Group pays women to get sterilized, targets women of color

This just makes me so sick.
A group called Project Prevention is doing it’s damage in Philly and the local paper is giving them somewhat-friendly press.
I heard about this “organization” about five years ago when I was interning at Ms. magazine. Except back then they were called C.R.A.C.K. (Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity) and everyone knew what a bunch of racist assholes they were. I guess folks need a reminder.
Project Prevention (a much friendlier name) pays women drug addicts to get long-term birth control and surgical sterilization. Outside of how disgusting that is on its face–let’s just sterilize women, not get them treatment–the group’s blatant racist and classist tactics make them beyond reprehensible.
Fuck, they used to put up billboards in poor black neighborhoods that said things like, “Addicted to Drugs? Want $200?” One of their other strategies is to approach women in soup kitchens. I wonder how many billboards went up in rich white areas where women are snorting coke at their kid’s birthday party or popping Xanax like Tic Tacs.
Barbara Harris, the organization’s founder, is the Queen Bee of bigotry. Check out this quote where she compares her clients to animals:

“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.”

Wyndi Anderson at the National Advocates for Pregnant Women says (via email) that “CRACK relies on the same economic arguments to support their program as were used to justify eugenics sterilization in the United States and Nazi Germany.” She points out that there are real solutions to help women:

“There are things we can do to help women and families. Make sure that when a woman asks for help she can get it. Too often women and other people seeking help for addictions are put on waiting lists, told to come back later, given a referral to a program that will not in fact take them, or told that they are ineligible because they do not have the right kind of insurance. Make sure that women with drug problems are treated the same as other patients.”

So please, don’t let the people of Philadelphia forget who this group really is. Write a letter to the editor:
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Box 41705
Philadelphia, PA
19101
FAX: 215-854-4483
Inquirer.Letters@phillynews.com