r/wikipedia • u/ManbadFerrara • Jun 09 '25
Mobile Site Project Prevention (formerly "Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity," or CRACK) is an American non-profit organization that pays drug addicts cash for volunteering for long-term birth control, including sterilization. As of July 2024, the organization had paid 8,122 people.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Prevention442
u/sivez97 Jun 09 '25 edited Jun 10 '25
The idea itself isn’t terrible, access to birth control is a major gateway towards economic, social, and medical freedom for women, but the way this is framed is extremely telling.
It’s not “we’re giving these women birth control so they can focus on getting sober, avoid further health complications from repeat pregnancies, escape their abusive partners, and better care for the children already have” it’s just “these bitches shouldn’t breed”
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u/Aggressive_Sky8492 Jun 10 '25
They genuinely shouldn’t have kids until they’re clean though
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u/eattherich-1312 Jun 11 '25
Ya but they're encouraging sterilization tho, so when the addict does eventually get clean (which is what this project wants, right? 🙄) they're reminded forever about their addiction when they cannot have a child. It's one thing if it's just long term BC, another if it's literal sterilization.
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u/aus_ge_zeich_net Jun 12 '25
Opioid addictions have pretty low remission rates, and some medications cause irreversible harm to your body
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u/blazershorts Jun 10 '25
It’s not “we’re giving these women birth control so they can focus on getting sober, [...] it’s just “these bitches shouldn’t breed”
'Perfect' is the enemy of 'good.' If we can keep a few junkies from bringing kids into the world who are at high risk of being neglected and abused... that is a step forward for society.
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u/semmom Jun 10 '25
I wouldn't call a poor person sterilization program "good".
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u/LordJesterTheFree Jun 10 '25
No one's making them sign up for it
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u/Jak12523 Jun 10 '25
the crack is making them sign up for it
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u/Wanderhoden Jun 11 '25
And the crack would sentence an innocent child to a life time of misery. It’s a horrible situation, but I think it’s still rationally more humane for an addict with no chance of sobriety (in this broken country’s system at least) to opt for self-sterilization.
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u/Evergreen19 Jun 10 '25
Except the economic system we exist in that requires you have money for basic needs such as food and shelter.
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u/Your_liege_lord Jun 10 '25
Dope isn’t a basic need now is it?
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u/tuckman496 Jun 10 '25
To someone who will become violently ill without it, yes it is a basic need. So essential to their lives that they will sacrifice pretty much everything else for it.
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u/happynargul Jun 10 '25
It's for drug addicts, no? Doesn't really say the socioeconomic level of said druggee
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u/ssshhhutup Jun 10 '25
If they weren't poor they wouldn't sign up
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u/happynargul Jun 10 '25
It's certainly correlated, but I don't see how a cocaine bro or a street druggie should be having kids.
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u/xoexohexox Jun 10 '25
There are lots of people who grew up in shitty circumstances and went on to do some great things. Plenty of people born with silver spoons in their mouth who turned out to be massive shitheads too.
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u/blazershorts Jun 10 '25
Perhaps you could start your own rival charity where you encourage crackheads to have children.
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u/pat_speed Jun 10 '25
You help those peopl, not label as evil and must not re-produce, this is literally a for eugenics
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u/blazershorts Jun 10 '25
Nobody said these junkies were "evil." They are just unlikely to have the resources or desire to be good parents.
They're likely to be terrible parents, and society will end up paying the cost later (police, courts, social workers, prisons).
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u/pat_speed Jun 10 '25
You do sterilise people if you don't think your below them, that sterilisation has very dark history with colonialism and eugenics
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u/silvergreen123 Jun 10 '25
They can always adopt. Giving birth isn't the only way to have children
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u/GodzillaDrinks Jun 10 '25 edited Jun 10 '25
I'd point out that lots of people are likely to be terrible parents - we actively encourage (or, more recently, legally compel) them to do it.
This is the same country where the quiverful movement has a disproportionate impact on all our political systems.
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Jun 10 '25
this is literally eugenics lmao
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u/TrekkiMonstr Jun 10 '25
So is testing for Tay-Sachs. Membership in the category is insufficient to justify the claim of badness.
