A bold plan to help damaged women

Can it ever be right to stop women having children? The charity Pause certainly thinks so, says Janice Turner. Over the past three years it has arranged for 137 women to get contraceptive implants – women who between them have 497 children who were taken into care. One such woman is Lisa, a homeless addict, who’s seen four of her children put into care – the last two removed days after birth – and who would have gone on having babies because, as she notes, “men are nicer when you’re pregnant, don’t hit you so much. And social workers look after you”. So Lisa was offered a deal: put your fertility on hold for 18 months with an implant and receive intense therapy for mental illness, and advice on housing and finding a job. Many think that removing people’s fertility in this way, even if only temporarily, smacks of eugenics; and clearly, this is “tricky ethical territory”. But when you see how this project allows these damaged women to regain control of their lives, and when you consider how much misery can be averted, it’s surely an initiative worth supporting.