Should Female Drug Addicts Be Paid to Choose Infertility?
It’s a question that could not be more hotly debated in the United States and a group called Project Prevention is traveling around and stirring up the controversy everywhere they go. The group, run by Barbara Harris, has but one goal in mind: pay drug addicted women $300 to undergo sterilization voluntarily so that they can no longer have children. Harris believes it helps the women, their potentially drug addicted children and the community at large who are hard pressed to care for these sick, unwanted youngsters. Critics say that the program takes advantage of desperate women and takes away their reproductive options when they are vulnerable.
Clients Defend Project Prevention’s Program
Some of the biggest defender or Project Prevention are the women who have undergone the procedure, many of them mothers who have children with developmental issues due to their mother’s drug abuse during pregnancy. Even mothers who are now clean and sober are glad that they underwent the procedure and are not now dealing with children who would have been punished due to their problems.
One woman who chose sterilization through Project Prevention used the money to pay household bills for her family of 11: herself, her husband and their 9 children. She says: “At first I was scared but then I thought, ‘I have too many kids already’. They’ve suffered so much through having both parents addicted. I had my children taken away for two years because of my meth addiction. That was the worse time of my life. I didn’t want to risk putting any more babies through the same thing.”
How It All Began
Harris, the program’s founder, adopted several children who were born to drug addicted. The first was in 1990 and the child’s mother, who was addicted to crack, had two more children over the next few years. Each one was born addicted to crack and Harris adopted them all, helping each one of them through detox and recovery.
Says Harris: “The scream of an addicted baby is like no other scream you’ll ever hear.”
Though she was 57 years old at the time and had six sons of her own in addition to the children she adopted, Harris vowed to find a way to stop addicts from having children they couldn’t care for. She used her own money and began the first incarnation of Project Prevention and paid women to choose sterilization or long-term birth control. Harris and her group drive a 30-foot motor home to communities with high levels of drug use and pass out flyers.
Harris says: “These women have so many children that even if they do get clean they have more children than they can care for. I didn’t know who I was more angry with – the mothers for having these children or the system for allowing it to happen.”
What They’ve Done: Project Prevention’s Track Record
Over the past decade, almost 3300 women have been sterilized through Project Prevention. The sterilization procedure of choice: fallopian tube tying, not hysterectomy. Men are offered the opportunity as well, but only 35 have volunteered to do so. Though Project Prevention has focused on the United States, that may soon change.
Harris says: “I was sent a check for 13,000 pounds by a man in London who had heard me on the radio and supported what I’m doing. I’ve had emails and letters from people in Britain saying I should bring the program over, so I’m planning a visit in May to get it rolling.”
What do you think? Is Project Prevention ethical or not?
