Barbara Harris with children she adopted from a crack addict
For the past 13 years, Barbara Harris, a warm and vivacious mother of ten, has been a hate figure for many in the US.
Harris runs Project Prevention, a charity that works to reduce the number of babies born with drug or alcohol addictions as a consequence of their parent’s habits. Few could quarrel with that. But many disagree with her charity’s methods.
Put simply, Harris bribes addicts and alcoholics with cash. They get $300 if they agree to long-term contraception—such as the coil—or sterilisation. Critics claim the latter is a terrifying throwback to the neutering of “defectives” by the Nazis during the second world war. Project Prevention, they argue, is little more than eugenics dressed up in a cloak of compassion.
Yet those who accept Harris’s dollars don’t necessarily see it that way. So far in the US, Harris has signed up more than 3,000 drink and drug addicts to her programme, in effect buying their fertility and potentially stopping thousands of births. Now she wants to do the same in Britain.
Project Prevention UK is formally launched in early November. It still has no official offices, yet it has already received more than £20,000 in donations and hundreds of people have called its helpline, seeking to enrol and claim the £200 Harris is offering to those who have the procedures on the NHS. Yinka Omotoso, a 28-year-old single mother, was one of the first to call.
Brought up in care and struggling with drink and drug addictions by 18, Yinka describes her life as a textbook tragedy. “You name it, I was taking it—and I was doing all kinds of nasty things to get it,” she admits. Four years ago, she gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. Four months later she was pregnant again. This time, her baby survived, but he suffers from foetal alcohol syndrome and has recently been diagnosed with learning difficulties. Yinka vows this will never happen again and has signed up to Harris’s project to be sterilised.
Yinka’s case, Harris argues, is a prime example of why Project Prevention is needed in Britain. The statistics show that we have a growing problem: in the past decade the number of babies suffering from drug withdrawal symptoms increased by 67 per cent. David Field, a professor at Leicester Royal Infirmary, has witnessed the change. “In the 1990s addicted babies were rare on neonatal wards, now they are treated on a daily basis,” he tells me. A recent survey he undertook reveals that 1 in every 500 newborns is addicted. Over the past 15 years, the number of Britons regularly taking class A drugs doubled to just under half a million. Nearly 4m of us are dependent on alcohol, which also contributes to birth defects and developmental problems in babies, says Field.
Often, those babies who are born at all are considered lucky. The offspring of addicts have a higher chance of dying prior to or during labour. Some of those who survive are unharmed, but others never fully recover from the toxic substances ingested in the womb, and endure long-term mental and physical disabilities. Later on, with drug or alcohol dependent parents, there can be neglect and abuse. Two thirds of children in care in England and Wales have parents with addiction problems. In Scotland, the figure rises to 80 per cent.
Harris knows all about this. Four of her children are adopted from a crack-addicted mother, who had eight babies year after year. “I started Project Prevention after witnessing what they went through,” she said. “They were forced to go cold turkey in the cradle and I thought: why is our supposedly caring society allowing this to happen?”
What Project Prevention does is perfectly legal. But is it setting a dangerous precedent—deciding who should or shouldn’t conceive? Addaction, one of Britain’s biggest drug support services, has described Harris’s scheme as morally reprehensible. Others accuse her of playing God. “She’s offering money to people who are vulnerable, weak and least placed to make an informed decision about sterilisation,” says Celina Stone of Women’s Drug Support.
Harris points out that she is not forcing people to be sterilised; she also offers long-term contraception. “Social workers and their like have done their best for years and it’s not good enough,” she says. “I’m paying addicts for being responsible.”
Out on the streets of London’s Whitechapel, handing out leaflets that read “Attention Addicts & Alcoholics—Get Birth Control, Get Cash,” Harris claims not to understand why anyone would object to her approach. What if in later years they regret being sterilised, for example? If clients have kicked their habit—and can prove it—Project Prevention will pay for their surgery to be reversed. For women, though, reversal operations have a poor success rate of between 50 and 60 per cent, according to NHS figures. For men, it is surprisingly worse: between 25 and 55 per cent. And more problematically, is putting money into the hands of addicts not feeding their habit?
Sterilisation is an uncomfortable concept with a dubious history. But we must ask ourselves whether concerns about it should take priority over the welfare of children. Many may disagree with Harris’s approach, but no one can deny the problem she is forcing us to pay attention to is a serious one.
