Group Pays Drug Addicts to Get Sterilized/Long Term BC
What are your thoughts on this? I think this is a GREAT thing, seeing that these women are not being forced. Every state should provide something like this. $300 dollars is much cheaper than our taxpayer dollars paying for prenatal care and foster care.
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/group-pays-drug-addicts-sterilized-receive-long-term-birth-control-sparks-criticism-article-1.1075432
A controversial nonprofit group is seeking out drug-addicted women and paying them cold hard cash to get sterilized.
The group, Project Prevention, hangs stark ads in clinics and homeless shelters to reel in drug users. The posters feature hard-hitting taglines such as, "Don't let a pregnancy ruin your drug habit," and "She has her daddy's eyes ... and her mommy's heroin addiction."
Barbara Harris, founder of the program, insists she is only trying to help prevent unwanted pregnancies, which often lead to children being fed into an overwhelmed foster care system, and that she's not forcing anyone to get sterilized.
"I think it's really important for people to understand that the majority of women we sterilize are women who have had multiple children and don't want anymore," she told the Daily News. "It's their decision."
"And to say, 'Let's go ahead and let them keep having babies because one day they might decide to clean up and keep one?' It's just not fair," she said. "And it's preventable."
Harris said that the last 20 women she paid to get sterilized had been pregnant a total of 121 times.
"Thirty were either aborted, stillborn or died after being born," she said. "Seventy-eight are in foster care."
Betsy Hartmann, director of the Population and Development Program and professor of Development Studies at Massachusetts' Hampshire College, has accused Project Prevention of "thinly disguised" racism.
"Project Prevention mainly targets women of color," Hartmann wrote on philanthropist George Soros’ Open Society Foundation's blog.
"Essentially, while it targets specific vulnerable populations, it is trying to build support for eugenic and population control measures," she added.
Harris' mission to stop drug addicts from getting pregnant started when she adopted four children from a crack mom in Los Angeles.
"I witnessed firsthand how these innocent babies suffer after spending months in the womb on a steady diet of crack, alcohol, whatever their [birth mom] decides to try," she said.
In 1992, Harris got a call from a social worker. The same drug addicted woman was pregnant with her seventh child, and Harris was asked if she would adopt that one, too.
"My husband said, 'Barbara, I'm not buying a school bus,' because we had already sold our town home to buy a home with more bedrooms," she told the Daily News.
But Harris did take the baby, then later adopted yet another from the very same woman. She began Project Prevention in 1996.
The North Carolina-based program pays women $300 to get tubal ligations (permanent sterilization) or an IUD, Implanon or Depro-Provera shot (all forms of long-term birth control).
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/group-pays-drug-addicts-sterilized-receive-long-term-birth-control-sparks-criticism-article-1.1075432
A controversial nonprofit group is seeking out drug-addicted women and paying them cold hard cash to get sterilized.
The group, Project Prevention, hangs stark ads in clinics and homeless shelters to reel in drug users. The posters feature hard-hitting taglines such as, "Don't let a pregnancy ruin your drug habit," and "She has her daddy's eyes ... and her mommy's heroin addiction."
Barbara Harris, founder of the program, insists she is only trying to help prevent unwanted pregnancies, which often lead to children being fed into an overwhelmed foster care system, and that she's not forcing anyone to get sterilized.
"I think it's really important for people to understand that the majority of women we sterilize are women who have had multiple children and don't want anymore," she told the Daily News. "It's their decision."
"And to say, 'Let's go ahead and let them keep having babies because one day they might decide to clean up and keep one?' It's just not fair," she said. "And it's preventable."
Harris said that the last 20 women she paid to get sterilized had been pregnant a total of 121 times.
"Thirty were either aborted, stillborn or died after being born," she said. "Seventy-eight are in foster care."
Betsy Hartmann, director of the Population and Development Program and professor of Development Studies at Massachusetts' Hampshire College, has accused Project Prevention of "thinly disguised" racism.
"Project Prevention mainly targets women of color," Hartmann wrote on philanthropist George Soros’ Open Society Foundation's blog.
"Essentially, while it targets specific vulnerable populations, it is trying to build support for eugenic and population control measures," she added.
Harris' mission to stop drug addicts from getting pregnant started when she adopted four children from a crack mom in Los Angeles.
"I witnessed firsthand how these innocent babies suffer after spending months in the womb on a steady diet of crack, alcohol, whatever their [birth mom] decides to try," she said.
In 1992, Harris got a call from a social worker. The same drug addicted woman was pregnant with her seventh child, and Harris was asked if she would adopt that one, too.
"My husband said, 'Barbara, I'm not buying a school bus,' because we had already sold our town home to buy a home with more bedrooms," she told the Daily News.
But Harris did take the baby, then later adopted yet another from the very same woman. She began Project Prevention in 1996.
The North Carolina-based program pays women $300 to get tubal ligations (permanent sterilization) or an IUD, Implanon or Depro-Provera shot (all forms of long-term birth control).
Comments
There's even the issue of are they even in a legally sound state of mind to make that decision? If they're high or withdrawing, they don't have the mental capacity to make such decisions.
I think its very morally wrong.
Long term bc is much better of an idea in my mind.
"Thirty were either aborted, stillborn or died after being born," she said. "Seventy-eight are in foster care."
:O Wow. I'm definitely all for this. If its someone young and without children I would definitely recommend trying to get clean first before making a decision like that, but for the women who aren't getting help, the only ones who suffer are the children.