Doug Henwood wrote:
> [from the icky Negative Population Growth folks - I think they approve of this]
>
> Washington Post - June 26, 2000
>
> Group to Pay Addicts to Take Birth Control
>
> By Avram Goldstein
>
> Melanie Folstad agonized over whether to join the campaign, but
> each time she considered her son's nightmarish origins and his
> continuing health problems, the hesitation melted away. So this
> week, the Bethesda financial planner will help a national
> children's welfare group make a provocative offer to Washington's
> drug addicts:
>
> Obtain long-term birth control and get $200 in cash.
>
> The idea is a last-ditch incentive to help prevent the birth of
> drug-addicted babies, according to the group's national campaign.
>
> The California-based group running the program, Children Requiring
> A Caring Kommunity (CRACK), will push the plan throughout July on
> placards in 500 Metro buses. The local effort will be headed by
> Folstad, who adopted a low birth-weight baby delivered by a
> drug-addicted D.C. woman who was being held in jail.
>
> The program already has been roundly condemned by area health
> leaders, who call it simplistic, racist and dehumanizing.
>
> "It's unethical," said Larry Siegel, the D.C. health department
> deputy director in charge of substance abuse services. "We are
> talking about attempting to introduce a therapeutic intervention
> into a population of individuals who are unlikely to have been
> thoroughly informed of all the potential complications."
>
> Public and private health officials in the District say the care of
> addicted mothers should be left to health professionals.
>
> The campaign will take advantage of drug abusers with mental
> illnesses, making them even more vulnerable to the influence of
> easy cash, Siegel said. "Treatment for the underlying condition has
> to be part of this conversation before we talk about offering
> people a therapy with major medical consequences," he said.
>
> Further, Siegel said, the campaign will target the African American
> community disproportionately.
>
> Folstad, a 31-year-old financial planner, who is white, is bracing
> herself for the cries of genocide and racism that have been raised
> in other cities where CRACK has campaigned. "I've gotten a mixed
> reaction," she said. "I've talked to my pastor and with people in
> my neighborhood active in social causes. I've heard people call it
> everything from ethnic cleansing to a good way to encourage
> responsibility and choices."
>
> Barbara Harris, the group's founder and director, says the offer is
> a sensible way to help drug addicts halt repeat pregnancies. So
> far, 236 women and one man have collected the reward, she said.
>
> Many children of drug addicts wind up in foster care and battle
> health, developmental or emotional problems at taxpayer expense.
> Some are born with HIV, while others suffer the effects of prenatal
> drug exposure. Harris figures the program is trading a small sum to
> pay to avoid the greater cost of coping with abandoned children.
>
> The ad campaign will be subsidized partly by taxpayers, because
> Metro provides space for free to nonprofit groups whose messages
> have been approved by a Metro advertising review committee. Instead
> of paying $7,000, the standard ad rate for 500 interior bus
> placards for one month, CRACK will pay Metro only the $1,000
> installation fee, said Metro spokeswoman Cheryl Johnson.
>
> CRACK, based in Orange County, Calif., has financial and political
> backing from well-known conservative figures such as radio talk
> show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger and billionaire Richard Mellon
> Scaife. But the group doesn't fit into a simple pigeonhole.
>
> Harris said there is nearly an even split between black and white
> clients who have received the $200, she said.
>
> Most of CRACK's board members are black. Harris is married to a
> black man with whom she raised six biracial children before
> adopting four African American siblings of the same drug-addicted
> mother. Folstad and her husband are white, but her adoptive son and
> two other children she is now adopting are African American.
> "People always want to yell racism, but I can take the heat,"
> Harris said. "We don't target a race, but a behavior. This is
> common sense. It's about preventing pregnancy. It's not about
> abortion or women's rights. If we use birth control, we don't have
> to deal with either one of those issues. I've heard from so many
> African American people who say, 'We don't want our babies born
> that way.' "
>
> The NAACP national headquarters referred inquiries to the District
> NAACP chapter, but the local group declined to comment on the
> reward program.
>
> The Washington area chapter of Planned Parenthood had no such
> hesitation.
>
> "We believe that any program that offers cash as an incentive to
> take birth control or become sterilized is inherently coercive,"
> said the chief executive, Jatrice Martel Gaiter. Federal rules
> require her agency to provide only voluntary family planning
> services, she said.
