I've finally caught up with this thread! Wow. I start, I think, with the same premise that Phil does, and that is that it is none of the government's business how people, individually, conduct their lives or make reproductive choices. Of course, I also agree that if we had universal health care that included education on birth control options and provisions for birth control it would be a better policy for the population as a whole than any form of sterilization, permanent or not.
The State may have an interest in reducing its burden in caring for children of profligate parents that are economically challenged, but that interest pales in comparison to the interests of parents in raising their children and making reproductive choices - even dumb ones. Although the issue of Carrie Buck's forced sterilization has come and gone from this thread, it is instructive in that that was a legal philosophy that prevailed in the country until only two generations ago - Carrie herself only died 25 years ago. Given the willingness of the current administration to forgo basic constitutional and moral proscriptions, it is healthy to be concerned with how such authority might be abused in the future.
For most people receiving aid or being sterilized is the kind of a Hobson's choice that most of us would consider heinous if presented to us, but is somehow less onerous if it is presented to those somehow deemed less worthy - just as waterboarding is torture if done to Americans, but an "aggressive interrogation technique" when used on "terrorists." (It's akin to the difference between "major" surgery and "minor" surgery - major surgery is anything that is done to me and minor surgery is anything that is done to you.) What it does, as I think Ardy tried to say earlier, is point out how little most of us know about living near the poverty line and how coercive financial pressure can be for those of little means.
