BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)

Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
From: Kampervan
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 07:48 PM

KHNic

I think that you'll find that skipy is on your side. he was exagerating to make a point.

First sterilisation/birth control, next a cheaper, more permanent solution.

Skipy was warning of the danger, not supporting it.

Well done with the recovery, long may it continue and I hope that you get the support that should be available to anyone who needs it.

k/van

Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 08:46 PM

KHNic, I have looked at the issue largely from the mother's point of view, that's true. I guess I'm thinking that things like foetal drug and alcohol syndrome are conditions which take place in vitro, which means that the mother is the one passing on the condition. It is also often the mothers whom the children are most "bound" to - th state does all it can to keep mothers and children together, and it is usually mothers who take the decision to put their children in care, or have their children removed.

I'm afraid that, in these particular circumstances, I see the impact of unwanted pregnancy and of unmanaged contraception as being something which has most impact on the women and the children involved. "John" form Leicester is a one-off case, and yes, he had a vasectomy; his case kind of muddies the water for the less extreme, more managed approach of long-term contraception (not sterilisation) which I am suggesting deserves further exploration.

Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
From: Emma B
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 09:41 PM

"I am advocating a strategy that could include long-term contraception" - no problem with that Ruth

However, I have a real problem with CRACK/Project Prevention becoming a 'charity' franchise in the UK

Harris and her organization does NOT recognize addiction as a medical problem which responds to appropriate treatment; the 'quick-fix' approach effectively gives up on treatment as a solution to addiction just as long as women with addiction problems stop having children, nothing else seems to matter - even the care and welfare of any existing children!

It is unlikely that many of the women who are CRACK 'targets' in America have access to the kind of health care which provides adequate contraceptive counselling, screening for any contraindications and monitoring of side effects and, as I outlined above, CRACK selectively limits the birth control options it is prepared to pay for denying poor women an option of alternative barrier methods which protect against HIV infection etc.
- caring about the, as yet, unconceived child does not also mean caring nothing about the potential mother.

Some opponents of Project Prevention have argued that the sterilisation-for-cash programme is part of a resurgence of eugenics in the US and regard the financial support of such people as the Texas software entrepreneur Jim Woodhill who paid a consultancy retainer to the disgraced British academic Christopher Brand (the author of a self-published tract called The g Factor, in which he argues that black people are genetically inferior to whites) as evidence

However, the Yale history professor Daniel Kevles points out there is no actual ambition to improve the human gene pool in their programme the issue appearing to be, more precisely, reproductive discrimination against the poor
- what Germaine Greer once described as middle-class resentment at "having to shell out for the maintenance, however paltry and meagre, of the children of others".

This rings too many bells in the current cut backs in the UK!

During the heyday of the eugenics movement there was a long history in the US of seeking to discourage the poor from having children, which often overlapped with race in the southern states.

Andrew Gumbel, a Los Angeles-based journalist and writer and a longtime foreign correspondent for British newspapers reports more recently -
"In South Carolina, for example, pregnant black drug addicts are routinely arrested and prosecuted for child abuse, since the state courts have determined that a foetus has the same legal status as a child.
In a notorious case a couple of years ago, an indigent woman whose child was stillborn was sentenced to 20 years in prison for murder, even though the prosecutor could not prove that the stillbirth had been caused by her cocaine addiction.
In another notorious case, a hospital in Charleston, South Carolina was taken to court for conducting secret urine tests on its pregnant patients and then calling the police if it found evidence of drug use. Women were dragged out of the hospital in chains, some of them just moments after they had given birth. The US Supreme Court eventually deemed the hospital's behaviour to be unconstitutional"

Lynn Paltrow, executive director of the New York based National Advocates for Pregnant Women, is one of Project Prevention's fiercest critics stating that
"Our concern is that this programme will result in an increase in prejudice and misinformation about drug use, addiction and about the women and children affected by it."

