PAYING ADDICTED WOMEN NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN

It sounds almost like a hoax, but it's not: An Orange county group is
handing out $200 cash to drug addicts and alcoholics who agree to stop
having children.

The group is called C.R.A.C.K. - Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity.

C.R.A.C.K. was founded by Barbara Harris, an Orange County foster mother who
adopted four drug-addicted babies - all born to the same addict mother.

"She had eight. We have the youngest four," Harris said. "Every year, she'd
have another baby."

In 1994, Harris cam up with the idea of paying addicts cash to get permanent
birth control (like vasectomies or tubal ligations) or semi-permanent birth
control (like Norplant or IUDs), and started C.R.A.C.K.

She gave away the first $200 in 1997. Since then, the group has raised
$85,000 and expanded to three more states.

But not everyone is cheering for Harris. Dr. Jeffrey P. Kahn, an associate
professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota and head of the
university's Center for Bioethics, thinks Harris' program is a blow to
"reproductive liberty."

Paying drug addicts to give up the ability to have children takes advantage
of the fact that "drug addiction often leads people to do anything for money
to support their habit," he wrote in an online column published earlier this
month. "Does preventing the birth of a child protect his or her interest?"

Kahn says Harris is handing out drug money, plain and simple. Harris says
she's preventing child abuse.

"As far as I'm concerned, unless you're willing to adopt a crack baby and
raise him for 18 years, your opinion doesn't matter to me," she said flatly.

After looking at the statistics Harris is keeping on the people who've
gotten the $200, I'd have to agree with her. These are people who shouldn't
have kids. In fact, they probably shouldn't have dogs.

Since 1994, C.R.A.C.K. has given money to 54 long-time drug or alcohol
addicts, all women. The 54 women had been pregnant a total of 404 times - an
average of more than seven pregnancies each. The 54 women averaged three
abortions and four live births each. Of their 211 babies, 167 of them -
three out of four babies - wound up in foster care.

This is why Harris isn't having trouble raising money.

But so far, no men have signed up for a vasectomy and the $200. Harris is
aiming at drug-addicted mothers, not fathers, and she's not ashamed to admit it.

"A lot of the men don't know they're fathers, because these women prostitute
themselves for drugs," she said - letting the fathers off the hook with a shrug.

Which doesn't seem fair. It's easy to point the finger at the addicted women
Harris is targeting, and say they shouldn't have children. They shouldn't; a
heroin addict who leaves a toddler alone for hours while she's out getting
high isn't anybody's idea of a good mother.

But a man who'd leave his kids with a woman like that isn't anybody's idea
of a decent father, is he?

I wonder when somebody's going to form a fund-raising birth control group
aimed at drug-addicted or alcoholic dads. Or what has to freeze over first.

E-mail columnist Teresa Mariani at tmariani@callamer.com