ARTICLES
November 2003 ARTICLES
Contents © 2003
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Not Medicine, But Social Control
Eugenics -- Not Even for the Best of Reasons
By Christopher Zehnder
It is unusual to find someone who can tick off both pro-abortion folks and Catholics, but one woman has done it. Her name is Barbara Harris. This woman, formerly a resident of Orange County (she now lives in North Carolina), has done the seeming impossible: she was won the condemnation of Planned Parenthood and other "pro-choice" groups and, at the same time, initiated a program that strikes at the roots of Catholic morality.
At first glance, Harris would appear the likely recipient of a Planned Parenthood medal of honor. In 1997 she founded an organization called CRACK (Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity) to encourage drug addicts not to have more children. CRACK, now sporting the more benign name, Project Prevention, not only offers to pay the costs of sterilization or long-term birth control for women and men on the street, but gives those who take up the offer $200 cash, to spend as they wish. The forms of birth control Project Prevention pays for are Depo-Provera, IUD, Norplant, tubal ligation, and vasectomy.
Harris' story begins in the mid-1990s. Then living in Stanton, in Orange County, and working as a waitress at the International House of Pancakes, Harris was not expecially unique. After having three children of their own, she and her husband, Smitty, decided to have no more. A short while later, though, they became the foster parents of a girl, Destiny, whose mother had been addicted to drugs. Four months later, the Harrises received a call that Destiny's mother had given birth to another child, a boy. A year later, the same mother gave birth to another child, and the following year, to yet another. The Harrises ended up adopting all four children.
"It was frustrating every year to get another phone call saying she had another baby and did we want it?" Barbara Harris told me in a telephone interview. "We couldn't believe we [society] just allow women to drop off babies yearly at a hospital and walk away with no consequences." Harris' incredulity led her, in 1995, to try to get a bill passed in the California Assembly "which would have made it mandatory," she said, for women who "have a drug-addicted baby or a baby with fetal alcohol syndrome to use long-term birth control."
After the bill never came to a vote in the assembly, Harris said she "just decided to start a non-profit organization and offer cash incentives to people who are acting not very responsible to get them to be responsible." This was CRACK, or Project Prevention, an organization that has garnered the support of conservative Republican types and even of such a conservative icon as the radio talk maven of "family values" and "tough love," Dr. Laura Schlessinger. Schlessinger, known for her support of pro-life causes, has not only plugged Project Prevention on her radio program, but has contributed sizable sums of money to the project.
How many clients has Project Prevention "helped"? "As of today," Harris told me on September 17, "1,081." Most of these, by far, are women. But, while this number is small, Project Prevention is growing and even making inroads into state institutions. "Just over the past year," said Harris, "we've had many organizations, county and state agencies come on board and start referring women to us. We have jails that allow our volunteers in to tell inmates about our program. We have drug treatment programs that are referring women to us. We have methadone clinics that have our information posted on the walls, and probation departments -- just many, many agencies, in a lot of states, that are learning about us and making referrals to us." Would she tell me what agencies, in particular? She could not remember, she said. "Even if I did, I wouldn't name them to you because, too often when I name someone who works with us, then somebody who doesn't approve jumps all over them; I don't take that chance any more, because we've had social workers lose their jobs."
And some, indeed, do disapprove of what Harris is doing. One is Jana Cunningham, with Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, who told the February 14, 2001 Menlo Park, California, Almanac that she does not think Harris has sufficient concern for addicted women. "We think," said Cunningham, "these women need and deserve appropriate counseling. If you give an addict $200, what do you think they are going to do with it?"
Another critic of Project Prevention and Barbara Harris is Lynn Paltrow of the Washington, D.C.-based National Advocates for Pregnant Women. Paltrow does not disapprove, she told me, of birth control, or even of abortion; "talking to a Catholic paper," she said, "I'm not sure where I am going to get in trouble more. I do believe in family planning and I think there's nothing wrong with encouraging people to take responsibility -- and who have the means to take responsibility -- for family planning, whatever method, natural, chemical, or barrier methods that they choose to use."
Then what is Paltrow's problem with Project Prevention? Supporters of Project Prevention, she said, "are not merely supporting an outreach program to people who need contraceptive services; they're supporting a particular type of political agenda or propaganda which is stereotyping a whole group of women and undermining those real social and political solutions that would improve the lives of both women and children in this country." It is not Project Prevention's "initial presentation," said Paltrow, that is unreasonable, but what she sees as its deeper agenda. "On the one hand, they say their goal is to stop all drug- and alcohol-related pregnancies. Well, if that were true, they would have to control the birth rates of literally 14 to 76 million Americans. What they seem to really be talking about is a particular group of poor women who they very dangerously stereotype and stigmatize as being irresponsible."
