Barbara Harris says it began with an 8-month-old baby named Destiny. The child, born a mother addicted to drugs, had been pulled from her California home. She was the fifth child born to that mother and subsequently removed. The Harris family adopted Destiny and helped her through withdrawal symptoms. A year later, they took in Isaiah – the sixth child born to the same mother.
"The next year we received a phone call that she had had her seventh baby, a baby girl. Did we want her? My husband said, ‘Barbara, I’m not buying a school bus,’" Harris said.
They adopted the little girl, Taylor, and then one more son, Brandon. "It was important to me that they grow up together," Harris said.
Harris started C.R.A.C.K. – Children Require a Caring Kommunity. The name of the organization has since been changed to Project Prevention. Harris pays $300 for women who choose tubal ligation. Other women agree to an IUD or an implanted birth control like Implanon. Those women get the $300 payments annually if they remain on the birth control.
The program requires proof of addiction established by court records or a statement from a government official. A physician must sign a contract that says the woman had a tubal ligation or a long-term birth control implanted before a check is mailed. Harris has paid more than 3,300 women and 57 men who have been paid to have a vasectomy. The money comes from donors to the organization.
Project Prevention operates primarily out of Harris’ home in North Carolina. A 30-foot RV travels with the logo "Get Birth Control, Get Cash" and features pictures of women doing drugs and a premature baby. Critics of Project Prevention are vocal about Harris’s methods.
Dr. Hytham Imseis, a local Charlotte obstetrician who works with high-risk pregnant women, including addicts, believes that Harris’ language in the past has been damaging. Her words used to describe drug addicts stereotypes them instead of helping them. Harris once talked about the "litters" of babies that drug-addicted women give birth to, and compared her program to neutering and spaying animals.
"There is a much more constructive way of doing this," Imseis said. "We need to focus on treatment rather than on this sort of strategy of sterilization of an entire population," Imseis said.
Imseis said "it’s not about empowerment. It’s about control, and when you try to control any particular group and as a society try to prevent them from reproducing, I think you’ve crossed a line."
This week Harris is in London finalizing an expansion of Project Prevention into Europe. She has been to all 50 sttaes and said that despite the criticism, there has been tremendous support, especially from the British media.
‘If you believe strongly these women have a right procreate," Harris said, "then get to the hospital and the next time one’s born, take it home and raise it."
