Should drug addicts be paid to get sterilised?

Paying drug addicts to be sterilised is exploitative and wrong, say critics of just such a scheme that runs in the US. Jane Beresford talks to the woman behind Project Prevention.
If you call Project Prevention's helpline it's likely that Barbara Harris, the founder of this US based organisation, will answer the phone. A warm and vivacious grandmother, her aim is to give $300 to as many drug and alcohol addicted women as possible.
The deal? That they receive long term contraception or sterilisation to prevent them having children she believes they are unable or unwilling to care for. Funded through private donations, her organisation is non-profit making.
Project Prevention, started in 1997, says it has paid money out to 3,242 addicts, or clients as it prefers to call them. Most of them were women and 1,226 were permanently sterilised. Thirty-five men have had vasectomies.

Barbara Harris and family, including her four adopted children

To get the money people have to show evidence that they have been arrested on narcotic offences, or provide a doctor's letter confirming they use drugs. Fresh documents are then required to show the medical procedure has actually taken place.
Ms Harris is driven by her own experience. She fostered, and then adopted, four children born to the same crack-addicted woman in Los Angeles. Taylor was the second she took in.
"He couldn't keep food down and his eyes looked like they were going to bulge out of his head," she says. "Noise bothered him, light bothered him, he just couldn't sleep.

FIND OUT MORE... You can hear Fergal Keane talking to Barbara Harris on Taking a Stand, on Tuesday, February 9, on Radio 4 at 0900 GMT. Or listen to it BBC iPlayer.

"My husband and I had to take shifts with him. He would sleep 10 minutes, wake up screaming. I was just angry at his mom, I thought how could somebody do this to a baby?"
Her stand has drawn fierce opposition. Critics, such as US group National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), accuse Ms Harris of spreading "dangerous propaganda".
They say what she does is social engineering, defining one category of people - addicts - as unsuitable to have children. The scheme has been compared to eugenic sterilisation in the US during the 1930s and the Nazis' programme of eugenics, which led to the extermination of Jews and the murder of many gypsies, the mentally ill, and homosexuals.
Such comparisons are rejected by Ms Harris, who says the criticisms do not concern her.
"It doesn't matter," she says. "I'll do anything I have to do to prevent babies from suffering. My heart is with the children. I don't believe that anybody has the right to force their addiction on another human being."
Chance after chance
She has also been accused of being racist, targeting poor black communities with her promotional campaigns. Ms Harris says this is ironic as she is married to a black man.
"I have a large family and I'm the only white face in my family. We have 10 kids and they are all black, some are bi-racial. It's not about race to me."
And according to their own figures, which haven't been independently verified, over half Project Prevention's clients are white.
Offering money to addicts is clearly not a solution to the problem, say critics. Ms Harris herself admits the money she pays out is probably spent on drugs. So why not use her resources to lobby for measures to help stop women turning to drugs in the first place - or better treatment programmes when they do?

Critics have accused Ms Harris of exploiting addicts

"I do a survey on every one that comes into the programme," she says. "Most of them started using drugs when they were 11, 12, 13 years old. And all of them have been in and out of drug treatment programmes, in and out, in and out.
"So people tell me that I should be focusing on drug treatment not birth control but drug treatment is just a gamble you know. Women go in there, they get off drugs, they go back on drugs but that doesn't keep them from getting pregnant.
"If they feel so strongly about it then they need to start an organisation that does what they are telling me to do. I am concentrating on women who are addicted to drugs who are getting pregnant over and over again. That is really my focus."
Organisations like NAPW don't deny the problems of mothers and fathers who are addicted, but argue that many do get clean and become loving parents of healthy children.
Also, having a family is one of the most valued parts of many people's lives. By removing that, or the possibility of it, does she not remove a powerful incentive for an addicted person to get clean: the hope of that better life?
'Heartbroken'
"These women have a chance every time they give birth to a child," says Ms Harris. "They are told if they go into drug treatment they can get their child back. They are given chance after chance after chance.
"And drugs are more important, but at the very least we can stop them from giving birth to children whose lives may end up the same as theirs."
She takes an extremely hard line, but says she does feel sympathy for the mothers living in poverty.
"If anybody believes that these women having multiple babies that are taken away is a good thing for these women, they are wrong," she says.
She talks of one woman who had 13 children taken into care before she finally got off drugs. When she was clean she was unable to contact any of them.
"She was heartbroken. She didn't know where they were, they were gone". (from BBC)

So what do you think should drug addicts be paid to get sterilised?

It,s called Eugenics and has been tried in the past!

bug1 wrote:It,s called Eugenics and has been tried in the past!

Ok bug1 Eugenics is selective breeding, are you saying this is the same thing?

What consitutes a Drug Addict? Someone who smokes 20 a day? Someone who drinks most days? They could both be considered drug addicts could they not?

GD. Its a bit difficult to breed once sniped.

How about God botherers? That is surely addiction.

GD wrote:

bug1 wrote:It,s called Eugenics and has been tried in the past!

Ok bug1 Eugenics is selective breeding, are you saying this is the same thing?

That's exactly what you are saying.Selecting those that you don't want to breed!