Source: Orlando Sentinel (FL) Website: http:www.orlandosentinel.com Author: Kathleen Parker Copyright: 1999 Orlando Sentinel Pubdate: 6 Jan 99 Section: Features CRAZY IDEA SAVES BABIES OF ADDICTS Last year was a good year for 37 drug addicts who didn't give birth to a drug-addicted baby. Or seek an abortion. Or bury a premature child. All thanks to one crazy woman in California, Barbara Harris, who believes that any problem can be solved with common sense and a little cold cash -- even the problem of drug addicts bringing drug-addicted babies into a world they themselves can't navigate. It's been a little more than a year since I first wrote about Harris and her groundbreaking, nonprofit program called CRACK, or Children Requiring a Caring The program pays drug addicts to procure long-term birth control. Since I wrote about her, Harris has appeared on several TV and radio talk shows, attracting individual donations and corporate sponsors, and is beginning to rewrite one of America's saddest tales. Harris' plan was dazzling in its simplicity: Drug addicts care about drugs, not babies, and they respond to money, not motivational moral-speak. Why not pay them to stop having drug-addicted babies they can neither support nor nurture? It sounds cruel and coldhearted, but it sounds a lot nicer than the screams of a cocaine-addicted baby thrashing against restraints in an intensive care nursery crib. Harris is familiar with those sounds. She adopted four of eight babies born to one crack-addicted mother. All are thriving, now thanks to their stable, nurturing environment, but they're among the lucky few. Having nursed her four kids through scream-filled nights and the jitters of drug withdrawal, Harris was tormented by the fates of all the other drug-addicted babies. In 1997 she founded CRACK. To date, she and her associate, Lin Alvarez, have paid 37 volunteer clients. The women approach Harris through a hotline and promise to get either a tubal ligation or Norplant, an epidermal patch that prevents pregnancy for up to five years. When the client verifies treatment with written notice from a clinic, Harris hands over $200. A few men have filled out paperwork, but so far none has followed through, says Harris. The 37 women Harris has helped thus far already were responsible for 297 pregnancies, of which 184 went to term. Abortions accounted for 113. Fifteen babies were stillborn; 13 died after birth; 132 are in foster care. Note that I haven't used the words "crack baby." Joining the trend against labeling babies born to crack mothers, Harris prefers the term "substance-exposed infants." Children identified at birth as "crack babies" often are stigmatized as developmentally damaged and left at the bottom of the adoption pool. Recent research has shown -- and Harris' experience confirms -- that babies exposed to crack can overcome their difficult beginnings if placed quickly in a loving, stable environment. Unfortunately, the vast majority of substance-exposed infants end up in foster care, and therein lies the tragedy. According to Harris, 80 percent of birth mothers of drug-addicted babies never reclaim their children. Twenty percent of those who do reclaim their children come back into the system through the birth of another substance-exposed infant or for child abuse/neglect. By any measure, it's better to prevent such tragedies than to bemoan our failures later, says Harris. Anyone who thinks otherwise, she says, "better be ready to adopt." - --- MAP posted-by: Pat Dolan