Let’s say you’re a 22 year old drug addicted woman.
You’ve had 5 kids, and have lost custody of all of them.
You’re hooked, you’re strung out, you’re lost.
You’ve eaten out of trash cans, you’ve had sex for drugs, you’re falling apart.
You see a billboard.
It says, “Don’t let a pregnancy ruin your drug habit.”
You’re searching for money for your next high.
So you call the number.
$200 dollars for documentation that you’ve been sterilized or are on some form of permanent or long-term birth control.
And then after receiving the details, you go and have this done.
This is the service that the organization, Project Prevention, provides.
I recently saw a news story on this, a news story which I’m sure isn’t new.
I felt so mixed on the issue.
The news story was an edition of 60 minutes, shown by a Biology teacher that I am a Teacher’s Aide for.
It was an interview of the founder of Project Prevention, Barbara Harris.
It was also a rundown on what this non-profit organization does.
They pay drug addicts to go have themselves sterilized.
Barbara Harris described her story.
She and her husband had adopted a child from a drug addict.
They had weaned the baby off of crack and began to raise it.
A year later, they get a call asking if they’d take another
one of this person’s children. They accepted.
A year later, the same call about another child.
A year later, another call.
This was the drug addict’s 8th child.
Barbara Harris is known to have described these addicted women as having “litters” of children.
I stand mixed on this issue.
I feel that waving $200 in front of a person desperate for another high is taking advantage of the terribly vulnerable.
However, I also feel that these women, having child after child isn’t good, either.
On the basis that these children will, in all likelihood, become wards of the state, and be ushered into foster home after foster home.
Then, Barbara Harris went to talk about how drug use is illegal, and why aren’t these women being arrested when they come to the hospitals?
Which raised another thought in my mind.
If these women think that they’re going to be arrested when they come to a hospital cracked out, to give the hospital their baby, they’re just going to dump the baby and not even bother with the hospital.
What do you think about all of this?
That's a pretty difficult issue to have a set opinion on. I mean, yeah, drugs are bad, but so is having so many children without proper conditions. At first thought, I'd say that it's more important for these women to get off of drugs, but I say that because I'm more against drugs than most other things. I really don't know what to say on this.