Nonprofit pays addicts for sterilization/l. term birth ctrl.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

OK, so I realize this is probably old news, but I have only recently discovered this and it royally pisses me off the controversy and negativity this gets when it would seem to be so common sense that it is a good, charitable thing:

So essentially there is this "This Woman Pays Drug Users Not To Have Kids (HBO)" mini-documentary about a nonprofit (Project Prevention) which pays drug addicts or alcoholics $300 to get sterilized (all the $ at once) or to use long term contraception ($ in smaller installments). It's run by a woman who has apparently been doing this for over 20 years across the USA. I'll just let you read the video description:

For the last 20 years Barbara Harris has driven across the country in a branded RV, advertising her non-profit to drug addicts and alcoholics. Her organization, Project Prevention, pays substance-abusers $300 to get sterilized or put on long-term birth control like the implant, or an IUD. To date, she has paid over 7,000 people, mostly women, to give up their fertility.

By using cash incentives, she feels like she is stopping a problem in it’s tracks. “We're preventing women who are strung out on drugs and alcohol from conceiving a child,” Harris says, “Nobody has a right to force feed any child drugs and then deliver a child that may die or may have lifelong illnesses.”

It seems straightforward enough - but the ethical questions behind Harris program are not. Vice News Tonight caught up with Barbara Harris during her first RV road trip of the summer, where she targets areas where addicts or those who know them hang out and speaks to long-time critics who think Project Prevention may be contributing to the very problems Harris set out to solve two decades ago.

It is worth noting before going any further that the woman who runs the nonprofit states that "she launched Project Prevention after she adopted 4 (four) babies in 4 years, each born to the same drug-addicted mother".

So I'm sitting here watching the video and going hey what this woman is doing is fucking awesome, but then in true Vice fashion, the reporter goes batshit insane and starts bombarding this poor woman with asinine "reporting":

- 3:03 Vice reporter asks the question of how what the woman is doing isn't merely a "band-aid", essentially belittling and disrespecting this woman's work and simultaneously 'calling her out' for essentially not being the US government, by asking why she's not tackling the "root causes"?!

But wait.. it gets better:

-(VICE:) It doesn't bother you that by virtue of what you do you're targeting a specific section of the population?
-(Barbara Harris, the woman who runs the nonprofit:) No.
-(VICE:) It doesn't bother you at all?
-(Barbara Harris:) No.

By now I'm thinking OK, this is a good question, after all the negative effects of drug addiction including those related to unwanted pregnancies & etc. do impact the poorer population more heavily, right?

WRONG - but I should have seen this coming, it is Vice after all..

-(VICE:) A disproportionate number of people who use your services aren't white, how do you respond to the claim that you are socially engineering?

by now I'm *literally facepalming* - so not only are you accusing this woman or at least her non-profit of racism, you have the audacity to even claim she is engaging in "social engineering". "Accuse" and "claim" may not be the best words to use here, but asking her these questions in any kind of a serious manner is just beautifully :vice: in its own way and would actually be amusing if it weren't so sad.

-(Vice:) Is it really informed consent when they're in that chaotic situation?

, the reporter asks. Why yes of course it is "informed consent" unless the person is literally high at the moment of expressing said consent. By now it only makes logic sense that the reporter is either implying drug addicts are on drugs non-stop or that somehow being in a generally shitty life situation disqualifies them from being able to give informed consent. What an ignorant, irritating reporter.

Then, the story of a mother with 2 children is presented: mother has child while taking drugs, child is born with/develops "receptive and cognitive delays", supposedly as a result of mother's drug use during pregnancy. Mother goes and gets paid for having an IUD. Mother proceeds to (allegedly after some time and after removing said IUD) have second child which is born addicted. Mother goes and gets paid for getting sterilized.

-(Vice:) Do you ever have any second thoughts?
-(Mother:) No.
-(Vice:) Not even when your youngest son says he wants a sister?
-(Mother:) [...] I can't, I can't, I know I can't.
-(Vice:) Just listening to you it makes me feel that you don't believe in yourself.
-(Mother:) I believe in my limitations

Yeah, good job Vice, let's emotionally wrestle and corner this woman who's managed to fuck up not one but two pregnancies into "having second thoughts" on camera after finally coming to her senses and doing the right thing, all with the end goal of showing how this nonprofit has wronged this woman in so many ways, by robbing her of her God-given / "it's my body!!!!1111"-granted right to produce off-spring, and of the gift of becoming a "parent" again.

If you thought this couldn't get any worse, you were horribly wrong. This is literally like the boss level.



Essentially what we have next are 2 brain-dead women whose logic goes a bit like this:

-ex-crackhead or whatever with 2 kids who used during both pregnancies. claims her children are "very healthy" and "very amazingly successful". apparently this anecdote is supposed to be evidence to us all that 'it's really not that bad " and "you too can enjoy a glass of jack and a pipe of crack during your pregnancy, it's no biggie"
-drugged mothers rights advocate, claiming that, quote "the GREAT NEWS is that none of the criminalized drugs cause unique, permanent, terrible damage". Oh wow that is like so great. How about the rest of the drugs which aren't criminalized? Imagine the possibilities! Indulge your baby in some designer drugs, don't do it tomorrow, do it today! She "talked to the medical researchers", it's totally legit you guys. News couldn't have been better, what a time to be alive!

