I wouldn't agree with castration but I can understand why some feel that those who will never have the mental age of an adult should be prevented from having children (through sterilisation, depo injections, etc). I have mixed feelings about this though- in the simplest scenario do the rights of the individual who decides they want a baby (even if they can't take care of themselves) come before the rights of the child to be raised by parents who have a reasonable level of functioning?
It's a tough question. I've wondered about this one for a while. Maybe the best answer is to allow the parents to have the child, but to provide support workers of some sort in the home, so that the child is regularly exposed to a reliable adult. Yes - expensive. More so than putting the question out of sight, out of mind with castration. But I think better than the alternatives.
I agree that the support should be there for those who need it, regardless of the expense- unfortunately it seems rare that adequate support is provided. This issue aside I think there's probably a lot of people out there who could do a lot more if they were only given the support and encouragement. I know this is partly off topic but there's been some comments about how affected most of the members are by ASD (with claims that because many have jobs/relationships/both they obviously can't be as 'severely affected' as others). I personally wonder if the differences in level of functioning could also be due, in part, to the fact that many of those that do seem to be higher functioning didn't find out about ASD's until they were already grown adults. So they've
had to find ways to cope, people didn't have preconceived notions about what they could/couldn't do.
Back to the original issue I think problems can arise when the parent of a person with a low IQ/low emotional maturity makes decisions about what they will be capable of understanding/doing instead of actually giving them a chance and finding out. Not only does it hold them back, it can also leave them vulnerable when away from that parent (e.g. not teaching them about sex because the parent believes they don't have the emotional maturity to understand could leave them prey to abusive people).
