Would you take $315 to be sterilized? Well, if you’re a drug addict and you live in the United Kingdom, you can. Project Prevention, a North Carolina–based charity, is offering £200 ($315) to any man who agrees to be sterilized.
Project Prevention founder Barbara Harris admitted her methods amounted to “bribery,” but said it was the only way to stop babies being physically and mentally damaged by drugs during pregnancy.
Apparently, Harris has already paid over 3,500 addicts in the United States for what she calls “long-term birth control.” She set up the organization after adopting the child of a crack addict.
Um, isn’t this eugenics? The idea smacks of self-righteousness, like all drug addicts are some kind of lost cause. At the same time, it’s encouraging drug addicts to continue being drug addicts. Their recovery is a nonissue when they can be tossed cash and forgotten about.
Project Prevention is merely sweeping a monumental problem under a fancy rug.
About Ryan O'Hanlon
Vocalyze
Nice find, Ryan. Controversy is so fun to blog about!
I’ve personally experienced the inheritance of the “alcoholic gene” from grandfather-father-me. Personally, I would rather exist than not.
But if people are given some kind of incentive NOT to pro-create, there is something else, perhaps subconscious, behind the decision. Or maybe the decision is ruled by the impulse for a quick fix/reward. Whatever. I still believe that people have the POWER and WILL to make decisions. And although I would never create this incentive for people, those who do will reap the karmic consequences for doing so. Nothing that we cause has no effect….so to each his own.
I’m with you, Lee. I’d prefer to exist, too.
I inherited genes that contributed to addiction. I’ve probably passed them on to my children, too.
And yet we thrive.
Personally, I find this sterilization-for-money program offensive, and morally wrong. I think a reductive program designed to purchase a basic human right (and I think most reasonable people would agree that reproduction is as basic as it gets) from a vulnerable population who are found to be undesirable by other elements of society… is fucking awful.
Co-sign!
WHY should fucking up kids be a basic human right? Do the KIDS have no basic human rights? No one cares if they inherit a gene-this is about not making innocent babies suffer horrible consequences for their irresponsible parents decisions. Period.
momof4: Your question is “why” is it a basic human right? Well, you’re a parent, right? Think about it. If “fucking up kids” wasn’t a basic human right, nobody would have kids. Nobody can foresee all outcomes, can they? Certainty like yours implies an amazing insight into the future, especially other people’s futures. Can you bend these powers to anticipate the lives and relative suffering and lifetime outcomes of all babies born, or just those of addicted parents? Can you foresee with the same certainty even that of your own? I surely can’t of mine. I suppose, were I able to do that like you can, then I might also not consider reproduction a basic human right, but rather something that’s only reserved for those who deserve it and who can guarantee things will work out “right.” And, I suppose, if I had this gift, I would get all worked up like you have about children that don’t even exist yet. Remember, they’re paying these junkies not to reproduce at all … thereby rendering your kid’s basic-rights argument moot. I mean, without your ability to see the future, people would say that I was projecting horrible consequences onto children that didn’t even exist except in my imagination.
Now, were you to ask me if I were more concerned with the addicts who were willing to sell their reproductive abilities off than the theoretical children they’ll never have, I’d say yes, because they are real, live human beings with a very dangerous disease that causes all kinds of collateral damage for society. They are the ones I think it is in our interest to help, and help right now. Creating a program based on “_______ people shouldn’t breed” is arrogant at best, and provides a walk-away solution for sideline solipsists at worst. It creates an illusion of control over a very bad, very complex problem and a solution that just doesn’t exist.
“Drug addict” is a description of a temporary set of behaviors. It is not an identity.
Consider sterilizing every musician who’s been a drug addict at some point in their life – still support it? (Now I’ll grant that you may have a case with Courtney and Kurt, but still…)
Why not something temporary – no kids as long as you’re using? Why permanent?
And why would anyone assume that a ‘drug addict’ is mentally, emotionally, and legally capable of sensibly making such a long-term decision? Would you accept such choices yourself if the hospital gave you a bunch of contracts to sign while you were out of it on painkillers after an operation?
“Consider sterilizing every musician who’s been a drug addict at some point in their life – still support it?”
Um, nobody’s advocating forced sterilization.
“And why would anyone assume that a ‘drug addict’ is mentally, emotionally, and legally capable of sensibly making such a long-term decision?”
By all means, let’s have somebody who isn’t raise another human being.
If they CHOOSE it, yes! Keep your laws off their body, right!?
And, again, long-term BC IS offered by PP. Thanks for the mis-info, Ryan!
