LONDON – A US charity has paid 26 women drug addicts in Britain to have contraceptive coils or implants fitted, it was reported yesterday.
Project Prevention said it had made initial payments of £60 and that a UK-based charity was hoping to launch a similar scheme.
Barbara Harris, who founded the US charity, attracted criticism in October after offering to pay British addicts £200 if they were sterilised.
Martin Barnes, chief executive of charity DrugScope, said the concept was “exploitative, ethically dubious and morally questionable”.
No women took up the offer at the time, but Ms Harris hopes focusing on birth control will be more successful.
She told Radio 5 Live Breakfast: “It’s tough to kick a drug habit, but at least if these women get on birth control it’s one less thing that they have to worry about in their lives.
“People have to understand that these women don’t want to conceive children that are just going to be taken away from them.”
Ms Harris said that Project Prevention paid around £200 to addicts who proved they were using birth control. “We do offer them money, but the money gets their attention and keeps them focused long enough to follow through and do what they know that they need to do anyway. They’re grateful and thankful that they did that,” she added.
UK charity Kaleidoscope Project is planning to launch a similar incentive scheme in the form of shopping vouchers. – (PA)