As well as the completly refuted myth that drug addicts are giving birth at abnormally high rates promoted by Harris (although instances of multiple pregnancies can clearly be found, the best research suggests that the average drug user has between two and three children) the very emotive portrayal of thousands of children suffering horrific neurological disorders because of the crack addiction of their mothers - another tenet of Harris's campaign - has little or no basis in fact.

"Beginning in the late 1980s, the 'crack mother' scare led to an unprecedented alliance between doctors and prosecutors, where doctors turned in addicted low-income minority pregnant women to the police for arrest, trial, and incarceration. While middle class white women weren't treated in the same manner.
The instant addiction of crack cocaine and its threat to the health of women and infants were exaggerated by the media and used to justify harsher social agendas regarding women and minorities."
Review - Crack Mothers: Pregnancy, Drugs, and the Media

While no one suggests using cocaine in pregnancy is harmless unlike alcohol, which in heavy doses can cause a set of birth defects known as fetal alcohol syndrome, cocaine is not associated with any pattern of defects. Nor does it produce infantile withdrawal, like opiates

Writing in ""The Social Pharmacology of Smokeable Cocaine". specialists John P Morgan and Lynn Zimmer outlined that
"Cocaine does not produce physical dependence, and babies exposed to it prenatally do not exhibit symptoms of drug withdrawal. Other symptoms of drug dependence - such as craving' and compulsion' - cannot be detected in babies. In fact, without knowing that cocaine was used by their mothers, clinicians could not distinguish so-called crack-addicted babies from babies born to comparable mothers who had never used cocaine or crack."

Lynn Paltrow concludes
"On some level, I do believe Barbara Harris is a sincere person who does not set out to be discriminatory.

But the consequence of her programme is to blame the individual and provide further incentive to government to de-fund any kind of public services."

Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
From: J-boy
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 01:27 AM

Sterilize the whole bloody human race.We've earned it, and then some.Sorry, just feeling bitter at the moment.

Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
From: J-boy
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 01:36 AM

My pub quiz team lost by one point tonight.Hence the call to genocide.

Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 04:45 AM

The trouble is in reality I can't see many males going for it, addict or not at the end of the day a man is a man and unfortunately many men think below the belt and their virility. It is hard enough to convince your average man to have a visectomy (not sure how you spell it) as it is. A woman would be more likely to be convinced into doing this especially if she was at her lowest ebb and then possibly come to regret it later. It just wouldn't work.

Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 03:24 PM

ANY addict, male or female, would jump at the idea, for the £200 it would give them for their next fix...and that's why this whole idea absolutely stinks..because she's baiting terribly vulnerable people with exactly what they need to keep on being addicts...

WHAT is the £200 actually FOR?
WHY does she offer it to them?

Is it done in the full understanding that she knows deeply desperate people will accept money under the most horrific circumstances, so they can get more drugs?

Makes me shudder...

And tell me, has Babs ever sat down with a woman who's been sterilised, or a man...years later, when maybe, just maybe they've been able to break free of addiction, then realised exactly what they were coerced into doing, making it impossible for them to ever have children?

Or does she not follow those folks up?

Maybe there aren't that many...

Maybe some of them OD on £200 worth of drugs.....because *someone* gave them £200 in the first place....

Just some thoughts...

Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
From: skipy
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 05:45 PM

KHNic, a BIG WELL DONE to you, read nothing more into it than the words that I have just typed.
What make me mad & my blood boil is that our service men & women are being killed or torn apart mentally & physically in shit holes on this planet that grow & manufacture drugs! Buy drugs, fund the Taliban ( & others ) Why not just buy a bullet or make a bomb & use it against the troops it has the same effect.
Skipy.

Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 06:26 PM

Buy drugs, fund the Taliban ( & others )

That is another good reason why giving addicts the £200 is wrong. The British government should be providing the help required for people with addiction problems just as it should be providing everything our troops need - but they just haven't got it right yet! However we do not need Barbara Harris trying to fill any gaps because she hasn't got it right either!

Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
From: Emma B
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 07:03 PM

Afghanistan is largest producer of heroin's main ingredient opium and opium is nothing new in that part of the world being produced for centuries and used as a treatment in various diseases.

