Claim your free $300 by being sterilised

[wop]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8500285.stm

If you call Project Prevention's helpline it's likely that Barbara Harris, the founder of this US based organisation, will answer the phone. A warm and vivacious grandmother, her aim is to give $300 to as many drug and alcohol addicted women as possible.

The deal? That they receive long term contraception or sterilisation to prevent them having children she believes they are unable or unwilling to care for. Funded through private donations, her organisation is non-profit making.

Project Prevention, started in 1997, says it has paid money out to 3,242 addicts, or clients as it prefers to call them. Most of them were women and 1,226 were permanently sterilised. Thirty-five men have had vasectomies.

To get the money people have to show evidence that they have been arrested on narcotic offences, or provide a doctor's letter confirming they use drugs. Fresh documents are then required to show the medical procedure has actually taken place.

Ms Harris is driven by her own experience. She fostered, and then adopted, four children born to the same crack-addicted woman in Los Angeles. Taylor was the second she took in.

"He couldn't keep food down and his eyes looked like they were going to bulge out of his head," she says. "Noise bothered him, light bothered him, he just couldn't sleep.
"My husband and I had to take shifts with him. He would sleep 10 minutes, wake up screaming. I was just angry at his mom, I thought how could somebody do this to a baby?"

Her stand has drawn fierce opposition. Critics, such as US group National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), accuse Ms Harris of spreading "dangerous propaganda".

They say what she does is social engineering, defining one category of people - addicts - as unsuitable to have children. The scheme has been compared to eugenic sterilisation in the US during the 1930s and the Nazis' programme of eugenics, which led to the extermination of Jews and the murder of many gypsies, the mentally ill, and homosexuals.

Such comparisons are rejected by Ms Harris, who says the criticisms do not concern her.

"It doesn't matter," she says. "I'll do anything I have to do to prevent babies from suffering. My heart is with the children. I don't believe that anybody has the right to force their addiction on another human being."

Chance after chance

She has also been accused of being racist, targeting poor black communities with her promotional campaigns. Ms Harris says this is ironic as she is married to a black man.

"I have a large family and I'm the only white face in my family. We have 10 kids and they are all black, some are bi-racial. It's not about race to me."

And according to their own figures, which haven't been independently verified, over half Project Prevention's clients are white.

Offering money to addicts is clearly not a solution to the problem, say critics. Ms Harris herself admits the money she pays out is probably spent on drugs. So why not use her resources to lobby for measures to help stop women turning to drugs in the first place - or better treatment programmes when they do?

[wop]

Creamsoda GO!

[AoE]

Cream Soda's wackiness is all natural so your plot fails.

Also inb4 this gets to about 5 pages about politics and then someone skims the OP and rants about how they hope a natural disaster kills 70% of the world conveniently not including themselves.

[Blubbartron]

All I have to say is a-fucking-men. The attackers are correct at what this woman is proposing. Drug addicts should not be allowed to continue having children. It's a disgrace to humanity that we allow it to happen at all. Have you guys seen how fucked up some of these children are? I've seen a few in my time and believe me, it's hard fighting the urge to remove the genitals of both parties involved on the spot.

[chazzyphizzle]

And it begins.

[Takedown3]

about fucking time

[Akucaen]

about fucking time

This.

[EdgeMoragan]

This is the best fucking idea -EVER-. Should be mandatory for various qualifications.

[wop]

This is the best fucking idea -EVER-. Should be mandatory for various qualifications.

Wrong.

Should sterilise for free.

The 300 bucks given to them to take this up, will 99.999999999% used to buy drugs again.

[*Shinzon*]

Wrong.

Should sterilise for free.

The 300 bucks given to them to take this up, will 99.999999999% used to buy drugs again.

Which is fine, because they wont go out and whore themselves to someone and potentially get pregnant for the same purpose. Program isn't designed as a rehab but a prevention program. Need some kind of catch, otherwise what's the point. A drug addicted person wont just show up and say, hey this is a good idea I should get sterilized so I dont give birth to a meth-head baby.

[wop]

OK that sounds logical

[Ragnus]

This should be a payment for anyone willing to remove themselves from the gene pool.

[Pirian]

Doesn't GB already have a negative population growth?

[Acturus]

Doesn't GB already have a negative population growth?

If I'm reading it correctly, it's a BBC article about a US company.

Also...

Her stand has drawn fierce opposition. Critics, such as US group National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), accuse Ms Harris of spreading "dangerous propaganda".

They say what she does is social engineering, defining one category of people - addicts - as unsuitable to have children. The scheme has been compared to eugenic sterilisation in the US during the 1930s and the Nazis' programme of eugenics, which led to the extermination of Jews and the murder of many gypsies, the mentally ill, and homosexuals.

I didn't know that "addicts" were classified as a category of people alongside Jews, Mentally Disabled, and Gay populations. With that in mind, the entirety of NAPW can eat a bag of dicks.

And hooray for privatizing social engineering. Nevermind that as far as I've ever heard, addictive tendancies and behaviors are not primarily genetic traits. So the social engineering and eugenics seems to be a pretty weak fucking argument.

[Mici]

I love it and want to find the PayPal button.

[ZarakiKujata]

edit: removed quote b/c I decided I'd post something else not related to the quote.

Could just have free abortions and then you arent giving drug users the means to buy more drugs and still prevent kids from having to grow up in a shitty environment.

[Zilong]

Could just go down to the ghetto and just falcon punch any bitch with big stomach too while you're at it

[ZarakiKujata]

Could just go down to the ghetto and just falcon punch any bitch with big stomach too while you're at it

What about fat bitches that arent pregnant, you cant always tell real well.

[willriker]

:O wow. This is interesting.

[dejet]

What about fat bitches that arent pregnant, you cant always tell real well.

hit them anyways?

Hate to say I sorta side with the woman... Sounds so wrong what she is doing, yet it really seems like the right thing to do.

still that is one odd way about fixing a problem. thinking outside the box she is.