Pubdate: Mon, 28 Jul 2003
Source: Winston-Salem Journal (NC)
Copyright: 2003 Piedmont Publishing Co. Inc.
Contact:  http://www.journalnow.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/504
Note: The Journal does not publish letters from writers outside its daily 
home delivery circulation area.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/barbara+harris (Barbara Harris)

BRIBING ADDICTS

A program that pays drug-addicted women to be sterilized or get long-term 
birth control is surely well-intentioned. However, the bottom line is that 
it is demeaning and condescending. It also unpleasantly evokes the state's 
old forced sterilization program, which the award-winning Journal series 
'Against Their Will' described in detail. In that program, those who 'knew 
better' decided which women and girls were and were not fit to have children.

The new program, which has recently moved to a Charlotte suburb, is named 
CRACK, although the name - which stands for Children Requiring A Caring 
Kommunity - is the least of what is unfortunate about it.

The charge of racism, which has been leveled at the program, is perhaps 
unfair. Of the program's clients, 498 have been white, 341 black and the 
remaining 185 of other races. CRACK's offer is also open to men, though 
only 24 have participated.

Founder Barbara Harris, who with her husband recently moved to the area 
from California, says that the aim of her program is to prevent child abuse 
by removing the children from homes in which care is likely to be insufficient.

That's a worthy goal. However, the method leaves much to be desired. The 
unspoken message she sends is that the people she tries to attract to the 
program can't be trusted to behave appropriately unless they are bribed 
into it.

It also devalues human life by allowing the women to leave with her as many 
children as they like. Although the program does not encourage promiscuity, 
as is often claimed of ideas to separate babies from mothers whom others 
judge unfit, it does communicate to the women that a baby need be no more 
than a temporary inconvenience.

The mothers may hand over the baby or babies, even if they are suffering 
from drug withdrawal or Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, removing one major negative 
consequence of unwanted or ill-advised pregnancy.

The program might make more long-term progress by steering its donated 
dollars toward treating the drug addiction that quite likely led to 
careless or desperate actions in the first place. Someone who is no longer 
addicted to drugs is likely to be able to take over caring for her own 
children and to be a person who contributes to the system. As it stands, 
the participants leave Harris' program on birth control, but still addicted 
to drugs and freed of the consequences of unthinking behavior.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom