A $200 BRIBE FOR NO BABIES

Will This Solve One Problem Caused By Drug Addiction?

WASHINGTON Coming soon, perhaps to a birth-control clinic near you: A $200
bribe for you to get yourself sterilized, either temporarily or permanently.

Of course, there is a catch. To qualify for this program, you must be a
drug addict or in recovery.

A cash-for-sterilization offer begun by an organization called CRACK
(Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity), was founded two years ago in
Anaheim and has opened its first national expansion office in Chicago.

CRACK also has put up billboards in Florida and Minnesota with a toll-free
hot line and this straightforward offer: "If you are addicted to drugs, get
birth control. Get $200 cash. Stop the cycle of addicted newborns now!"

This sort of thing can catch on. Other states may follow. There are a lot
of people around who, like CRACK's founder Barbara Harris, want to do
something drastic about the thousands of babies born every year to
drug-addicted parents.

There is nothing new about states offering birth control to low-income
women as part of their health coverage. But just because it is offered does
not mean people are going to take advantage of it, especially when their
lives already are disorganized by drug addiction. For them, Harris merely
is adding $200 worth of inducement.

Her offer is open to men and women. So far 57 women and zero men have taken
her up on it, according to CRACK figures.

Hey, guys, what's going on? Shy?

Of course, there also are a lot of people who are just as troubled by the
notion of paying potential parents to get themselves sterilized as they are
by the crack babies such parents sometimes produce.

"Coercing women into sterilization by exploiting the condition of their
addiction is just plain wrong," one Chicago-area Planned Parenthood
official said.

Talk radio was even more agitated. The most common word I heard to describe
the program on one black-oriented talk radio station in Washington, D.C.,
was "genocidal."

"White America realizes they are about to lose their majority," one
African-American male observed, implying that conspiratorial efforts to
thin our ranks are on the upswing.

Thank you, Louis Farrakhan.

As an African-American I have long had my antennae out for conspiracies
against the race. Heaven knows American history is full of them. But my
racial antennae aren't twitching much at this CRACK program. Compared to
the damage crack cocaine has disproportionately done to black and Latino
Americans, Harris' bribe-for-no-babies plan pales.

Besides, if she is a racist, she's an exceptionally clever one. A white
Anaheim PTA parent, Harris is raising four black children she adopted as
crack-addicted babies from the same mother. She also has led a local
anti-discrimination program, according to her web page, which has the
memorable addresses: "www.cracksterilization.com" and
"www.cashforbirthcontrol.com".

No, Harris appears to be just one of many angry Americans who has held
trembling drug-addicted babies in her arms and become outraged enough to
want to do something about it. Exploiting? If so, crack addiction is worse
exploitation. Considering the human misery that birth control avoids in
such instances, two hundred bucks sounds like a bargain.

Of course, the drug user might just use the cash bribe to buy more drugs.
Harris realizes that, she said, but adds that at least the drug dealer has
a "choice," which is more than crack babies have.

She makes a good point. In fact, the biggest problem I have with Harris'
scheme is not that it does so much but that it accomplishes so little.

Like community programs to "buy back" handguns, CRACK is too modest to make
more than a dent in a very big social problem.

The best you can say is that it gets a message out, a message that brings
public attention back to an issue and a class of people too few of us want
to think very much about.

Sadly, programs that bribe drug addicts to sterilize themselves signal a
form of social surrender, not unlike needle-exchange programs that provide
addicts with free needles to avoid HIV infection. In a society unwilling to
pay for adequate drug-treatment programs, it is reasoned, at least we can
offer clean needles.

Unfortunately, poor addicts who seek drug treatment find themselves facing
waiting lists several months long, precisely because politicians have been
more eager to build jails than drug treatment facilities.

In that sense, Barbara Harris is a modern-day missionary. She may not offer
spiritual salvation, but at least she offers money. If government won't
spend enough time or money to deal with the roots of our national drug
addictions, frustrated citizens like Harris inevitably will come along to
deal with its least fortunate end products.