Woman Offers Payment if Addicts Get Sterilization

First Barbara Harris tried to persuade the district attorney to prosecute pregnant women who use drugs. When that didn’t work, she pushed a bill to make it a crime.

Unsuccessful again, Harris, who has adopted four siblings who were born addicted to crack, has taken a more dramatic step--she will pay crack-addicted mothers $200 if they are sterilized, $50 for Norplant and $20 for an injectable contraceptive.

“People who used to be drug addicts told me $20 would be enough,” 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 contacted by The Times questioned 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 willing to be sterilized. It took her three months, but she claims she found 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, that tax payers frequently must bear.

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

She also plans to offer $200 to addicted men 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’ began her crusade seven years ago to stem the numbers of babies born to drug addicts in California, estimated by state officials at more than 60,000 a year.

But she said her experience with the Los Angeles woman has softened her views. “She’s helped me understand this addiction and become a little less hateful toward these women,” she 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% [of the women] 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.

“[The woman] 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.”

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.

Harris admits her compassion tilts toward the children, rather than the mothers. She has written a book, “Love Babies,” on her experiences adopting the four children, which is due out in April.

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

Times staff writer Nancy Cleeland contributed to this story.