Wow, let's just totally ignore children who start their lives literally ADDICTED to hard drugs from their very birth. The GREAT NEWS is that it really doesn't cause any "unique, permanent, terrible damage". It's A-OK. It's really all just "destructive, cruel myths" in her own words.

"[...] None of that has anything to do with the criminalized drugs".

"the biggest threats to our children don't have anything to do with what an individual woman did or didn't do"

Let's just all crack open a cold one (or a dozen) with our pregnant partner then and while we're at it, smoke a pack or two of cigarettes together since everything is fine since she's checked with the medical researchers already.

Let's just completely ignore things like fetal alcohol syndrome, the GREAT NEWS is in, it's all been a H O A X.

"[instead,] it has to do with poverty, with lack of access to healthcare, it has to do with the stress created by racism"

. . .

I rest my case. Stress created by racism will impact the outcome of your kid more than whether or not you shoot dope when you're pregnant or if he gets FASD. *nod*

(VICE, talking to Barbara Harris:) Do you not think that addicts would deserve a second chance and by promoting sterilization you're denying them a second chance?

If you've been addicted to drugs you highly likely experienced how it felt to be alone and vulnerable and require human care and attention. Let's just sit and whine about how this nonprofit has wronged us by giving us the chance to not royally fuck up our lives at a time when they were probably already fucked enough, all for the grand cost of us benefiting from doing the medical procedure for free and actually being given $300 on top of that. Let's just hang on to this completely surpassable instinct of producing offspring, and ignore the fact that there are thousands upon thousands of children in foster care, many of whom would probably do anything just to be able to have a real family like every other kid.

The whole drinking or drugging while pregnant being bad is really really all just propaganda, a true conspiracy created to secretly OPPRESS THE WOMAN, HER BODY, AND BLACK PEOPLE!!!11

Project Prevention is rly E U G E N I C S

S T A Y W O K E

Let's just ignore NAS/FASD.

Let's just ignore the fact that, even without going into the circumstances the children will be brought up in, many drug addicts can barely feed themselves properly, let alone a child in their womb as well. Let's just ignore the whole other range of poor lifestyle choices and poor health a drug addict is more likely to have that will also impact the child before it's even born.

Again, without even going into what follows.

..because "MY BODY IS NOT A BATTLEGROUND FOR YOUR WAR ON DRUGS"

[Bombadil]

Frankly I think it's awful to give an addict $300 in return for neutering them, of course an addict will take it. Why not get a kidney while you're at it.. let them all go to Candy Mountain..

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

Frankly I think it's awful to give an addict $300 in return for neutering them, of course an addict will take it. Why not get a kidney while you're at it.. let them all go to Candy Mountain..

they get the same $300 for an IUD but not all at once.

[AiliailiA]

That's fucked. Sterilization is essentially permanent: reversal operations, besides being expensive, usually fail. Just because you're a drug addict now, by the loose definition "need money for drugs that bad", doesn't mean you'll always be a drug addict and therefore not capable of raising kids properly.

[AiliailiA]

Frankly I think it's awful to give an addict $300 in return for neutering them, of course an addict will take it. Why not get a kidney while you're at it.. let them all go to Candy Mountain..

they get the same $300 for an IUD but not all at once.

That's OK. For an implant, would also be OK.

Maybe you should have made this clearer, since you mentioned sterilization in the thread title then mentioned it again in the second paragraph.

Didn't read your OP, btw, it's too long.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

That's fucked. Sterilization is essentially permanent: reversal operations, besides being expensive, usually fail. Just because you're a drug addict now, by the loose definition "need money for drugs that bad", doesn't mean you'll always be a drug addict and therefore not capable of raising kids properly.

I still fail to comprehend why it is such a great deal for people who want to have kids whether or not they are biologically theirs. Isn't this supposed to become an antiquated principle at some point? Shouldn't we become advanced enough at some point that we only reproduce once we've adopted every child that could be adopted?

[Dumb Ideologies]

Seems like it can reduce social problems. Not opposed.

[NeuPolska]

And so it begins.

The educated and wealthy/middle class will continue to wait to have children, and not produce as many, and the poor, who would normally have more children, go down the route of sterilization. The poor will die off, Malthus will be absolutely ecstatic in his grave, and the wealthy will slowly die off due to having less children, and/or more with down syndrome or other.

Of course I just blew this out of proportion and over-generalized to the max. However, it's still an interesting development. I don't oppose it.

[Bombadil]

They had a lovely slogan.. "Don’t let pregnancy get in the way of your crack habit"

I would be more at home with this if it was free to be honest, the giving money to an addict aspect seems morally dubious.

