NO MORE CRACK BABIES - CASH

Controversial Activist to Visit City

Here's an unusual offer for Memphis drug addicts:

Get paid $200 to be sterilized or take long-term birth
control.

The founder of North Carolina-based Project Prevention will be in
Memphis this week to publicize her controversial offer.

Barbara Harris will drive her Ford Expedition around town Tuesday and
Wednesday, sporting big signs that offer money for alcoholics and drug
addicts who agree.

"We've researched where the drug problem most likely exists in
Memphis," she said. "We go where the drugs are."

Signs that read: "Get Birth Control, Get Cash" also will be posted on
telephone poles around town.

Since 1997, about 1,200 alcohol and drug addicts - including 26 men -
have taken Harris up on the offer.

The participants had been pregnant a total of 5,750 times, with 1,701
abortions and 4,049 births, she said.

Of the children, 2,235 remain in foster care.

Harris got the idea for Project Prevention after she and her husband
began fostering the fifth child of a Los Angeles crack addict. The
woman's first four kids were in four foster homes.

The Harrises later fostered three more of her children, and ultimately
adopted the last four of the woman's eight children.

While living in California, Harris tried to get legislation passed
that would have made it mandatory for mothers to use long-term birth
control after giving birth to a drug-addicted baby.

After the bill died, she started Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity
(CRACK), which later became Project Prevention.

Here's how the offer works:

Anyone interested calls (888) 30-CRACK and leaves a mailing address.
They're sent a packet of information, including forms to take to a
doctor or clinic.

The birth control methods are the Intra-Uterine Device (IUD),
Depo-Provera and Norplant. Other, more permanent options are tubal
ligation and vasectomy.

The patient chooses the birth control method or sterilization, then
sends proof of the procedure, including a doctor's signature.

The patient is then sent a $200 check.

There are now 23 Project Prevention chapters across the country, and
Harris's Memphis visit is part of a four-state tour that includes
stops in Atlanta, Birmingham, St. Louis and Nashville.

Though she's raised roughly $1 million in six years, Harris has
garnered criticism for her tactics.

Some say she targets the poor and addicted at a time when they can't
make decisions about their future - or what to do with the $200.

Those who counsel addicts say the money and energy might better be
used to help people break the addiction.

Wali Shaheed of the Cocaine and Alcohol Awareness Program Inc. in
Memphis, worries about the permanence of sterilization.

"They may regret it after they've made a recovery," Shaheed
said.

"A cash incentive sounds like a good short-term carrot, but it might
be perilous to offer this to someone who is using or abusing."