Ironically, it was only in Taliban era when the world saw a sharp decline in opium crop in Afghanistan.

But opium production has soared since 2001 and drug smugglers in Afghanistan claim they are "untouchable" because their bosses include cabinet-level officials in the NATO supported government. British officials suspect senior government insiders are involved in the drugs trade, but they have struggled to get the support from Mr Karzai, or the evidence, to arrest them.

However, cocaine is the 'favourite substance of choice' in the west and Latin America, particularly Colombia, is the world's leading producer of cocaine

The involvement of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in cocaine trafficking in Central America during the Reagan Administration as part of the Contra war in Nicaragua has been the subject of several official and journalistic investigations since the mid-1980s - examining the allegations that the CIA was using drug dealers in its controversial covert operation to bring down the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua

Former CIA agent David MacMichael explained the inherent relationship between CIA activity in Latin America and drug trafficking
"Once you set up a covert operation to supply arms and money, it's very difficult to separate it from the kind of people who are involved in other forms of trade, and especially drugs. There is a limited number of planes, pilots and landing strips. By developing a system for supply of the Contras, the US built a road for drug supply into the US."

By all means make the sale of drugs in the UK a major offence with maximum punishment for the misery they cause
- but do NOT, as Barbara Harris advocates, criminalize the user or coerce them into sterilization (or less 'safe' forms of contraception) while ignoring causes and treatment

Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 21 Oct 10 - 05:56 AM

"- but do NOT, as Barbara Harris advocates, criminalize the user or coerce them into sterilization (or less 'safe' forms of contraception) while ignoring causes and treatment"

Any thoughts about what we ought to be doing about all the children born to addicts whose lives are blighted by addiction before they are even born?

This is the issues that everyone seems to be neatly skirting around. While we would all certainly advocate whole-society change and hope and advocate for the day it might happen, more children are being born every day and suffering neglect and abuse because of addiction. What do we do about that, here and now?

Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 21 Oct 10 - 06:59 AM

Any thoughts about what we ought to be doing about all the children born to addicts whose lives are blighted by addiction before they are even born?

I agree that they are concerns and I don't think anybody in this thread has actually disagreed with that.

Emma B has said what I would like to have said; I have the same concerns.

Personally,I think that the government needs to be dealing with these problems; not Barbara Harris. There are places in the UK where people with addiction problems are given support and help with many things including birth control. There are not enough places of help and often the service is inadequate, I know. It also depends on the person with the addiction actually turning up for appointments!

However, I have grave concerns about Barbara Harris and her tactics. Like the services in place in the UK at present the services she provides are also inadequate but in my opinion they can also be damaging. She is trying to give the appearance of being overall caring but in fact an overall caring approach does not appear to be what is actually offered by Project Prevention. £200 may be a big incentive for someone with addiction problems to turn up for an appointment but what a price to pay in the long term for that £200!

I have written to the British government in the past about the issues of addiction but I think a lot more people would have to do that if any action is to be taken. I have also given a lot of support to local drug/alcohol agencies in the hope of bringing about change. It is a difficult question.

Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
From: Emma B
Date: 21 Oct 10 - 07:00 AM

In 2008 two social work academics Brynna Kroll and Andy Taylor left Plymouth University to join Artec Enterprise addiction consultants and undertake work as part of a Deparment of Health effort to improve drug treatment services.
They interviewed 42 children and young people aged between four and 20 who had witnessed parental drug misuse, 47 parents or grandparents who cared for them, and 60 professionals who work with them.
Their findings, discussed in Working with Parental Substance Misuse: Dilemmas for Practice (published in the British Journal of Social Work volume 34) explored some of the problems faced by those working with substance misusing parents and raised serious questions for child welfare, addiction and social work professionals.

The full report was reviewed in The Guardian, Wednesday 14 January 2009

"Young people who ended up taking drugs themselves did so as both a form of pain management and a way of connecting with a parent who was otherwise "psychologically unavailable and emotionally absent" because their drug habit came before their children. One 15-year-old girl said it made her feel closer to her parents to share their heroin, while a 16-year-old boy said he used cannabis and amphetamine to be like his father.

