In case you don't accept my opinion that the veneer of civilisation is very thin, this report on The Guardian provides more proof.

The story is about forced sterilisations in Japan: "between 1948 and 1996, about 16,500 people were operated on without their consent under a eugenics law ... that was not repealed until the 1990s". Unsurprisingly, the victims want compensation. The victims were each offered government compensation of "¥3.2m ($22,800) – an amount campaigners have said does not reflect the suffering the victims had experienced."

The report also points out that Germany and Sweden had similar eugenics laws, repealed decades before that in Japan, and those governments have since apologised to victims and paid compensation.

Eugenics legislation is inherently barbaric, and I find it bizarre that Japan, Germany and Sweden had such laws in place, despite the world having fought a war against Nazi Germany partly on the justification of their eugenics programmes against Jews, Gypsies and the like.

I do, however, take issue with the statement by campaigners in Japan that the offered compensation "does not reflect the suffering the victims had experienced", which seems to be based on the concept that reproduction is an inalienable human right, with which I strongly disagree:

• There are people who clearly should not have children because of genetic disease, although preventing them from doing so, by sterilisation or forced abortion, is most certainly not justified in such cases;
• There are people who are unfit or incapable of being parents for reasons of stupidity or sociopathic personalities, but again, prevention is not justified;
• Our planet is heavily overpopulated, and is being quickly poisoned as a result, and people should be discouraged from reproducing as part of the effort to save our home-world, but it is no part of governments' responsibilities to decide who should reproduce and who not.