Long time readers of the Archive should remember the title of this thread.

Yesterday (Monday, November 18, 2002), the U.S. Supreme Court in a one-line statement refused to take up the case of Willam Gerber. Gerber is serving life-without-possibility-of-parole in a California state prison. He had sued early last year for the right to ship a sperm sample to his (47 year old) wife so that he could produce a child.

The first round of the court case in September of 2001 granted him that right. It was immediately appealled by the state. The thread which began at that time went up in smoke when the previous bulletin board program crashed and burned. There were about 50 comments on the thread discussing whether or not such a right to procreate ought to exist.

In May of this year, the 9th District Court, by a decision of 6 to 5, ruled against Gerber in the appeal. The thread discussing that ruling has about 30 comments and is on Eunuch Central at http://www.eunuch.org/vbulletin/showthr ... readid=985.

By refusing to hear the case, the U.S. Supreme Court has, in at least this instance, ruled that individuals do NOT have a legal right to reproduce.

With the much more conservative court that we are likely to have with the Bush regime in charge, we can only guess what directions this might lead. There have certainly been many who have argued reproduction as a basic human right.

However, if we go all the way in this new direction, my junior high textbook chapter from the middle of this century might actually become possible! http://www.eunuch.org/Alpha/M/newea_262110Making_o.htm

Any thoughts or comments?

Maybe.

As I sit here tonight and wonder about this ruling, a few things come to mind:

I have a bad dental filling. It's going to cost me at least $125 to get it fixed and replaced. I wonder how many prisoners had some most excellent dental care today.

I skipped lunch. Not in the budget. I'm sure that almost everyone in prison today had a good lunch. I've eaten prison food before on a photo shoot once, just out of curiosity. It sure beat MY cooking all to hell. Besides, my tooth hurts.

My sinuses were quite stuffy today and I sneezed a few times. I wonder how many Claritin D pills my tax dollars bought for these convicts today? At $3 a pill, I can't afford them.

I've been suffering from incapacitating headaches for weeks now. I'd love to find out why ... but guess what? Finding out why is somewhere in the neighborhood of $5k, which I don't have. I wonder how many convicts today saw a doctor and didn't have to pay for that and felt better afterwards? Not to mention the care that they'll receive.

I could go on, but I think you all get the point by now.

In essence, someone like me who works 2 jobs, has never broken the law beyond a speeding violaton or seal belt issue or reckless driving, is not nearly as well off as people in prison. Perhaps I should go out and murder someone - I'd probably be better off! At least then I could have my tooth fixed because I could cry about how mistreated I am in prison and threaten to sue!

God, I'm slipping back over the line into Conservativism!

And this sucker has the NERVE to whine about not getting to fuck his wife and have a child? Excuse ME ... how many children do I have? Give ya one guess - mainly because I knew I could not AFFORD to have children was one reason that I waited so long.

And now it's too damn late, until Mr. Clonee hits the market and I can cook up one at home!

My response to this one is simple - FUCK him. Let him sit in his cell with a bad tooth, sneezing, no lunch, and a headache and THINK about WHY he's in there.

I'm done ranting now ... I'm going to go phone my Godsons and tell them how much I love them. At least I have that.

If a person is convicted of a felony and put in prison he looses all rights. The only rights he does have is food, cloths, and a bed, nothing more. That said, there are different kinds of prisons, those how commit murder like this guy if I remember correctly. They should not have any more rights than stated above. There is also what they call white collar crimes and maybe they should have more benefits then the first group. I don’t see were a person who is sentenced to life with out parole should have any rights ever for anything.

To the bleeding hearts there might be a solution which has been used successfully is deporting them to another area, let them all scratch out a living the best that they can. No cost to the state once the prisoner is sent and no return necessary. Now for those of you that think I am nuts. The English did that with several groups, some were just the trash , others for religious freedom some as a penile colony like Australia. Now we have run out of every area in the would, so we would need to be blocked out a new peace of land to be so used. Again this is not new, our own government has done this several times to the native Americans. So, we set up an area, put the prisoners that are serving life sentences and send them to this new area where they can setup there own laws and system of government. Problem solved.

Or is it……….

While I agree that a person in jail loses general rights, I am not sure what the problem is with letting jailed people ship their sperm out, assuming they pay for the shipping costs.

SplitDik (imported) wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2002 11:04 am While I agree that a person in jail loses general rights, I am not sure what the problem is with letting jailed people ship their sperm out, assuming they pay for the shipping costs.

This sort of harkens to the Eugenics Issue of some time ago, and in some areas of the world, perhaps today. It brings up the ideas of improving the Human Race through selective breeding. Not so long ago, in the USA, the arguement was made that the feeble-minded and the criminally inclined (read: the poor) should not be breeding and creating more children to grow up in poverty with criminal thoughts and predisposition.

So is criminal behavior nature or nurture? I don't know. I mentioned the story way back on the other board, I think, about the young boy who used to sneak out at night and come down to the 24 hour convenience store where I worked as a high schooler. He was very messed up, mentally and in appearance, but he was a good kid ... for a while. Right now he's in the State Pen for a sex crime, and he's had about 100 illegitimate kids, I think. As bad as it sounds, castration at age 10 probably would have been a VERY good thing for him, but you know what they say about hindsight. Sigh..... hard to believe a boy who would so happily help me with my night work when I had injured my ankle would turn out so badly.

