Pol Suggests Paying Poor Women to Tie Tubes

September 25, 2008 — -- As Hurricane Gustav loomed off the coast of Louisiana, thousands of impoverished people flocked into shelters, where some of them seemed unprepared to take care of their young children's basic needs, forgetting to bring along diapers or medicine.

That heartbreaking scenario inspired Louisiana Republican State Rep. John LaBruzzo to start thinking about ways to stem generational welfare, in which many welfare recipients have children who also end up dependent on government assistance, according to the representative.

His idea -- giving $1,000 to poor women to undergo reproductive sterilization by Fallopian tube ligation -- is stirring up controversy among some medical professionals, who say that the proposal is offensive and smacks of long-discredited eugenics programs.

LaBruzzo has also suggested other controversial ideas: paying poor men to get vasectomies and giving tax incentives for college-educated wealthy couples to have more children.

"We have a problem of generational welfare in Lousiana," he tells ABCNews.com, adding today that he has modified his position to seek financial incentives for temporary forms of birth control instead of surgery.

"It's a horrible problem and we were brainstorming about some of the options, so I requested some information from Baton Rouge about the projected growth in welfare recipients and how much a proposal like this would cost," LaBruzzo said.

"After this recent storm, we had some issues where these people were going into shelters and taking their cigarettes and welfare but didn't have diapers or insulin for diabetic kids, and they felt they were entitled to say, 'Give me, give me.' None of them didn't want to set up cots or do anything."

LaBruzzo, who claimed that his constituents have complained about food stamp recipients driving Mercedes and Lexus luxury cars, denied that his idea was similar to eugenics, policies of selective breeding that were used in Nazi Germany and were popular in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th century.

"I don't know how it's eugenics if it's voluntary, and how can it be racist if the majority of people on welfare are white?" he said.