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Who is CRACK/Positive Prevention?
CRACK/Positive Prevention is a private nonprofit population control organization in Seattle that 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." The birth control methods that CRACK/Positive Prevention supports are hormone injections (Depo Provera), implants (Norplant), IUD, tubal ligation or vasectomy. None of these methods protect against HIV and there have been a number of studies that show that Depo Provera, Norplant and IUD's have had adverse affects on women's health. For poor women with limited resources for correcting or reversing damages caused from these forms of birth control, these methods can lead to multiple problems. That is, if a candidate for this program becomes ill as a result of the birth control method, she risks losing days at work (often at a low paying job that does not tolerate or compensate for sick leave). CRACK/PP promotes birth control methods that are hardly the most beneficial to women's health. CARA believes that pregnant mothers who abuse substances during pregnancy need comprehensive drug treatment and consistent low-cost or free prenatal care. CRACK/PP'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 is the Seattle Chapter for 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 |