CRACK HELPS ADDICTS

CRACK stands for Children Requiring A Caring Kommunity. To advance its aim
of "reducing the tragedy of numerous drug affected pregnancies," the
California-based group runs a program called Project Prevention. Under it,
female addicts are paid US$200 if they submit either to (a) sterilization
through tubal ligation; or (b) a long-term birth-control method such as
Depo Provera (a drug injected every three months) or Norplant (a removable
time-release implant). Barbara Harris, Project Prevention's founder, plans
to visit Toronto in May to speak at a conference of the Ontario Association
for Behaviour Analysis.

She deserves a fair hearing. Though her plan is controversial, it is moral
in design and benign in effect. What Ms. Harris advocates is not comparable
to a eugenics program of the type implemented by German and North American
doctors in the early 20th century. Those were conceived under the crackpot
theory that large, identifiable portions of society are genetically
defective. Project Prevention, by contrast, targets not a genetically
identifiable class of persons but a pattern of behaviour. (For this reason,
the plan would be on less ambiguous moral ground if it supported birth
control only, and not permanent sterilization.)

Unlike true eugenics programs, Project Prevention is also voluntary. If a
drug-addicted mother wants to bear children, neither Ms. Harris nor any
government official stops her. Some argue Project Prevention's addicts are
so eager for drug money that their participation in the program is not
truly voluntary. But that argument makes little sense. Addicts who steal to
support their habit are held criminally accountable for their thefts, so it
is evident society sees them as free willed. Moreover, many crack babies
are conceived during acts of prostitution or are otherwise unplanned. Many,
probably most, of these pregnancies are unwanted, which is why so many end
in abortion.

Some critics contend Project Prevention is racist. Eugene Oscapella,
co-founder of the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy, says: "If [Ms.
Harris] is going after crack-addicted babies, then she's going after
minorities, plain and simple." No, neither plain nor simple: In the United
States, most of Project Prevention's cash recipients are white. And Ms.
Harris is an unlikely candidate for an accusation of racism, having herself
adopted four black children conceived by the same crack-addicted birth mother.

Babies of women who use cocaine and other addictive drugs during their
pregnancies have an increased risk of low birth weight, mental retardation,
cerebral palsy and sense impairment. Even those who are healthy are highly
likely to spend their childhoods in impoverished, single-parent homes. It
is the avoidance of such tragic outcomes, not any dark eugenic conspiracy,
that motivates Ms. Harris and Project Prevention.