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.