Charity Pays Drug Addict To Sterilize Himself

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Project Prevention, an American charity that pays drug addicts to go on long-term birth control or undergo a tubal ligation or vasectomy, has completed work with its first client in Britain, marking the start of the group’s international expansion.

The BBC is reporting that “John,” a 38-year old addict, received £200 ($318) for completing the procedure that will prevent him from having children.

TIME interviewed  the charity’s controversial founder Barbara Harris last April, shortly after she began searching for addicts in Britain. She explained that her charity discourages unfit parents from giving birth—thereby reducing the number of children born addicted to crack and easing the burden on social services.

“Even if their babies are fortunate enough not to have mental or physical disabilities, they’re placed in the foster-care system and moved from home to home,” she said. “What makes a woman’s right to procreate more important than the right of a child to have a normal life?”

She speaks from the heart: Harris has adopted four children born to one crack-addicted woman in Los Angeles.

Even so, a number of addict rights groups and drug charities have compared Harris’ project to Nazi-era social engineering. DrugScope, a charity in Britain, told the Press Association that the Project Prevention scheme is “exploitative, ethically dubious and morally questionable.”

(Read TIME’s article on Project Prevention, “Why Drug Addicts Are Getting Sterilized for Cash.”)