For the past 13 years, Barbara Harris, a warm and vivacious mother of ten, has been a hate figure for many in the US.
Harris runs Project Prevention, a charity that works to reduce the number of babies born with drug or alcohol addictions as a consequence of their parent’s habits. Few could quarrel with that. But many disagree with her charity’s methods.
Put simply, Harris bribes addicts and alcoholics with cash. They get $300 if they agree to long-term contraception—such as the coil—or sterilisation. Critics claim the latter is a terrifying throwback to the neutering of “defectives” by the Nazis during the second world war. Project Prevention, they argue, is little more than eugenics dressed up in a cloak of compassion.
Yet those who accept Harris’s dollars don’t necessarily see it that way. So far in the US, Harris has signed up more than 3,000 drink and drug addicts to her programme, in effect buying their fertility and potentially stopping thousands of births. Now she wants to do the same in Britain.
Project Prevention UK is formally launched in early November. It still has no official offices, yet it has already received more than £20,000 in donations and hundreds of people have called its helpline, seeking to enrol and claim the £200 Harris is offering to those who have the procedures on the NHS. Yinka Omotoso, a 28-year-old single mother, was one of the first to call.
Brought up in care and struggling with drink and drug addictions by 18, Yinka describes her life as a textbook tragedy. “You name it, I was taking it—and I was doing all kinds of nasty things to get it,” she admits. Four years ago, she gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. Four months later she was pregnant again. This time, her baby survived, but he suffers from foetal alcohol syndrome and has recently been diagnosed with learning difficulties. Yinka vows this will never happen again and has signed up to Harris’s project to be sterilised.
Yinka’s case, Harris argues, is a prime example of why Project Prevention is needed in Britain. The statistics show that we have a growing problem: in the past decade the number of babies suffering from drug withdrawal symptoms increased by 67 per cent. David Field, a professor at Leicester Royal Infirmary, has witnessed the change. “In the 1990s addicted babies were rare on neonatal wards, now they are treated on a daily basis,” he tells me. A recent survey he undertook reveals that 1 in every 500 newborns is addicted. Over the past 15 years, the number of Britons regularly taking class A drugs doubled to just under half a million. Nearly 4m of us are dependent on alcohol, which also contributes to birth defects and developmental problems in babies, says Field.
Often, those babies who are born at all are considered lucky. The offspring of addicts have a higher chance of dying prior to or during labour. Some of those who survive are unharmed, but others never fully recover from the toxic substances ingested in the womb, and endure long-term mental and physical disabilities. Later on, with drug or alcohol dependent parents, there can be neglect and abuse. Two thirds of children in care in England and Wales have parents with addiction problems. In Scotland, the figure rises to 80 per cent.
Harris knows all about this. Four of her children are adopted from a crack-addicted mother, who had eight babies year after year. “I started Project Prevention after witnessing what they went through,” she said. “They were forced to go cold turkey in the cradle and I thought: why is our supposedly caring society allowing this to happen?”
What Project Prevention does is perfectly legal. But is it setting a dangerous precedent—deciding who should or shouldn’t conceive? Addaction, one of Britain’s biggest drug support services, has described Harris’s scheme as morally reprehensible. Others accuse her of playing God. “She’s offering money to people who are vulnerable, weak and least placed to make an informed decision about sterilisation,” says Celina Stone of Women’s Drug Support.
Harris points out that she is not forcing people to be sterilised; she also offers long-term contraception. “Social workers and their like have done their best for years and it’s not good enough,” she says. “I’m paying addicts for being responsible.”
Out on the streets of London’s Whitechapel, handing out leaflets that read “Attention Addicts & Alcoholics—Get Birth Control, Get Cash,” Harris claims not to understand why anyone would object to her approach. What if in later years they regret being sterilised, for example? If clients have kicked their habit—and can prove it—Project Prevention will pay for their surgery to be reversed. For women, though, reversal operations have a poor success rate of between 50 and 60 per cent, according to NHS figures. For men, it is surprisingly worse: between 25 and 55 per cent. And more problematically, is putting money into the hands of addicts not feeding their habit?
Sterilisation is an uncomfortable concept with a dubious history. But we must ask ourselves whether concerns about it should take priority over the welfare of children. Many may disagree with Harris’s approach, but no one can deny the problem she is forcing us to pay attention to is a serious one.
