‘Crack Babies’- the Final Solution?

The US-based charity ‘Project Prevention’ has this week arrived in the UK. The organisation is offering £200 to addicted women in order to undergo sterilization. In the US, some 1200 women and 50 men have entered into such a contract over the group’s history. Its founder, Barbara Gamble, defends her approach on the grounds that the rights of the child should supersede those of the mother. She has argued her case in the following terms: “We don’t allow dogs to breed like this, we spay and neuter them.”

What Project Prevention is practising is eugenics—the management of racial stock. Its arrival in the UK has been controversial, and rightly so. While there may be real problems associated with bringing up children while dependent on illegal drugs, there are other, less drastic and potentially damaging ways of alleviating them. Contraceptive advice can be offered as a part of drug treatment, and psycho-social support services may offer stability to drug dependent women. No information is provided on the group’s website about the medical practicalities of the sterilization process, and Release is concerned about the medical ethics involved. The issue of informed consent also looms large; one wonder how ‘informed’ this consent really is.

In addition, the assumptions in play here need questioning: there are many drug using families who bring up their children successfully, and many non-drug using families who don’t. Such problems as do arise should be addressed by policies to end the criminalisation of drugs and the stigmatisation of users, to provide high quality treatment and support where it is needed—including heroin prescribing—and offering people meaningful employment and a real chance of building a better life.