Should Addicts Be Paid Not To Have Kids?

Several months ago, WNYC’s Radiolab ran a story about Barbara Harris and her daughter Destiny. Barbara Harris is the founder is the founder of a controversial organization, Project Prevention.  Project Prevention pays drugs addicts to be receive vasectomies or tubal ligation.  

Here is a description of the story: 

When Barbara Harris was 37, she started wishing she could have a daughter. It was 1989, and by that time only two of her six sons were still at home. So she filled out all the paperwork, and later that summer got a call about an 8-month-old baby girl. As soon as Barbara met her, she knew that was it — this was her daughter. She named her Destiny Harris. But before she could take her home, the social worker told Barbara that Destiny had tested positive for crack, PCP, and heroin. Her mom was addicted to drugs, and doctors said Destiny was delayed mentally and physically as a result, and always would be.

Producer Pat Walters flew down to North Carolina to meet Barbara and Destiny, who’s now 22 years old. And Barbara tells Pat, a few months after she brought Destiny home, she and her husband got another call. Destiny’s mom had given birth to another boy. They went to the hospital to pick him up, and he was going through withdrawal from heroin. Then Barbara got another call: a little girl. And a year later, another little boy. By 1994 she’d adopted four kids from the same woman. And she was feeling angry — how could this be allowed to happen? She decided to take a stand by trying to get a law passed for longterm birth control. And when that failed, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She founded an organization called Project Prevention, and began paying women with drug addiction to get IUDs, or get sterilized.

Lynn Paltrow, the Executive Director and founder of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, argues that Project Prevention is misguided and harmful, and articulates many of the objections raised by Barbara’s critics.