Addicts Are Offered Cash to Be Sterilized

An Orange County activist says she’ll pay $200 to crack-addicted women who agree to undergo sterilization, a move that troubled women’s rights advocates and medical ethicists.

Barbara Harris, a Stanton mother of seven, including four adopted children born to a crack addict, also is offering to pay lesser amounts to women who agree to use long-term birth control methods, such as injected or implanted contraceptives.

It is the latest development in her seven-year crusade to stem the number of babies born to drug addicts in California, estimated by state officials at more than 60,000 a year.

“People who used to be drug addicts told me $20 would be enotgh,” Harris said. “All they’re thinking about is getting money for drugs. Most of the people are probably going to use the money for drugs. I hate to sound cold, but that’s their choice.”

Birth control advocates and bioethical experts are questioning the plan, saying it may exploit poor women into giving up their right to procreate while missing the underlying cause of babies born to drug-addicted mothers.

“The history of sterilization is so fraught with controversy and abuse that when you offer poor, drug-addicted people $200, it looks like they’re being bribed,” said Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics.

Caplan said the plan will be seen as “exploitative” and even “genocidal” because most of those eligible will be poor and minorities.

Harris, 45, said she has just $800. She started her group CRACK (Children Requiring A Caring Kommunity) circulating fliers in hospitals, police stations and drug treatment centers searching for pregnant addicts. It took her three months to find one.

She said many of the sterilization operations would be paid for by Medi-Cal, the state’s health system for the poor.

Babies born to crack users may suffer from a variety of physical and psychological disorders, ranging from colds and coughs to severe behavioral problems and learning disabilities and cardiovascular ailments, burdens, Harris said, which taxpayers frequently must bear.

She plans to give her first payment to Sheila Horton, a 28-year-old Los Angeles woman who soon will give birth to her sixth child. The five older children all were born drug addicts, Harris said. After giving birth, Horton will undergo a tubal ligation and then will receive the $200.

Harris also plans to offer the same amount to male addicts who agree to undergo vasectomies.

There is no law against Harris’ plans to pay women to get sterilized, said a spokesman for the state attorney general.

Harris said she once tried to persuade the district attorney to prosecute pregnant addicts and pushed a bill to make it a crime. But she said her experience with Horton softened her views.

“She’s helped me understand this addiction and become a little less hateful toward these women,” Harris said. “She’s making me understand that it’s a disease. She didn’t have any control, and now she says she wishes someone would have forced her into a treatment program.”

The homemaker is looking for a state legislator to sponsor a bill to make treatment mandatory for all drug-addicted women who give birth. “Even if they only got 10% to stop, it’s more than they’re getting now,” she said. “Whatever they’re doing now, it’s not working.”

Robert Pugsley, a professor at Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles and an advisor to CRACK, said because the program is voluntary it is unaffected by rulings that have found court-ordered sterilizations unconstitutional.

“Sheila is coming forward as a recovering drug addict and has chosen to have her tubes tied,” Pugsley said. “This is the most desirable kind of program.”

He said the $200 is meant to be a symbolic award.

“To the extent a person may be wavering, that small amount of money may make the difference,” Pugsley said. “To a person at the lower rung of the economic ladder, it may be more than it is to other people.”

Critics said the CRACK program doesn’t solve the problem of poor women addicted to drugs, “The focus should be on treating women while they’re pregnant and addicted,” said Rebecca Jurado, formerly a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and now an assistant professor at Western State University College of Law in Fullerton.

“The focus should be on the having programs available to take women off drugs, treat her while she’s pregnant, so the child will not be as addicted once born.”

While concern for drug-addicted mothers is “well-founded,” Jurado said, the implications are much more troubling. “The right to procreate is a constitutional right. They’re saying, ‘I’m going to give you $200 to give up your right to procreate.’ It doesn’t sound moral. It doesn’t sound ethical.’

Planned Parenthood considers sterilization a valid form of birth control, but only when women are well-informed and have given their consent without coercion or financial inducements, said Ann Marie Wallace, spokesperson for the organization’s Orange and San Bernardino counties chapter.

“They would have to make sure they’re not targeting a particular ethnic group,” Wallace said.

Others question whether a drug-addicted mother, without professional treatment and counseling, is capable of giving “informed consent.”

“If she’s addicted to crack cocaine, how valid is her judgment?” asked Melanie Blum, an Orange attorney who specializes in bioethical issues.

Harris admits her compassion tilts toward the children, rather than the mothers. She has written a book, “Love Babies,” due out next April, on her experiences adopting the four children, and she has spoken about her views on radio and TV, including the Oprah Winfrey show.

Harris said she was drawn into the issue seven years ago when, with three sons of her own, she took in her first foster child, born to a crack addict. A year later, she and her husband adopted the girl, only to find out she had a sister on the way. The couple adopted that girl too. “Every year, we got another call,” said Harris, who now has four of eight children born to the same woman, whom she presumes is still an addict.

“She wasn’t an unusual case,” Harris said. “I know of so many [addicted] women who have 12, 14 kids. And what becomes of those children? Most of them are bounced from foster home to foster home. It’s not just the drugs, it’s the system, the way they grow up.”

“I want people to know,” she said. “I want people to get mad and do something.”

Times staff writer Nancy Cleeland contributed to this story.