2nd Addict Agrees to Sterilization- for-Money Offer
A mother addicted to heroin will become the second woman to agree to sterilization in exchange for money offered by an anti-drug activist, the woman making the controversial offers said Friday.
Barbara Harris, founder of CRACK (Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity), said she will pay $200 to an Anaheim heroin addict to undergo a tubal ligation. Harris said the woman she identified as 32-year-old Yvonne of Anaheim recently gave birth to her sixth child addicted to heroin.
Harris said she founded CRACK to stem the number of babies born to drug addicts in California. She announced her first offer of money to a mother who agreed to permanent birth control last month.
Birth-control advocates and bioethical experts have questioned Harris’s plan, saying it may convince poor women to give up their right to bear children.
The first woman to take up CRACK’s tubal ligation offer was 28-year-old Sheila Horton of Los Angeles, whose five older children were all born addicted to drugs.
Harris has adopted four of eight drug-exposed children born to one woman and lobbied for legislation to make it a crime to give birth to a drug-addicted baby.
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