[AiliailiA]

They had a lovely slogan.. "Don’t let pregnancy get in the way of your crack habit"

I would be more at home with this if it was free to be honest, the giving money to an addict aspect seems morally dubious.

I'd question whether the drug addict is capable of informed consent ... though obviously somewhat capable, you'd want to minimize situations like irreversible sterilization which require their consent, until after they've recovered from addiction.

That is, mentally capable of making the choice whether or not there are inducements offered, but the inducements obviously make the situation worse. So I agree.

[USS Monitor]

They had a lovely slogan.. "Don’t let pregnancy get in the way of your crack habit"

I would be more at home with this if it was free to be honest, the giving money to an addict aspect seems morally dubious.

Yeah, giving them money raises issues about whether she's enabling them in their addictions, and whether this is something they really want or something they're doing because they're desperate for the money.

[Costa Fierro]

VICE used to have good journalism. Now it's gone to complete shit. Shame, really.

With regards to the "charity", on the one hand it's not really achieving much if she's only paid 7,000 women to forego their baby making abilities. On the other, there should be ways and means of preventing drug addicts from being able to conceive and bear children because said children should absolutely not be raised in such a horrible family environment.

[AiliailiA]

VICE used to have good journalism. Now it's gone to complete shit. Shame, really.

With regards to the "charity", on the one hand it's not really achieving much if she's only paid 7,000 women to forego their baby making abilities. On the other, there should be ways and means of preventing drug addicts from being able to conceive and bear children because said children should absolutely not be raised in such a horrible family environment.

If Vice is such a crappy source ... and the OP agrees that it is ... then why the fuck is a Vice interview the only source provided?

It's women AND men, though only a very few men took up the offer. The only option for men is vasectomy, which tends to be permanent, so maybe it's in proportion to only a few tubal ligations among women. Though also, maybe men just weren't offered the money as often.

It's really at the discretion of Project Prevention (mainly Harris herself) to judge whether the person's life is so fucked up they couldn't be a good parent. The only formal requirements are (a) arrest on a drug-related charge, or (b) a doctor's note stating that they take drugs. Neither of which definitely makes them a drug addict, only a drug user.

[Risottia]

That's fucked. Sterilization is essentially permanent: reversal operations, besides being expensive, usually fail. Just because you're a drug addict now, by the loose definition "need money for drugs that bad", doesn't mean you'll always be a drug addict and therefore not capable of raising kids properly.

Basically this. Also, offering money to addicts in exchange for what is basically a mutilation looks like exploiting someone's weakness. How about offering food and a minor job in exchange for staying sober instead?

[Costa Fierro]

If Vice is such a crappy source ... and the OP agrees that it is ... then why the fuck is a Vice interview the only source provided?

Because Vice is the only one that covers this sort of topic and the only one that did the interview? And the OP generally shares the same sentiments in the OP by calling Vice out on it's clearly emotional driven "journalism".

[Ethel mermania]

They had a lovely slogan.. "Don’t let pregnancy get in the way of your crack habit"

I would be more at home with this if it was free to be honest, the giving money to an addict aspect seems morally dubious.

Yeah, giving them money raises issues about whether she's enabling them in their addictions, and whether this is something they really want or something they're doing because they're desperate for the money.

I work because I am desperate for money.

That said I get the point being made about consent, and can an addict consent in this fashion. The addiction itself is a bar to consent. Otoh, I do see the social good in these folks not having kids.

I don't think the issue is as cut and dry as the OP makes it, but I am not sure of my opinion on the matter.

[Neo Balka]

i only watched Vice for the combat footage but even they are shit at now.

[Vassenor]

Wouldn't it make more sense to pay for rehab?

[Neo Balka]

oh boo hoo fucking hooo, cant have crack babies.

Cry me a fucking river, fucking addicts.

[Saiwania]

So, where did this one person get $2.1 million+ to blow through on all this?

[AiliailiA]

So, where did this one person get $2.1 million+ to blow through on all this?

7,000 clients, $300 each, that would be ... hey, you're right. $2.1 million.

Donations I guess.

[Ifreann]

So what happens when people want to reverse their sterilisation?

[Olerand]

Seems like a very short term solution for a long term problem. Drug addiction is a problem, particularly in the United States. Drug addicts having kids they cannot adequately care for is a problem, stemming from drug addiction.

So... Fighting drug addiction would probably be a more productive and constructive endeavor.

[Ethel mermania]

Seems like a very short term solution for a long term problem. Drug addiction is a problem, particularly in the United States. Drug addicts having kids they cannot adequately care for is a problem, stemming from drug addiction.

So... Fighting drug addiction would probably be a more productive and constructive endeavor.

Except it's her money, she gets to do what she wants with it.

[Sovaal]

VICE used to have good journalism. Now it's gone to complete shit. Shame, really.

With regards to the "charity", on the one hand it's not really achieving much if she's only paid 7,000 women to forego their baby making abilities. On the other, there should be ways and means of preventing drug addicts from being able to conceive and bear children because said children should absolutely not be raised in such a horrible family environment.

Ah, I remember those days. Then they went mainstream.