Drug Addict Makes Deal to Undergo Sterilization

Barbara Harris, the Orange County woman who paid two drug-abusing women $200 in exchange for their agreement to undergo sterilization, held a news conference Wednesday to introduce a third woman willing to make the same type of deal.

Outside the El Monte Planned Parenthood Center, the 29-year-old drug user described herself as a homeless mother of two living in a van in La Puente. She said she has used speed, has been pregnant eight times and given birth to seven children.

“It’s like drinking and driving; pregnancy and drugs don’t mix,” the woman said, her two small children standing nearby. “I don’t want to get pregnant again.”

The woman was examined at the Planned Parenthood center to evaluate birth control methods such as injected or implanted contraceptives. Harris said she would pay the woman $50 when such a procedure is a completed and $200 if she is sterilized.

Harris, who says she has collected $2,400 in donations, said she founded her organization CRACK (Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity) to stem the number of babies born to drug addicts in California. She has adopted four of eight drug-exposed children born to one woman.

Birth control advocates and bioethical experts have suggested she is in danger of exploiting poor, desperate women into giving up their right to procreate while neglecting the underlying cause of babies born to drug-addicted mothers.