Eugenics, now deemed an unconventional approach, at work...

[Guest guest]

http://snipurl.com/uutzw

[Honolulu Star-Bulletin]

Plan advocating sterilization

continues to spark criticism, debate, support

By Katherine Nichols

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Mar 15,

2010

 

 

The one-woman show that is Project Prevention

completed a three-day stint in Honolulu last week, generating 37 calls

to the toll-free line and debate about Barbara Harris' unconventional

approach to stopping substance-exposed births by paying drug addicts

and alcoholics $300 to obtain long-term birth control or be sterilized.

 

 

DENNIS

ODA / DODA

Barbara Harris posted information about Project

Prevention Tuesday in a lei shop on King Street.

 

 

Harris said she received supportive e-mails from

people in Hawaii offering to help. Among them was a young woman who

endured her mother's rampant drug addiction and spent most of her

childhood in abusive foster care situations. But some experts in the

field of substance abuse, health care and contraception object to

Harris' strategy, which finds her distributing information primarily in

low-income areas.

"Their approach to prevention is very crude,"

said Pam Lichty, president of the Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii. "It

perpetuates stereotypes about the kinds of women who use drugs." Lichty

called the tactic "superficial."

Harris is quick to acknowledge that drug

addiction crosses all socioeconomic barriers. "Obviously, the wealthy

addicts don't need our $300," she wrote in an e-mail message Saturday

after returning to North Carolina. "Drugs do tend to be in the

lower-income neighborhoods, but to assume that all those addicts have

always been poor is ignorant!" Of more than 3,000 clients, she claims

to have paid at least two people who once made six-figure incomes

before succumbing to drug addiction.

PATH (Perinatal Addiction Treatment of Hawaii)

Clinic Executive Director Renee Schuetter said she found the positive

in Project Prevention's presence in the islands. Not only did it spark

thoughtful discussion in her clinic -- in which all of the mothers have

struggled with drug addiction at one time or another -- but it brought

attention to a topic people prefer to ignore.

"Pregnancy provides an incredible opportunity to

provide a woman with the support she needs to stop addiction and be a

good parent," Schuetter said.

Schuetter, who keeps a large bowl overflowing

with condoms next to the clinic's kitchen area, thinks it is essential

that women of all socioeconomic groups be able to obtain long-term

birth control.

But sterilization is another matter entirely,

which tells women "they can't change and don't have value," said

Schuetter. "It doesn't make sense to trample of their rights now in the

name of preventing child abuse. It's re-victimizing them," she said,

because many of them were drug-addicted babies themselves.

"I think she's well intentioned," Schuetter said

of Harris. "I'd just like to widen her vision a little bit and tweak

her program so that it builds a stronger and more inclusive community."

The state's Quest insurance program covers

several types of long-term birth control methods and sterilization, a

Kaiser spokesperson said.

But Schuetter noted getting Quest coverage can

be a "nightmare" for an addicted woman living on the streets.

Therefore, contraception is not always as readily available as it

should be.

Planned Parenthood of Hawaii is trying to change

that. The organization wants women to know that an entire spectrum of

health services are available to them, including easily accessible

contraception, testing for pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases,

gynecological exams and family planning.

"We really care for the whole patient in a way

that's not judgmental," said Katie Reardon, vice president of

Government and Public Affairs at Planned Parenthood of Hawaii.

Harris' approach appears to be coercive, noted

Reardon. "We'd hate for people to think that anyone is a throwaway."3

 

 

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