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I stumbled upon this story in a comment on reddit and I think what this woman is doing is impressive.

https://news.vice.com/story/this-woman-pays-drug-users-not-to-have-kids

After watching the video it seems the critics can only say drugs don't always harm the children, it's the environments they grow up in, but take away the children and you're still solving the problem, right?

Edit: Another thing mentioned was that doing this would be taking away the person's possibility of a second chance, if they get clean they can't have kids, but one, they don't always sterilize, and two, you might be taking away a second chance, but I personally believe that is better then having a kid and subjecting it to a shitty childhood because of your shitty life choices. The parent chose to take drugs in the first place.

Barbara Harris is doing the work the government should already be doing itself. I honestly don't see how anyone could be against this.

Perhaps outright sterilization might be a little much, but long-term birth control use (IUDs and implants) should definitely be incentivized for drug addicts. Birth control should be free, first of all, but for Project Prevention to pay for the birth control and then pay extra on top of that can only serve to help drug addicts who as a group are overwhelmingly poor.

Conservatives should like this because it prevents abortions and liberals should like this because it helps out the poor. And everyone should like this because it prevents children from growing up in shit situations.

Good on Barbara.

This is kind of thing I don't like to get into, because it sounds good at first... but for what kind of people is $300 a lot of money, enough to give up being able to reproduce? You're not going to persuade rich people to change their lives for $300. It's a little too close to eugenics against the poor for me to support, whether intended or not.

You bring up an interesting point, but most of the clients don't get sterilized, they just get long-term birth control.

I think that Barbara has the best of intentions, and I commend that she's put so much time and effort toward what she believes in, but I wonder if all her clients are in a state of mind to objectively consider the implications of what they're agreeing to for money, especially if they choose sterilization. When they look at this deal, are they looking at it as a major life decision that could impact the rest of their lives, or as easy money for the next fix?

Besides that, it's just treating one symptom of a greater problem, which is the drug epidemic itself. Wouldn't it be better to devote that money to getting people clean to start with? A lot of drug addicts want to be free of that addiction, but drug treatment programs are overwhelmed...some have wait times of months just to get in them, at least where I live, and any money to improve access would be beneficial.

Even paying people to get and stay clean would be beneficial...it's money that they could use to start building a new life away from drugs.