Paltrow's assistant, Wyndi Anderson, agrees. Project Prevention's focus, said Anderson, is on the poor, and only on the poor. Why does the project concentrate only on poor women, she asked, and not on the drug and alcohol-addicted among the wealthy? Both Anderson and Paltrow say Harris ignores the "fact" that poor women do not have access to contraceptive services, many on account of a lack of funds. Paltrow and Anderson think that the real answer for such women is a wider availability of affordable healthcare, including contraceptive and abortion services.
Paltrow said that Harris spreads false notions about poor women who are addicted to drugs. One is that they have more than the average number of children [the project's website states "women and men who are using or addicted to drugs are often responsible for an extraordinary number of pregnancies (5-10 or more)]." Paltrow says, however, that no study suggests "that drug-using women on average have more children than any other people." Worse to Paltrow, however, is the project's claim that drug-using or HIV-infected women who get pregnant are child abusers. Project Prevention, she said, is "part of a propaganda machine in this country that is labeling, re-labeling, pregnancy and pregnant women, before they even have a child, as child abusers. They are reinterpreting HIV as a form of child abuse, turning what is for some women a health problem that is treatable to a form of intentional child abuse."
Further, Paltrow said, "there's no research saying using any kind of drug during pregnancy is a good idea, and certainly not crack or cocaine. But the notion that crack and cocaine are the uniquely harmful, devastating drugs as portrayed in the media has not been borne out by scientific research. In fact, the research shows that these children have neurological damage, it does not show that they have IQ damage; there are no studies that support that these children are born jittery and crying. There are children who are born jittery and crying, but they have not been able to link that to crack exposure. [These symptoms] have been linked to things like cigarettes, to things like alcohol in enough dosage, to combinations to various things, and poverty, most among them."
Paltrow said that what Project Prevention is about is eugenics. It is the sort of thing, she said, that was pushed, not only in Nazi Germany, but by the influential eugenics movement in 1930s America. Projective Prevention is a sort of end run that "discourages taking those steps which are not expensive but are effective in making a difference and, instead, suggesting that we can solve a problem by stopping some group of people from having children."
Some statements Harris has made in the press seem to support Paltrow's allegations. According to a recent BBC News article, Harris, in one of her first interviews, said, "we don't allow dogs to breed. We spay them. We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet these women are literally having litters of children." A flyer issued by Project Prevention evoked a kind of disdain for drug-addicted women: "Don't Let A Pregnancy Ruin a Drug Habit," it said.
Barbara Harris, however, dismisses Paltrow's criticisms. "We don't target any particular race," she told me. "We don't target poor people; but obviously I don't think a rich drug addict is going to be interested in our offer. We target drug addicts, and that's it. Skin color doesn't matter, and we believe all babies matter, even black babies. I've heard all of [Paltrow' s] statements; if she wants to spend her time campaigning, you know, for the rights of these women to have as many children as they want, well then she needs to step up and take a few home and raise them. There's no common sense reason, there's no rational or logical reason why a drug addict or an alcoholic should get pregnant. Even she couldn't give you one."
As for her likening pregnant drug addicts to breeding dogs, Harris said, "that wasn't a comment made by me but by a sister of one of our clients, and I repeated it." Her critics will bring the quotation up, said Harris, "but it doesn't matter to me, because I'm not sorry for it, and I wouldn't take it back, because I know for a fact that last year in California there were more dogs adopted than there were children. No, there really is no comparison between these children and animals; the animals are treated much better." Harris said that the flyer, "Don't Let A Pregnancy Ruin A Drug Habit," was designed "by a former drug addict who thought it would be powerful and it would work. I don't know, because I'm not a drug addict, so I just took their word for it. I don't apologize for the flyer."
Harris does not deny that Project Prevention does not monitor the money it gives out. "They can use the money for whatever they want to use it for," she said. "If they choose to use it for drugs, that's their choice. The babies don't have a choice." Harris, however, denies that she simply abandons her clients. "I write to these women. I write to about 50 of the women who have come through our program, and I send them cards, and I encourage them to stay clean or get clean. They call me when they relapse. I scold them, we talk, they go back into drug treatment. I've paid their rent, I've bailed them out of jail; I could go on and on forever listing what I do."
