Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Thursday 20 November 2014

Really? Forced steilization is an "outdated" policy?

I know journalists are not responsible for their headlines, and the word "outdated" does not appear in the editorial itself, but an opinion piece under the byline of the paper's Editorial Board ran  in the New York Times titled "India's Lethal Birth Control."

It is about the callous way that nation promoted a coercive sterilization program, in which the lives of women were granted all the value and dignity... well, that you would expect.
You know, women received invasive surgery in unhygienic circumstances, and the governmental perpetrators sent them home immediately with pain killers and maybe antibiotics.

Perhaps laced with rat poison.

As one does.

And the subtitle of the editorial, both on the web and in the email of headlines I receive daily was, "Official policies of forced female sterilization are not only outdated [emphasis added] but dangerous."

Get that?

The policies are "outdated."

Surely someone with some kind of editorial authority oversees those emails and subtitles, no?

The editorial board of the New York Times, or at least whoever they trust to write their headlines and subtitles, says that once upon a time, such policies would have been appropriate, but now we've moved past that.

That's what I'm reading, boys.

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