ADVOCATE OF STERILIZING ADDICTS COMING TO TORONTO

Lures Them With Money: 'It's The Best $200 That Could Be Spent'

A California woman accused of a practice verging on eugenics by paying drug
addicts to have themselves sterilized is coming to Canada to recruit others
to her cause.

Barbara Harris, founder of CRACK (Children Requiring A Caring Kommunity),
pays addicts US$200 if they agree to sterilization or long-term birth control.

The organization does not offer any counselling to its clientele, which is
almost exclusively women, but instead concentrates solely on preventing
unwanted pregnancies.

The group has 21 volunteer branches across the United States and has so far
paid 537 women and eight men to agree to permanent or long- term birth control.

Ms. Harris says those 545 people had been responsible for 2,840 pregnancies
- -- 1,906 births (including multiple births) and 926 abortions.

"There's really no reason why a drug addict or an alcoholic should get
pregnant," Ms. Harris told the National Post in an interview. "And if we
can prevent that from happening by offering them $200, then it's the best
$200 that could be spent."

Ms. Harris defends her practice as an effective solution to one small part
of a larger problem.

"There's only so much we can do for these people," she said. "We spend
billions of dollars in the U.S. for drug treatment and prevention. That's
not our focus. We can't solve all the world's problems."

Ms. Harris will speak at the 28th annual conference of the Association for
Behavior Analysis and its Canadian affiliate, the Ontario Association for
Behaviour Analysis, in Toronto in May.

"We're going just so that everyone that attends the conference will know
about our program," Ms. Harris said. "If anybody supports our idea that
child abuse is not OK and [is] interested in us, we'll take them."

Some Canadians are concerned Ms. Harris's project is not only unethical but
verges on eugenics.

"If she's going after crack addicted babies, then she's going after
minorities, plain and simple," said Eugene Oscapella, a founding member of
the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy.

Dr. Peter Selby, from St. Joseph's hospital's Centre for Addiction in
Pregnancy in Toronto, questions whether the addicts, desperate for money to
feed their habits, can even make such a decision without coercion.

For Dr. Selby, Ms. Harris's financial incentives raise similar questions to
when Alberta sterilized the mentally disabled under the 1928 Sterilization
Act. Before the act was repealed in 1972, 2,832 people were sterilized.

"The real issue for people with a medical disability was whether they could
appreciate what they were consenting to," Dr. Selby said. "It's the same
here, because the drug addiction entices them [crack addicts] to get it done."

At least one of Ms. Harris's clients disagrees. Teresa Kanellis, 36, a
heroin and crack abuser, had been pregnant 10 times, had six abortions and
three children, before taking up Ms. Harris's offer.

"I was in my right mind when I decided to get the shots," Ms. Kanellis
said. "I think [the program is] good for people who are into drugs --
homeless and not caring for themselves."

Ms. Kanellis spent some of the money on her children and some on a small
amount of heroin.

Professor Arthur Schafer, director of the Centre for Professional and
Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, said that to associate Ms.
Harris's practice with eugenics may be going too far.

"I think it's legitimate to say to drug addicts, if you have babies they
are going to pay a terrible price when they're born and when they grow up
and have you as a parent."

To educate and convince them of this, he said, is fair, but to bribe them
to become sterile at a time of great vulnerability is the wrong means to
the goal.

According to Michel Perron, CEO of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse,
targeting the reproductive rights of crack addicts may not only be
unethical, it may also be unnecessary. Unlike research into the effects of
alcohol addiction on babies, the effects of crack on a fetus are not
conclusive.

Dr. Bruce Thyer, a professor of social work research at the University of
Georgia who suggested Ms. Harris speak in Toronto, believes Ms. Harris's
critics should keep quiet until they come up with their own solutions.

"I think it's an ethically wonderful thing to do," he said.

Dr. Thyer sees no significant ethical concerns in Ms. Harris's initiative
and doubts that CRACK, which has had more white clients (267) than black
ones (190), would target minorities in Canada.

Ms. Harris counts Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the controversial radio talk-show
host, among her financial supporters. She runs her not-for- profit agency
on a salary of US$40,000 a year and has expounded her ideas on such TV talk
shows as Oprah and Leeza.

Ms. Harris founded CRACK in 1994 after adopting four drug-exposed babies
all born to the same crack-addicted mother.

In 1997 , the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimated
740,000 babies were born that had been exposed to drugs or alcohol sometime
before birth.

Health Canada estimates one baby is born every day with fetal alcohol
syndrome. There are no statistics for babies born to cocaine addicts in Canada.