But the arguements still rage: is criminal behavior genetic, or learned? There are studies to swing in either direction, either way as well. In the USA alone, up until as recently as the early 60's (according to some reports I have seen) sterilization was carried out on those committed for various reasons. In some cases, it even involved castration of men and boys.

One TV movie from the 80's on this topic is called AFTER THE PROMISE starring Mark Harmon as a single father in the 1930's or 1940's whose wife dies. He loses custody of his 3 sons, all of them perfectly fine boys, who end up in a mental institution. The eldest is 'sterilized' against his will, although there are some allusions - small ones - to castration in his case. The movie does have a happy ending, but it also reveals a darker side of Human Nature.

WHO has the right to make such a call? Can we really sit down and say, "YOU do not have the right to breed? YOU should NOT breed!" We joke about it, but there a lot of people out there who are dead serious about it as well.

As far as the guy in prison, well, he obviously has no means of supporting a child - or family - for that matter. Said child would no doubt be a Welfare case, and my tax dollars would end up paying for him/her. That's all we need ... another one.

IMHO, he has no right to have a child, period. What kind of father could he hope to be? And what kind of teasing would the kid endure if it got out that his/her dad was a convict? One also has to keep in mind the stress upon the mother, and perhaps even her family. This guy screwed up. He should pay for it. Having a child isn't it.

Of course, I'm also of the mind that no one should go around popping out kids willy-nilly at the drop of a pair of panties with no thought as to how the kids are going to turn out. I've bitched and ranted for years that having a child without a permit should be a federal crime, but then again, unless "I" am the one making the call, who could we trust to do it?!?

All kidding aside, it's a topic of heated debate with no easy resolution.

I have to have a license plate on my truck. I have to have a tag for my dog. I have to have a gun permit. I have to have a huntin' license. If I want to put a shed, I have to get a building permit. BUT we can go around cranking out babies with no restrictions whatsoever ... God forbid you forget to register that dog or let your license plate expire though!

Any other thoughts?

...I mean this asshole has got the nerve.

Who in the hell would raise his kid?

Who would pay the medical bills?

Who would school clothe, feed and educate the child?

US. That's who.

AND to top it all off whe are keeping his lousy ass in prison to the tune of about $20k a year.

Now he wants to jerk off into a condom and let his "wife" squirt his seed up her love canal with a syringe, well, that too is a little too much.

HELL. He managed to get himself into jail. If he wants to fuck and have children then he can get himself out.

Jesus, man! This is not an issue of reproductive rights...it is an issue of screwing the taxpayers! The bastard lost his rights when he broke the law, got convicted and then sentenced to jail.

SCREW HIM! I hope that the inmates in the joint get him down and castrate him. It would serve him right.

Sheesh, only in California....

A-1

The rights belonging to criminal prisoners are defined in each country. While the courts have held that Canadian prisoners do not give up the right to exercise their franchise, they have pretty much given up all other vestiges held by free men except that the current prison regime is that conjugal visits are allowed. Those possessing mail priveleges at all (probably most) can probably send out their semen. I doubt if those 'in the hole (solitary)' can.

A-1 (imported) wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2002 7:25 pm ...I mean this asshole has got the nerve.

Who in the hell would raise his kid?

Who would pay the medical bills?

Who would school clothe, feed and educate the child?

US. That's who.

A-1,

There are lots of people having kids the "natural" way who will have to be supported by the state. I don't think there is any precedent for preventing people from having children based on their ability to support them -- there probably should be, but there isn't.

We also don't know that the guy isn't wealthy, or that his wife/family can take care of the child. Not all criminals are poor.

Lastly, you are implying that single parents cannot raise children properly. However, the state does not go around removing children from single parents.

So I don't think the state has any precedence for worrying about the issues you stated.

I also don't think the prison should care about the person shipping sperm out, especially to a spouse. I just don't see the problem. I understand where the prison would prevent other things, such as making money, talking on talk shows, etc. as they are disruptive to their ability to control the prisoner.

So, you're right that it would be great if we could control who had children (from the point of view of good parenting and ability to support), however that quickly becomes eugenics where we start to prevent people with alternative religious beliefs, or with disabilities, from having children. We just shouldn't go there.

JesusA (imported) wrote: Wed Nov 20, 2002 5:09 pm Yesterday (Monday, November 18, 2002), the U.S. Supreme Court in a one-line statement refused to take up the case of Willam Gerber. Gerber is serving life-without-possibility-of-parole in a California state prison. He had sued early last year for the right to ship a sperm sample to his (47 year old) wife so that he could produce a child...

Alright.... :realpisse Now you've gone and done it...

First of all, if this idiot has money then it should all go to his victims and to the state to pay for his board and keep.

NOW!

Do you guys all know why there are no more conjugal visits in the California prison system?

Let me tell you why. A lady whose daughter was killed kept going to her killers parole hearings and testifying so that he wouldn't get out.

