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Cash for Contraception

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A controversial program in California is offering drug-addicted women two hundred dollars to be sterilized. It is estimated that some 75,000 substance-exposed babies are born every year in California alone. Of those, almost 80 percent are placed in foster care. They tend to have serious mental and physical disabilities. Since founder Barbara Harris started the project in early 1998, the California CRACK program has paid 61 women to be sterilized or use long term birth control -- those 61 women had already been pregnant a total of 446 times. The offer is made to men as well, but much fewer have responded. The privately funded CRACK program, or Children Requiring A Caring Kommunity, has been creating controversy in Anaheim, Chicago, Minneapolis, Dallas, and other cities that have adopted it. Reproductive rights advocates and other opponents say the program may be well intentioned, but it smacks of reproductive bribery and racism, as it targets mostly minority neighborhoods. Supporters counter that the program only tries what the government is seemingly unable or unwilling to do -- put an end to the tragedy of drug addicts having babies.