Project Prevention Encourages Addicts Not To Have Children

An estimated 11-15% of babies are exposed to drugs or alcohol in utero. Many of these babies are born with addictions or physical disabilities. For years, government and NGO programs have sought to reduce this number through drug rehabilitation programs and educating women about healthy pregnancies.

The nonprofit group Project Prevention has a more practical approach: seek out addicts and provide them with birth control. Project Prevention's goal is to reduce the number of "substance-exposed births" to zero.

A controversial organization, given the debate on how to educate young people about sex and drugs, Project Prevention has over 3,000 clients, whom are provided with cash incentives to use long-term birth control while taking drugs.

Is the project successful? The results have been moderate. Many of the female clients became pregnant anyway, and the group has logged thousands of abortions and thousands of children given up into foster care.

Barbara Harris started the organization in the mid-nineties, after her and her husband became foster parents to an eight-month old child born to a crack-addicted mother. To her, the $200 Project Prevention pays to a woman to get sterilized is worth the price, as it could prevent a number of future births. "An addicted woman will cradle her pipe before she cradles her own child," an addict writes on the Project Prevention website.

How do you feel about Project Prevention? Is this just tough love or a more nihilistic approach to preventing substance-exposed births? Leave your comments here or e-mail us at [e-mail].

Comments

[NA4PW]

03:12 PM on 11/03/2009

Many people view Project Prevention (formerly C.R.A.C.K) as a sensible program. Several years ago we closely examined their data and found that it acts as a dangerous vector for misinformation. The article Why Caring Communities Must Oppose C.R.A.C.K./Project Prevention, can be accessed at: http://bit.ly/3pyrY4

Those who support Project Prevention are contributing to a public education campaign that has fostered stereotypes, prejudice, and medical misinformation.

This Huffington write up hints at some of the ways this program contributes to misunderstanding. It says, “For years, government and NGO programs have sought to reduce this number through drug rehabilitation programs and educating women about healthy pregnancies.” The implication is that treatment is widely available, it has been tried, and yet we still have a terrible ongoing problem.

In reality:
• 48% of the need for drug treatment, not including alcohol abuse, is unmet in the US.
• Women, particularly pregnant women and women with children have been and continue to be especially underserved in the alcohol and drug treatment system. The National Association for Addiction Professionals puts it starkly stating: “Women are second-class citizens when it comes to treatment for drug addiction and alcoholism.”

Many things can be done to improve birth outcomes - targeting certain communities of women and offering them money to get sterilized or use long acting birth control has not been shown to be one of them.

[mollymac]

02:18 PM on 11/04/2009

Once you have interacted with an FAS/FAE child, you realize how ultraserious this problem is! Women selling their babies for another hit; allowing young children to be sold for sexual favors. Something has to be done for these kids. The right to lifers want all babies born, but they back off once the child is here and they're back to marching and praying and whatever else they do.

[Levonsky]

02:12 PM on 11/02/2009

Fetal alcohol syndrome is a real affliction that cannot be overcome no matter how much nurturing one receives. The defects are for life.

[rockyersocksoff]

07:29 PM on 11/01/2009

I heard of something like this proposed over ten years ago.

The one objection I remember hearing is "this is a genocide against black people."

Stupidity really is independent of race, creed, or religion.

[The Meek]

05:44 PM on 11/01/2009

I would go even farther. Provide cheap clean drugs, but in exchange you have to use birth control.

I won't get long winded about how this could be implemented because it never will, especially in the USA.

That solution could never be implemented with alcohol, because it is the recreational drug of choice everywhere.

[JScott]

11:51 AM on 11/02/2009

I'd go further-pay the cost of a sterilization.

[Mixpixlix]

10:32 AM on 11/01/2009

I'm in full support of the program as long as informed consent is part of the advisory process.

I used to volunteer as a guardian ad litem. One woman had four kids in five years because she couldn't afford birth control and the state wouldn't cover sterilization costs. I believe there are thousands of woman who would volunteer for sterilization, if they new it was affordable and safe.

For too long people have ignored the reality of children born to addicts and into poverty, holding on to the image of the healthy, adorable, non addicted Gerber baby. That's not today's reality. And as most people caught on following the birth of the octoplets, WE"RE paying for their care. Many of us can't get medical help or insurnce for ourselves, yet we keep paying for people to have children they can't afford and too often abuse.

[GrizzlyBowman]

08:20 AM on 11/01/2009

The wording of this story's title is very misleading. It sounds like people who have used substances at some point are being encouraged to avoid having children altogether in their lifetime. Like they're on some eugenicist plot or something. Someone will twist this and say "the establishment's trying to castrate us!" "they're trying to extinguish a certain inconvenient portion of society!" "Pretty soon, the government will be telling us place, time, and position!"

They're trying to offer a way for women to avoid getting pregnant when they shouldn't be getting pregnant. Addiction has nothing to do with intelligence, but contamination can have an effect on a developing baby. As long as they're not forcing people to do this, it's fine. It would be unethical to claim control over someone else's body.

[ssfahrer]

01:12 AM on 11/01/2009

Actually, we should do something like this on a mass scale-- to prevent the population of the world from increasing beyond its present unsustainable level and bring the population DOWN over the next 50 years (if 2012 doesn't wipe us and the earth completely out of existence, that is)....

[WilliamL]

12:09 AM on 11/01/2009

good idea considering the folks addicted to being paid to have chilren, people who get pregnant despite being able to provide for them.

[Dolmance]

06:24 PM on 10/31/2009

I've known more than a few people who were addicted to drugs at birth and had to be coaxed through withdrawals before they could be adopted. I can't think of one who didn't end up going to college and turning out pretty great.

So there.

[goexplore]

10:53 PM on 10/31/2009

Drug addicted babies are at a significant disadvantage, and that is undeniable. I work with criminals and drug abusing parents are a common factor. I was just talking to a man who was born addicted. He regularly beats his girlfriend and has no problem with it. He's going to jail, not college. I think that is the more common outcome.

[Mixpixlix]

10:34 AM on 11/01/2009

And, I can tell you about kids born addicted who were so seriously disabled they wound up in institutions.

Why would anyone take the chance.