Chainsaw…….HOw many drug addicts do you know? And how many have recovered??? By your definition its a temporary state. But Ive seen more people die from using, go to jail and come back out to immediately use, go to program after program and work them so they get out of jail time, just to go back to doing meth as soon as humanly possible. Ive seen some quit for a few months because of children….then start right up again. Obviously you didn’t grow up in a drug broken home like I did so you couldn’t truelyunderstand, but if you could you would probably be a little more persuaded to allow them to make just one more decisions they are incapable of making. addicts stop growing emotionally and pretty much mentally at the age they started using hard. Considering most people start in their teen and twenties nowadays if something isnt done the next few generations are fucked.
You;’re a raging idiot and everything that’s wrong with this world. Why don’t you just die already and go to your ‘heaven’ where your ‘god’ will tell you whatever it is that you thought up in your own head for an afterlife!
Well, first of all, because I’m a godless harlot.
Maybe work on the civil debate thing, Sheena?
I’ve blogged this here: http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/10/21/boohoo_for_the.html
Ryan, I’m not sure how you got this article printed, seeing as you have several blatant errors in it. One, the PP founder adopted 5 drug-addicted babies, several from THE SAME MOM, not one. Two, PP OFFERS sterilizations AND long-term BC options, to men AND women, and yes they offer financial compensation as inducement.
So how is making a choice the same as eugenics? i’ve been sterilized, in fact I paid a lot of money for it after my last baby. Am I a victim of eugenics? Are all other users of norplant and IUD’s victims? If you can’t trust these addicts making the choice on taking this money, how on earth could you trust them with a tiny baby?
“Why not help these people with their addictions or pay for them to be entered into a treatment program?”
One,because they made their choice and it is no one else’s business to sheild them form the effects of their CHOICE to use drugs. Addiction is NOT a disease. It’s a behavior. Walk through a pediatric cancer ward, Ryan, and tell a ding 10 year old that you raising your glass or your hypodermic is the same as what they have. I dare you,
The PP people aren’t particularly concerned with helping addicts. They are concerned with preventing babies lives of unimaginable physical and mental hardship, caused by being brought into the world by a parent who filled your unborn body with toxic substances.
As the adult offspring of hard-core addicts – heroin, cocaine, and meth, specifically – I totally support and encourage this voluntary option.
Nothing about this idea is forced.
Many of the above commentators have mentioned “helping” the addicts with the “medical problem” of addiction.
Addiction is a personal choice. But that’s really beside the point, isn’t it? This idea has absolutely nothing to do with helping the addicts themselves. This is to help society as a whole – and to prevent a few more babies from being born to self-absorbed moron parents who have no interest or ability to take care of them because of their own CHOICE of self-destructive behavior.
I absolutely love the way people can use the word “addict” as a crutch to remove personal accountability.
The program is a great idea. keep in mind, the program is only part of the solution. While treating an addict, don’t give them the chance to ruin a baby’s life, likely will not stop at just one baby either. I think most people criticize the program from afar. As soon as you see the problem up close, you realize that stronger action than drug counseling is needed. The other option to the program seems to be lots and lots of welfare checks, CPS calls, and Medicare/Medicaid financial drains. I hope that people realize what a great program this is, and I hope that it is perceived as only part of what needs to be done to prevent child abuse, financial drain, and to lead addicts down a path of recovery. If you think that an addict having a child is going to aid their recovery, think again. More stress leads to more reasons for an addict to escape the life they already couldn’t handle. Give addicts a way to recover without having children to take care of. If an addict can’t take care of themselves, the addict has absolutely no right to bring a child into the world.
Though they are being paid, addicts think of nothing more than when they will be high next. If the dealer said to them i will hand you a $300 rock that will sterilize you… they wouldnt think twice. So whats the difference if a charity does it or not. Its not a matter of deeming a parent worthy, it’s preventing the degradation of our population, prventing the extroardinarily diffuclt life of disabled peoples; and spending the taxes of individuals not running the streets, doing drugs, and popping out babies for the system to handle. What gives a drug addict the right to decide that society will have to take care of their children when they can’t, won’t, and don’t want to anymore or even to begin with. A drug addicts suffers addiction and society must suffer along with them…. Bullshit, sterlise them….. if they want a child let them adopt a crack baby and make up for some they put in the system. I personally know a girl that shoots methamphetamines and has had 5 different children over an 8 year span, she never has and never intends on being a parent to those children. Being pregnant didn’t keep her from getting high. She didn’t care if the children came out messed, in pain, and addicted themselves. She knew the system would take care of them or someone in her family when she decided not to, and instead to go out and get high. Many addicts don’t succeed at sobering up permanently and i do agree more funds should be put into recovery however, you can’t force someone to want to recover, but you can let them decide if they are going to drag the rest of society down with them. Again i say let them get sterilized if they want to cause they’re going to get those drugs one way or another, wherther it be rob someone, sell themselves, or even their children.