal. And if that is, indeed,
the case then we must all hang our heads in shame.

Because, no matter how suffering-hardened we may have become over the years
since ESAP (Economic Structural Adjustment Programme), anybody who accepts
as
normal the sub-human conditions in which blind beggars and their off-spring
are forced to live has precious little in the form of a conscience to talk
about.

It may be getting progressively warm now especially by day, but we all know
how bitterly cold it has been over the past several weeks particularly
starting
from April 21 when temperatures dropped overnight so dramatically ground
frost was reported in most parts of the country making us shiver even in
front
of our fireplaces.

Can you imagine what the blind beggars and their children were going through
out there in the nooks of city centre building protected, at the most, from
the icy howling winds on only three sides of their "sleeping quarters"?

True we have become, by and large, a nation of miserable paupers and a
colony of semi-scavengers to whom buying any new item of clothing, blankets
included,
has become an unaffordable "luxury" considering the majority of us these
days can’t afford more than one frugal meal of plain sadza and simple
vegetables
a day. But we nevertheless have a place with four walls and a roof under
which to lay our emaciated frames and the prematurely greying heads encasing
our
troubled minds.

Not only that. We also have at least two blankets each to throw over those
skeletal frames to ward off the worst of the chill. Threadbare most of them
certainly
are, that can’t be denied. But they are still blankets nonetheless.

On the other hand, our abandoned, homeless blind fellow Zimbabweans who have
not much in the form of personal clothing to talk about in the first place,
have no blankets at all to protect themselves from the bitter cold. And it
must be stated categorically that the situation in which they find
themselves
is not in the least one of their making — a truism which also applies with
even greater paroxysm to those blind beggars’ innocent children.

It is against this grim backdrop that my appeal to those rich and altruistic
brothers of ours who have so much money to spare that they are able to fund
welfare societies for animals to also spare some of their money for a
welfare society that can buy cars to go round the streets of Harare and
Bulawayo
picking up blind beggars and their children, taking them to a homely place
where they can bathe, be fed and sleep in relative comfort and warmth.

When they finally are at these places of comfort, three things need to be
done about them.

The very first thing is to see to it that those of them with two or more
children are rendered immediately infertile to remove the risk of them
having any
more children.

Contraceptive pills or injections offer the obvious immediate solution which
ought to be followed as soon as possible with vasectomy for the husbands
and,
if necessary, a similar operation for the women as the most fail-safe
solution.

I know there are those who are genuinely outraged by this proposal. Well,
look at it this way: If the SPCA could be considerate and caring enough to
forestall
the danger of stray cats and dogs under their care adding to their work by
unwittingly making more young ones of their kind, how much more considerate
and worthwhile would it be to do the same for fellow humans who don’t have
the means to support themselves, much less their potential off-spring?

We need to look at issues realistically and realism in this case calls for
such a measure.

From there we go to task number two. With information gleaned off their new
charges concerning their roots and relatives in their possession, the next
task
for the authorities at these places of care of the indigent blind would be
to try and locate their living relatives so that, wherever possible, the
blind
beggars could be released into their custody, care or guardianship.

This step should only be taken on the understanding that the Department of
Social Welfare will have made a written undertaking to pay the families
taking
in the indigent blind a living allowance in respect of those additions to
their households.

Thirdly, if no families can be found that are willing to take them in then
facilities ought to be put in place at the envisaged institutions to give
them
basic education and, later, equip them with skills such as making baskets,
mats and pottery and other artefacts.

Please don’t tell us it can’t be done. These people are perfectly trainable
and many of them are highly intelligent. After all, one of the ablest
lawyers
Zimbabwe has ever produced was a blind man — the late Advocate Pearson
Nherere.


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