Gagging the Baby

According to an article at the BBC, Russia has been shocked by pictures of orphans in the care of a state hospital, that have been gagged by plasters and dummies stuck over their mouths. From the article:

"Children in the first year of life were systematically gagged with sticking plaster to make children behave quietly," the prosecutors' press service said. It is alleged the babies were silenced because there were too few staff to deal with them.

These children then, are being treated in a way not too dissimilar from the forbidden experiment. By denying the children social contact, including the ability to cry and utter sounds, the 'carers' are no doubt, damaging the children and reducing the chances that they will have a normal life as they grow up.

The difficulty is that these problems really come down to a matter of resources (money). You cannot prevent people having children. It is a right that they have had since time immemorial and one they will no doubt demand until the end of our species. But, these babies did not ask to be born and nor did society ask them to be born. The choice was that of two people who had sex. But for some reason or another they have fallen into the care of the state. The population are asked to pay taxes and give up money that they have earned to help raise these children. Is there any wonder, that in a world where huge numbers live in poverty, that these children are left to become even more of a burden on the state?

The solution is that humans should think much more carefully about having children. The continuation of our species no longer relies on prodigious procreation. The ones who are alive now should be our concern, rather than bringing ever greater numbers into the world, like a sad conveyor belt, chugging out more and more broken humans. For god's sake, won't somebody think of the children?