Barbara Harris, and her program Project Prevention are offering a controversial program that they believe will help stop the cycle of addiction. Educational programs? No. Job Training? No. Drug Treatment Program? No. Project Prevention’s solution is offering addicts $300 in return for agreeing to long-term birth control or sterilization.
“Fifty percent of foster kids become homeless at age eighteen,” Harris explains. “The cycle repeats itself. I mean there’s just a host of reasons I could give you why a drug addict or an alcoholic should not conceive a child.”
As part of the program, that does not work directly with any doctors or clinics, Project Prevention pays for an implant-on device that is inserted in the arm for men, or either IUD or tubal ligation for the women – vasectomy for the men.
One Harris’ strongest supporters is her adopted daughter, who was born to an addict in Los Angeles. Destiny Harris, 20, says she supports her mother’s controversial program, even though if her biological mother had signed-on she likely would have never been born.
Of the 3,500 drug addicts and alcoholics nationwide that have agreed to take part in Project Prevention since January 2006, ninety-nine percent are women. Of those, nearly 1,200 have agreed to become sterilized. Per the program’s Wikipedia page, Project Prevention had paid 3,242 addicts, with 1,226 women being sterilized and 35 men having vasectomies.
As a woman who has dealt with addiction issues, that was the child of an addict, and eventually will want to be a mother. I am still shell-shocked by this. Yes, drug addiction and alcoholism in America are deadly diseases. Yes there has to be something done. But to sterilize a person because they are addicted, is that where we have gotten to? Is it not predatory to target people in addiction, who are often times at their weakest point, to make this drastic decision?
If you are parent dealing with addiction, could you have done this? Whether you have had addiction issues or not, does this seem like a viable option?
Here are some quotes from the project’s website:
“I wish a program like this would have been available while I was addicted. Then I wouldn’t have so many children.
- Sandra Mathews, recovered addict raising 7 children
I wish you had come to me with your birth control offer years ago so I wouldn’t have had 14 babies.
- Sharon, client #24
It is critical that African-Americans support C.R.A.C.K.’s [Project Prevention's] effort.
- Earl Ofari Hutchinson
For more information about Project Prevention, visit their website: http://projectprevention.org/
