prevention is better than Prevention

The work of US campaigner Barbara Harris and Project Prevention has recently captured the news headlines.  The scheme is designed to tackle the problem of children born to drug and alcohol addicts and offers cash to users who agree to be sterilised.

There is without question a significant risk to any child parented by a drug or alcohol user.  In extreme cases babies can be born with an inherited drug dependency.  There are a number of ways the problem can be confronted, including education, early counselling intervention and long-term contraception.  Project Prevention goes significantly further than this by seeking to dissuade anyone with a drug or alcohol problem from ever having children.  I think, however well-intentioned this scheme, the project is fundamentally misguided.  A young man or woman with a profound substance habit is by definition in no fit state to make a life-changing decision of this magnitude.  This particularly applies to women, where the sterilisation process is unlikely to be reversible.  It is also the case, and we in CAIS know this, that substance misusers can turn their lives around to the extent that they can become competent and loving parents.

I would ask anyone tempted to approve of Project Prevention to consider what the average drug addict is likely to do with the £200 received in exchange for sterilisation.  It is in fact asking vulnerable young women to exchange their womb for 20 bags of heroin.  This is not a piece of social engineering we should be embracing in the UK.