Most of the young people said they felt themselves to be "invisible", not just to their parents but in case records and to some of the professionals they encountered. They believed that too little help was offered too late, and that not enough was done to help families stay together rather than being separated by care proceedings and fostering."




Kroll argues this points to the need for ALL drug services to start developing approaches focusing on the entire family affected, not just the user in a more holistic, and assertive way and that all offspring of drug misusing parents should be viewed as "children in need", given the incompatibility of a drug habit and proper parenting.

At the moment I am deeply pessimistic that, in the current climate, any additional funding is likely to be put into such a response - maybe drug addicts should just take the money and run (to the nearest supplier) as we all enter a new period of defining the 'undeserving poor'

Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.

Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 21 Oct 10 - 07:57 AM

Interesting to hear how she talks about being completely disinterested as to whether addicts use her money to get more drugs. She's really not interested in the person and the pain...

BBC 'Hardtalk' Interview with Barbara Harris - Part 1 (Part 2 is also there)


And if we're going down this road,is she also going to start advocating sterilising all the slovenly, lazy, ignorant, rotten parents out there who AREN'T on drugs, but who truly don't give a fuck about themselves, or their children.

There are many out there who are far more interesting in the *I*, as much as they are the *high*....

This woman is odd. I'm sorry, but she claims to be so compassionate on one path, but she's utterly discompassionate on the other...and she's very focussed on women, rather than men. I've not heard her say one word, so far, about the men who get the women pregnant in the first place.

Today I watched part of the programme on the Appalachian Mountains, the poverty, depression, drug abuse and alcohol there...and I listened to a young girl, who was caring for her one-time drug-addicted mother. The mother had fought drugs and won, and she was trying so damned hard to take care of her family. They were all pulling together, somehow making it work..12 people living in one small house, the grandparents house, that is....But the compassion within that young person was awe-inspiring...

And yet, some would rather have her not existing in the first place????

What this whole thing highlights is the absolute contempt that so many within society have for drug addicts and alcoholics. Yes, damage done to children because of those addictions is terrible, but it is society's place to help both sides, not simply annhilate one side, then hope the other side take an overdose so they can't be a drain on society any longer...

We have become so uncaring, so desensitised, so sanitised, so materialised...and we walk on by, walk on past those who have nothing, or who are struggling so deeply in a world that does not understand them, in a world they do not understand.

It is society's fault, equally, that so many have fallen through the net, and are doing so in ever increasing numbers.   You do not have to be the child of an addict to become one yourself. Life is shitty at times, and so many are unable to cope, in a world that is becoming more pressured, more controlled, more competitive by the day.

Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 21 Oct 10 - 08:28 AM

I have watched the video of the Barbara Harris interview. She is clearly on a mission!

She makes sweeping generalisations. I know a lot of people with drug dependency problems. Most of them have no children at all. The most children that any of them have is two. However Barbara Harris leads us to believe that people with drug dependency problems have one child a year; that is rubbish, most of them do not have a child every year.

She is comfortable with the fact that she supported a bill that would imprison for years any woman who used drugs or alcohol during pregnancy. All those women who have an occasional glass of wine during pregnancy (and I was one of them) had better watch out - Barbara Harris is on the case! According to her anybody who uses drugs or alcohol during pregnancy is not responsible enough to be a parent.

She is comfortable giving addicts money because as she says it is their choice if they want to spend it on drugs. So she is happy to let them have that choice to buy drugs but they are not allowed any other choices!

Subject: RE: BS: A snip at £200? (sterilizing addicts)
From: akenaton
Date: 21 Oct 10 - 09:47 AM

I am against the criminalisation of addicts, but if the proper framework was in place, along the lines which Emma has illustrated, I think there would have to be an element of compulsion in any treatment/rehabilitation programme.

As I pointed out earlier, drug addiction has parallels with the male homosexual hiv epidemic, and these two social/health problems, cannot just be left to sort themselves out.