My friend Liz H. posted this story on facebook, and I couldn’t believe it.

From the UK Telegraph:

Kerry Robertson, 17, who has mild learning difficulties, has been told that she will not be allowed to bring up her own child, who she has already named Ben.

Last month Miss Robertson was prevented from marrying her fiancé Mark McDougall, 25, after council officials claimed that she “did not understand the implications of getting married”.

She has now been warned that she will only be allowed a few hours with her baby, which is due in January, before it is taken into foster care.

After hearing the news, Miss Robertson, of Dunfermline, Fife, who is 26 weeks pregnant, said: “I couldn’t believe it. I am so upset – I can’t stop crying.”

In Buck v. Bell, the United States Supreme Court upheld a statute instituting compulsory sterilization of the unfit, including the mentally retarded, “for the protection and health of the state.”

Justice Holmes famously wrote:

We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

How far is the statist culture in the UK away from actively practicing eugenics?

Who is John Galt?