In the mean time this man had conjugal visits with his wife and that had produced several children.

THE LADY WHOSE DAUGHTER HE MURDERED LOBBIED AND GOT THE LAWS CHANGED.

So, you tell me. Why should the prisoner have more rights than his victim? She is DEAD! She will not have any children. The offender though, hell, he could have had children until hell froze over or until his old lady got too old and then he could have gotten another younger woman and started all over again.

No, I am firm on this one, folks. This is not a matter of reproductive rights, it is a matter of victims and of rehabilitation.

I mean if this "offender" who is serving "...life without parole..." gets paroled some day how will he ever come to appreciate what he did to get himself into his particular mess? How can he appreciate what he did to his victim's "reproductive rights"? NEVER MIND THE FACT THAT HE ALSO KILLED THEM!

Tell it to the families of the surviors. Explain it to them!

Think about the actress Sharon Tate and how she was slain during her 7th month of pregnancy. Remember how she "begged" for her life and the life of her unborn child? Her murderers told the story. They killed her and then cut the baby from her womb after she and the baby were both dead.

The bastard we are talking about is probably no better than Manson and his Monsters. He deserves to rot in jail childless. Maybe Jesus will tell us the rest of the story as to what his "offense" was. But the truth is known I know enough now to BITCH for quite a while.

You just don't get "...life without the possibility of parole..." in California for spitting on the sidewalk.

Besides that, can't you all just imagine the precedent?

Charles Manson sending his sperm out to make children?

What about Susan Smith? She killed her two little boys because some jerk would not marry her because she had children so she drowned them and tried to blame it on a BLACK man. What a BITCH!

So, what do YOU all think? Does SHE deserve to get pregnant and have more children while she is doing her life term?

Who is going to go in and get her pregnant? Shouldn't single people have the same "reproductive rights" as married couples?

Maybe she could get a special dispensation to get pregnant by whatever guard that she chooses. Hell, maybe they can just tie her to the bed and then take turns with her...

AND what about the people on death row? Wouldn't they deserve "reproductive rights", too? Maybe that will be the next case to go to the Supreme Court. You cannot execute offenders because that would be denying them their reproductive rights. Well, the DEAD cannot reproduce, can they?

Then, you could stand in front of the survivor's and the victim's families from Oklahoma City and tell them that poor little Timothy McVey deserved to live so that he can impregnate a woman and have children. Tell it to the parents of the children who died in the day care center in the Murrah Federal Building!

What about this man's, (and I use the term VERY loosely describing this scum), children who have to go to school and are treated as pariahs because of who they are and who their father is?

No, we cannot have penal systems where inmates make children with their wives or other women who may not even be their wives. Once their sperm leaves the prison anything could happen to it.

If the 47-year-old woman that this guy is married to wants a child that bad then she can go and get some donated sperm. This bastard deserves to be cuckoled! I doubt if at her age that she would qualify for artificial insemination in any viable program.

Another thing. My wife is 47. I would not want her to have to go through a pregnancy at her age. It is too much to ask. Hell, we have raised 4 children and it is not easy.

I have a daughter who is 28 and trying to raise 2 children, boys, without much help from their father. If she were 47 she would not be able to do it. PERIOD! She would probably die trying, though. My mother died in her 50's. What would become of the "offender's" children if their mother dies in her 50's? What kind of "father figure" could this "offender" be to a child while doing life without parole? Who would take his children to visit him then?

No, this asshole is just using the judical system to try to thumb his nose at society once again. He doesn't give a damn about his wife and he could care less about the life that his progeny would have to lead because of him, his selfishness and his ignorance. HE DOES NOT WANT CHILDREN...HE JUST WANTS HIS OWN WAY!

Again, this is not a matter of reproductive control OR rights. It is a matter of responsibility. An irresponsible "offender" doing "life without parole" wanting to be a "responsible" parent. If it were not so shameful it would be hilarious!

I cannot believe that we are actually having this discussion on this message board. A bunch of guys on a "eunuch" message board worried about this CONVICTS

Riverwind (imported) wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2002 10:03 am reproductive rights. That in itself i

s ludicrous.

He should not have any more rights than anybody else here has. We cannot reproduce. What makes a LIFER, most probably a murderer, any better than the rest of us?

Hell, he has not been in prison all of his life. Why didn't he lay in bed with a woman and make children instead of going out and committing murder or whatever he did to get himself in prison for the rest of his days on the Earth?

Just let him have a conjugal visit. Hell, I have been "STRAIGHT" all of my life. I would be willing to cross-dress up like a Whore and go in and nut this MUTHERFUCKER personally!

...Right before I pulled his fucking eyes out and ate them RAW!

The only problem is that I doubt if I could ever pass as a woman. I am too muscular and UGLY!



Well, Splitdik and friends, The soapbox is all yours now. I am glad that this is off of my chest. So much for the "Eunuch Calm"

A-1

...we have "reproductive rights" in reverse or of the victims.

If someone should kill one of us should the penalty for them be less because since we cannot reproduce we have no "reproductive rights" to be denied to us?

Hmmmm? Better think about it...

A-1