I saw an interview with Barbara Harris of Project Prevention on BBC HARDtalk. Her organization offers cash incentives to women that are addicted to drugs and/or alcohol to use long-term or permanent birth control. See part of that interview here. Controversial issue no doubt.
Project Prevention: Is this a form of eugenics?
19 Wednesday May 2010
Posted in Activism, BBC HARDtalk, Child Abuse, Drug Addiction, Health Care, Life, Project Prevention, Sterilization, Women
afrospear.wordpress.com 
$300 for your ability to reproduce little revolutionaries?!
That’s not only genocide, its cut rate genocide. Ya’ll gotta give me a couple of mili for my seed.
About a year ago, a representative in the Louisiana State congress attempted to run a similar program in that state. The U.S. has run similar programs with women who were underage and has supported programs of this sort in Puerto Rico. This is an old debate about the government’s right to control and deny services to women who have children out of wedlock.
There are several ethical implications to programs that attempt to usurp personal sovereignty for states’ rights. However, the debate has changed. Interjected are the rights of fetuses and of the individuals who bear the burden of children of drug abusers. This conversation runs deep into several additional arguments about social services, personal sovereignty, race, class, and media misrepresentations (evidence by the CNN clip where the wrong name is running on the screen stating that Project Prevention advocates for pregnant women, while airing a picture of African-American children surrounding this woman advocating for sterilization (This picture was a graduate thesis in and of itself.).
Is it eugenics? Absolutely. “Minorities” in the U.S. and other “first-world” European countries are disproportionately affected by poverty, environments where illegal and legal drug availability is disproportionate, and alcohol and other dangerous legal substances are highly advertised.
We must stay vigilant in identifying postmodern racial discourses, race conscious actors, and policies that disguise racial profiling as common sense reactions to social problems. Thank you for making me aware of these new developments in social discrimination.
They’ve amended their plans for UK because of the UK approach to human rights.
http://stuartsorensen.wordpress.com/2010/05/31/propject-prevention-amends-its-plans-for-uk/
The legal argument around adult protection is here:
http://stuartsorensen.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/the-case-against-project-prevention/
Alas,
sterilisation is back on the agenda here in UK. I’m keeping a regular Project Prevention watch on my blog:
http://www.stuartsorensen.wordpress.com
just click the ‘Project Prevention’ category.
The latest blog is here:
http://stuartsorensen.wordpress.com/2010/10/29/project-preventions-cynical-manipulation/
Don’t let these people have their way in UK!
We kicked them back over the Atlantic. No UK directorship AND they backed down over sterilisation.
Good isn’t it?
http://stuartsorensen.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/how-we-beat-project-prevention/