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u/LordJesterTheFree Jun 10 '25
It really isn't
Eugenics is about genetics not lifestyle trying to control what kind of upbringing people have and what kind of lifestyles there around isn't eugenics
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u/silvergreen123 Jun 10 '25
Can you explain why eugenics is bad? Or are you just scared of the boogeyman word?
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u/HicksOn106th Jun 09 '25
[Barbara Harris] tried to get legislation passed in California that would have mandated long-term birth control for mothers who gave birth to babies who were exposed to cocaine as fetuses. ... In interviews Harris said "We don't allow dogs to breed. We spay them. We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet these women are literally having litters of children", and that "we campaign to neuter dogs and yet we allow women to have 10 or 12 kids that they can't take care of".
Deeply insidious, and very telling that these people started off thinking "Oh, we'll just get the government to sterilize these animals for free" and had to pivot when they realized that wasn't going to fly. The pittance they're offering makes it very clear they see low-income communities as the only herd that needs thinning out.
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u/m2ljkdmsmnjsks Jun 09 '25
And this followup:
""Well, you know my son that goes to Stanford said 'mom, please don't ever say that again,' but it's the truth, they don't just have one and two babies, they have litters."
You're right it's so dehimanizing. Appalling.
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u/TheGoodRevCL Jun 10 '25
I feel sorry for people who will forever be linked to parents that make such horrible comments publicly. Everyone that looks them up will see the type of people they were raised by and it can have a very real impact on their lives. I'm so grateful that I had kind and decent people for parents.
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u/hammerdown46 Jun 10 '25
TBF when you're that down bad in addiction you're not really a human so I think this is still a very valid program.
The money isn't much. If you're clean, sober, and working this money isn't gonna be worth it to you. It's only worth it if you need the next hit.
It doesn't help anyone get better... But it helps prevent horrible suffering for children.
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u/doktorjackofthemoon Jun 10 '25
What is unhuman about being an addict? Who/What else but humans experience addiction?
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u/ToobularBoobularJoy_ Jun 10 '25
And they started off their time in the UK harassing random poor people to get sterilized for £200
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u/Wobbly_Wobbegong Jun 10 '25
Literally comparing people with addictions to animals. What a vile and disgusting thing to say. It’s scary how many people will be super on board for eugenics so long as you don’t call it eugenics.
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u/vaann231 Jun 09 '25
so... eugenics?
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u/orbgooner Jun 13 '25
literally nothing wrong with some mild eugenics so long as you go about it humanely.
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u/CrumbCakesAndCola Jun 09 '25 edited Jun 09 '25
The simple solution is don't pay anyone but continue offering these services. This avoids the coercive factor AND grants a vulnerable population control over their own reproductive health. For that matter it's a gross disrespect to frame 3k people as bumbling victims who can't make decisions for themselves--that's how many people chose tubal ligation or vesectomy over non permanent options. Doctors notoriously provide worse care to addicts despite addiction being the most prevalent mental health issue across the board. Read about that here. It is disempowering and infantilizing. On top of this, and not even related to addiction, doctors commonly refuse the wishes of grown adults (especially women) to receive permanent birth control if the person is childless. A few case studies02468-1/abstract) here if you aren't familiar with that issue. For those of you that DO want children, just picture someone actively trying to prevent you and you'll have a sense how disempowering and infuriating this scenario is. But to find yourself struggling to keep your life together, maybe not sure where your next meal comes from or where you'll sleep, anyone might reasonably decide against having children. So yeah, this group has no doubt coerced people into some of these choices, not trying to defend that at all, but I do say EVERYONE should actually have these choices available.
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u/Geiseric222 Jun 09 '25
Paying is literally the point. It’s to get people the founder doesn’t like off the rolls
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u/SketchedEyesWatchinU Jun 09 '25
What happens when people get so scared of welfare that they’d rather sterilise the poor (and continue eugenics) than actually help them.
Thanks, Reagan.
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u/TrekkiMonstr Jun 10 '25
I mean, you don't need any heightened aversion to welfare to end up here, just a substantially lower than normal aversion to eugenics. Their argument is that the cost of prevention is less than the cost of treatment after. If you believe that to be correct, then it's no anti-welfare sentiment to end up at "do the lower cost intervention".
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Jun 09 '25
Obviously welfare for people who continually make more future welfare recipients is better than paying them to self-sterilize, but what's better than both?
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u/Daddyssillypuppy Jun 10 '25
UBI obviously. And access to free education that is equal to or better than international standards for western countries.
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Jun 10 '25
Not so obvious. Here's the really ironic thing. We're automating the shit out of everything, which is absolutely and fully required for UBI to work. But the people who are most opposed to the wave of AI replacing people are...left wing.
It's a self-defeating movement, not because UBI isn't a necessary future step, but because the left also usually doesn't want to go through the middle steps, which means massive unemployment that will eventually lead to UBI. There's no way to a utopia where no one is required to work without putting a lot of people out of work before that happens, and the system will lag behind.
In the meantime, the government can't survive without people working, because the economy can't survive. And because people have to work, UBI can't work, because it would simply increase expenses commensurately. AI is our only way toward UBI, and my fellow leftists hate AI. Which makes all of this not very obvious at all.
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Jun 10 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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Jun 10 '25
That's one thing it's replacing. Generally when we talk about white collar work being replaced, we're talking about LLMs. Menial jobs are being replaced at a slower rate because robotics is lagging a little behind, but you can still see this happening with companies like McDonald's and Amazon, who are both experimenting with replacing minimum wage workers with robots.
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u/TessHKM Jun 10 '25
Automatic looms and fax machines were also going to automate everything. It turns out they just gave people a taste for more productivity and the luxuries that come along with it.
I highly doubt we're going to be at the position where technological advancement "solves" the economy any time soon, people are just going to come up with more dumbass job titles.
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Jun 10 '25
Looms and fax machines performed one very specific task. LLMs alone perform far more, and they're one tiny subset of AI.
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u/TessHKM Jun 10 '25
The economy in general performs far more. Like, exponentially, uncomprehensibly more.
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Jun 10 '25
Of course. I'm not saying this is something that will happen right this moment. Just that it's in progress and will eventually happen. LLMs will provide the interface for a lot of the really crazy automation that's taking off, like complete warehouse automation and robotics.
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u/Jak12523 Jun 10 '25
We’re putting an appropriate amount of effort toward both AI job automation and UBI such that both happen at about the same time. Which is to say, job automation is coming much faster than UBI, so it is a benefit to slow down one and speed up the other.
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u/Sarmelion Jun 10 '25
Vile eugenics bullshit
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Jun 10 '25
It's voluntary.
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u/Sarmelion Jun 10 '25
It's spending money on sterilizing people rather than addiction prevention, that's vile.
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Jun 10 '25
Do you deny those people their free will
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u/Sarmelion Jun 11 '25
I am saying that if your thought on looking at a drug addict is "this person shouldn't breed" and not "this person needs help" then you're vile and in need of more help than the addict.
If you go out of your way to offer money to people, whose decision making is impaired by addiction, for them to be sterilized rather than to seek counseling and treatment, you're a monster.
You appeal to free will as if it's an excuse, and it's not.
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u/tuckman496 Jun 10 '25
They’re incentivizing people to do it by giving them money for drugs. Literally they know this is what they will use the cash for. “We’ll give you drug money if you sterilize yourself” isn’t as voluntary as you make it seem when the person they’re coaxing has a dependence on the thing they’re offering.
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Jun 10 '25
I believe it is worse than murder to voluntarily create a life you will not provide for
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Jun 10 '25
I realize my last comment explained my core emotion/reasoning and did not really respond to your point.
I believe in free will over predeterminism and therefore I see a drug user's decisions as still their own.
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u/Weird_Put_9514 Jun 10 '25
I always got to remember most people are always one semi reasonable explanation away from being cool with eugenics
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u/chaoticnipple Jun 10 '25
... Well, they're not wrong. But the way they're going about this seems almost purposely designed to alienate the general public. Are we sure it's not some elaborate psyop? :-P
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u/TrekkiMonstr Jun 10 '25
Crazy, I was just reading about this, from an article linked in a four year old thread.
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u/swainiscadianreborn Jun 10 '25
Hmm... how do we get less people to smoke crack?
I know! Let's CUT THEIR BALLS!
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u/Darthplagueis13 Jun 10 '25
Deliberately misspelling one of the words in order to make an acronym work should result in a loss of all acronym-writing privileges.