The bottom line for Harris is what happens to the children of addicted and HIV-infected mothers. The "big picture," she said, is not "just the fact that people who can't take care of their kids should not get pregnant; it's what happens to these kids after they get born. These kids are born with the cards stacked against them. They go into foster care and bounce from home to home, usually never feeling loved, never feeling like anybody wants them. At age 18, 50 percent of the foster kids become homeless, to repeat the cycle. If you can prevent that, by asking somebody who is irresponsible to use birth control, until they are responsible, then, to me, it just makes good sense. I mean, the children are the ones who are suffering. If every child born to these women had somebody there for them, it wouldn't be as big an issue. But that's not the case." Harris, who said she opposes abortion, noted that her program helps prevent abortions. "If you use birth control," she said, "you don't have to have 15 abortions."
But isn't Harris saying that certain children should never exist? After all, who can predict anyone's future? Four of her own children would not exist if their mother had utilized Harris' program. "We're not saying you're pregnant, your baby shouldn't be born," said Harris. "We're saying, don't get pregnant. We're saying, prevent pregnancies." However, she admitted that "obviously, if starting this organization had sent us back in a time warp, and my children would have disappeared, I never would have done it."
For those, like Paltrow, who worry that Harris has political aspirations beyond her current efforts, Harris said she has no such goals. She said "that it's probably better that this is being done by a private organization. I don't think the same people who support us for doing this would support the government doing it."
"They say it's just to help people, and the best way to help them is to make sure they don't exist." So said Monsignor William Smith, a Catholic ethicist at St. Joseph's Seminary in New York, when I asked him how a Catholic should look a program like Project Prevention. The "presumption" of such as Project Prevention, said Monsignor Smith, "is that pregnancy is a disease. This is not medicine; this is social control. Are [drug addicts] less human beings than someone else?" The arguments of people like Harris, said Smith "is that we'll neuter them as we neuter pets. It's unacceptable. It's against human dignity."
Smith, it seemed, was not impressed by Harris' insistence that she was working for the good of children. "It's always for the best of reasons," he said. "Not much changes." Monsignor Smith cited the Southern California-based Human Betterment Foundation, which in the early 20th century pushed for the sterilization of "defectives" -- the feeble-minded and insane. In 1909, California became the third state to legalize sterilization for eugenic purposes; eventually, 30 more states would pass similar laws. Experimental programs in California became models for the Third Reich. "The eugenics movement -- Hitler's people gave it a bad name, but it's back," continued Smith. "We bury some of this in our foreign aid. It's not just Democrats behind it; it's Republicans. Three of the biggest hitters on international population control are Warren Buffet, Ted Turner, and Bill Gates." (Warren Buffet was one of Arnold Schwarzenneger's advisors during his gubernatorial campaign.)
That even defenders of "family values" should embrace a program such as Project Prevention should come as no surprise; it is the natural consequence of society's widespread acceptance of artificial contraception, said Smith. "Paragraph 17 of Paul VI's encyclical, Humanæ Vitæ, spoke of consequences that would follow from the wide acceptance of contraception. Particularly, says the encyclical, if couples or individuals [use artificial contraception], who's going to complain if governments force things, or big foundations fund things? All of that has come true."
But, what does one do about the women on drugs who keep having children? "It 's a moral principle," said Monsignor Smith. "You say what Jesus said: 'look, lady, I don't condemn you, but don't do this anymore.' In John 8 it's as clear as a bell. You've got to have a call to compassion and a call to conversion. Now, if they don't convert, you don't compel them. You start all over again.
"It's the risk of human freedom," continued Smith. "When human freedom is well used, great things can happen; when human freedom is poorly used, sad consequences follow. But unless you want to have state control or foundation control or elite control, there is no other option. It's force or freedom."
"Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue [artificial birth control] if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control.... Careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.
"Consequently, unless we are willing that the responsibility of procreating life should be left to the arbitrary decision of men, we must accept that there are certain limits, beyond which it is wrong to go, to the power of man over his own body and its natural functions -- limits, let it be said, which no one, whether as a private individual or as a public authority, can lawfully exceed. These limits are expressly imposed because of the reverence due to the whole human organism and its natural functions, in the light of the principles We stated earlier, and in accordance with a correct understanding of the 'principle of totality' enunciated by Our predecessor Pope Pius XII."
-- From paragraph 17 of Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanæ Vitæ.