Kate, a liberal and well-to-do holder of a graduate degree in social work, decides that she can do the most good in the social services department of a rural county in a southern state.

In a few years she has established relationships of trust with her clients. Now two of those clients are posing a problem for her. A young girl in one of her families is pregnant. The girl and her sister are both in their early teens and have left school as “uneducable.” The family is grindingly poor and virtually illiterate; the father has a problem with alcohol.

Kate has started discussing with the family their plans to care for the baby, which they want, and sent the girl to the clinic for evaluation. Now she has learned that the county health officials have arranged for both girls to be hospitalized and sterilized, without their knowledge or consent.

Involuntary, uninformed sterilization is legal in her county, and her fellow workers keep mentioning swollen welfare rolls. But Kate keeps remembering her professional and personal commitment to the value and dignity of human life. She wants to talk with the family, to allow them to choose, but she is told that she is too idealistic. What should Kate do?