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Positive Prevention, a population control organization in Seattle, offers a $200.00 cash incentive to people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol to undergo a form of long-term or permanent birth control. Their mission is to "save our welfare system and the world from the exorbitant cost to the taxpayer for each drug-addicted birth" by offering "effective preventive measures to reduce the tragedy of numerous drug-affected pregnancies."

CARA believes that pregnant mothers who abuse substances during pregnancy need comprehensive drug treatment and consistent low-cost or free prenatal care. Positive Prevention's approach is dangerous because the use of payment as an incentive to receive birth control undermines the very notion of reproductive choice, drug treatment, and is reminiscent of the Eugenics movement, which had the greatest momentum in the United States (1907-1941).

Positive Prevention's strategy is also coercive because it targets people during a significantly vulnerable period due to their chemical addiction, lack of resources, and economic desperation.

Positive Prevention is the Seattle Chapter for Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity (CRACK) founded by Barbara Harris in 1994 at her home in Anaheim, California. CRACK is now based in Fresno.

There has been resistance in other cities where CRACK has opened offices, including Chicago (July, 1999), Houston (January, 2000), Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Florida (April, 2001). Some of Harris' initial billboards read, "Don't let a Pregnancy Ruin Your Drug Habit." However in Seattle, Positive Prevention advertisements have never been that bold. The "$200 Cash" flyers have tabbed phone numbers at the bottom of the sheet. In the Belltown neighborhood, resistance activists have removed the flyers off of garbage dumpsters, alley walls, inside the doors of homeless shelters for women and Street Outreach Services (on 1st and Pike) and off of Metro bus shelters windows, walls, and removed bunches of hand-sized flyers crammed together in the crevasses between the windows and the walls.

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e-mail: info@cara-seattle.org | phone: (206) 322-4856 | tty/fax: (206) 323-4113
office: 801-23rd Ave S, Suite G-1 Seattle, WA 98144
Last Updated: June 3, 2002 © Communities Against Rape & Abuse

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