ADDICTS AND ADVOCATES

Your article "Surgical Strike" (November/December) quotes people who look at
our organization, Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity (CRACK), as
anti-poor and anti-black because we offer drug addicts $200 to accept
long-term birth control or sterilization so they won't produce more addicted
babies. An NAACP official says, "How can you come in and say that you are
concerned with the welfare of the mothers...?" Good question. We don't say
we're concerned with the welfare of the mothers. CRACK's mission is to stop
them from having more doomed babies.

As for Chris Brand, "the British psychologist who is working to expand CRACK
overseas," that's news to me. I talked to him once and thought he was pretty
strange. His ideas about blacks being inferior aren't welcome to me. Still,
if this man causes CRACK to work overseas, fine. I care about results. His
motives are his own business.

Barbara Harris, CRACK

Stanton, California

As a bleeding-heart liberal, I am surprised to find myself on the same side
of an issue as Laura Schlessinger and Richard Mellon Scaife. However, that
does not cause me to waver in my support for encouraging female drug addicts
to become sterilized. To me, this issue is as clear as my prochoice stance:
I am for abortion and reproductive rights for all women primarily because I
believe no child should enter this world unwanted. Perhaps what is really
bothering some of my fellow liberals is that these poor, drug-sick women are
willing to give up their reproductive rights for so cheap a price.

Melinda Young

Tryon, North Carolina