>
> Harris accuses Planned Parenthood of being hypocritical. "How do
> they feel these vulnerable women can make a rational decision to
> have a free abortion when they are under the influence of drugs?"
> she said. "That's coercive to a drug addict."
>
> The reaction to the campaign in other cities has been mixed. In
> Kansas City, a billboard company buckled under community pressure
> within days and took down the ads. In Oakland, protesters charging
> racism tore down a billboard as soon as it went up. But in Seattle,
> it was greeted without much reaction.
>
> The reward is paid only for long-term birth-control methods such as
> a Norplant contraceptive, which is inserted under the skin and can
> last five years; Depo-Provera shots, which must be repeated every
> three months; an intrauterine device, which works indefinitely; and
> irreversible surgical sterilization known as tubal ligation.
>
> So far, about half of those who have participated chose surgery,
> the campaign says.
>
> Harris said she has rewarded 237 drug addicts, including a man who
> had a vasectomy. In questionnaires, the women told CRACK that
> before seeking the reward they had 1,501 pregnancies--more than six
> each, on average.
>
> The women reported to Harris that 527 of those pregnancies ended in
> abortion. Of the 966 completed pregnancies, 117 infants were
> stillborn and 39 died after delivery. Among the 810 children who
> survived, 537 are in foster care, Harris said.
>
> Experts acknowledge the devastating toll inflicted on children and
> taxpayers, but they contend CRACK's approach is flawed.
>
> To Bill McColl, executive director of the National Association of
> Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors, the organization should focus
> on getting more women into treatment.
>
> "Two hundred dollars would buy more than a week of long-term
> residential care," he said. "This non-program preys on an addict's
> need for cash, stigmatizes them as inhuman, raises extraordinary
> ethical questions and highlights our society's unwillingness to
> find real solutions for real problems."
>
> McColl concedes some women often obtain drug treatment and then
> suffer relapses, during which they can become pregnant again. But
> he contends outcomes would be improved if pregnant women and
> mothers with young children encountered fewer barriers to
> treatment.
>
> Tracy L. McGruder, a 35, of Compton, Calif., gave birth to five
> children and worked as a prostitute to support her crack cocaine
> habit for 11 years. Just as she began to get her addictions under
> control, she accepted CRACK's $200 offer in 1998 and got a
> Norplant.
>
> Cash is one of the only things that can cut through the fog and
> motivate an addict to get contraceptives--even if the cash winds up
> being used on more drugs, she said.
>
> "I've been in 13 [substance abuse] programs, and it did nothing,"
> McGruder said. "Them taking my kids wasn't enough. The judge and
> the social worker telling me I needed a program--none of that was
> enough until I did it myself. I did it for me."
>
> She disregarded concerns about the health of her fetus. "The drug
> has you so insane and crazy that you just don't care," McGruder
> said. "I would get my drug, and when I would take a hit, the baby
> would draw up in a knot."
>
> McGruder said she worked the streets at one point with seven other
> prostitutes and all were pregnant at the same time. "I'm the only
> one who has their child now," she said of the 2-year-old son she
> cares for.
>
> Harris's campaign has traveled across the nation one city at a
> time, starting in Anaheim and then in Los Angeles, San Francisco,
> Phoenix, Seattle, Kansas City, Chicago and other cities.
>
> The July campaign in Washington, she said, will be the largest
> advertising effort so far.
>
> "That's where everybody is who's supposed to care about the world's
> problems," she said. "The audience there has all the people who
> could make a difference. Maybe somebody will actually care enough
> to call us and let us explain why there is a need for our program."
>
> Provocative Program
>
> Children Requiring A Caring Kommunity says it has paid rewards to
> more than 200 women nationally. These are statistics according to
> questionnaires filled out by clients.
>
> CLIENTS STATS
>
> Paid clients 237
>
> Pregnancies 1,501 Abortions 527
>
> Births 966
>
> Stillborn births 117
>
> Babies who died after birth from complications 39
>
> Children remaining in foster care to date 537
>
> BY RACE/ETHNICITY
>
> White: 101
>
> Black: 102
>
> Hispanic: 25
>
> Indian: 3
>
> Biracial: 6
>
> PROCEDURE CHOSEN
>
> Norplant 29
>
> Tubal ligation 117
>
> Depo-Provera 67
>
> IUD 23
>
> Vasectomy 1
>
> SOURCE: Children Requiring A Caring Kommunity
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> NPG Population-News Listserve http://www.npg.org
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
--
Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901