From PEOPLE Magazine
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Her rage wasn't directed at little Isiah, of course—under her doting care he has grown into a typically boisterous 8-year-old. But not all the 500,000 drug-exposed babies born in the U.S. each year are so fortunate. After adopting four of the same addict's children, Harris was fed up. So in 1994 she founded CRACK (Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity), a nonprofit program that pays drug addicts $200 to be sterilized or undertake long-term birth control, such as Norplant hormonal implants or regular Depo-Provera shots. After completing an interview and questionnaire, a client has at least two months to get the job done and return a form signed by a doctor before Harris hands over the cash. "These women are not getting pregnant because they love children," she says, "but because they're totally irresponsible. It's sad that they're on drugs, but the bottom line is, I don't want them to get pregnant."
To that end, Harris is expanding her Anaheim, Calif.-based operation with an office in Chicago and billboard advertising in Minnesota, Florida, Illinois and Los Angeles. So far, 64 women have taken the tough-talking former waitress up on her offer, among them Sharon Adams, 39, who now helps recruit others. A former addict, Adams gave birth to 14 babies in 22 years, 8 of them addicted. Three were stillborn, 1 died from an accidental poisoning at age 2, and 6 of the 10 survivors are in foster care. "I would go home from the hospital and smoke the same day," recalls Adams, who quit drugs in 1997 after becoming pregnant with her last child, Kendall. "The kids would flash back and forth in my mind, but there was nothing I could do."
Tracy McGruder, 34, felt just as helpless before she received Norplant—and $200 from Harris—in September 1998. "I was out there selling my body, doing whatever I had to do for the drug," recalls McGruder, who had five children, two of them drug-exposed. The eldest, 18, lives with McGruder's sister, two are up for adoption, and one daughter is being raised by her father. Though drug-free now, "I don't want to take the chance of hurting any more kids or bringing a baby into this world and having someone else raise it," she says. "It's just not worth it."
Harris certainly doesn't think so. Working from a cramped $310-a-month office while her younger children attend school, she has raised about $150,000, including $10,000 from talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger. "I couldn't believe that somebody had the courage to stand up and worry about the children and take the very very politically incorrect position that she has," Schlessinger says of Harris. "This was a woman after my own heart."
But CRACK has some equally vocal critics. "I asked her very nicely to please stay away from our clients," says Kathryn Icenhower, executive director of the California-based SHIELDS for Families, which provides mental health services and housing to the homeless. Offering addicts cash for contraception, she says, "is kind of like saying to a homeless person, 'I'll let you come in here and sleep tonight if we sterilize you.' "
The ACLU agrees. "It's coercive," says ACLU attorney Rocio Cordoba. "To a woman who is very poor and suffering from substance abuse, $200 is a lot of money." Furthermore, the NAACP says it has received more than 100 complaints claiming CRACK is racially motivated. Harris refutes that charge by pointing out that husband Smitty is black (they have two sons, Brian, 19, and Rodney, 17) and that all their adopted children are black. She also notes that of her 64 clients to date, only 26 are black. As for the other complaints, "I tell people if they have a better solution, I'll work with them," she says. "But so far no one has come up with anything."
Harris learned early on to stand up for her beliefs. Born in Lancaster, Pa., one of eight children of a truck driver and his wife, she was initially so shy she preferred to fail rather than speak up in class. That changed when her parents persuaded her at 19 to put her first son, Stephen, up for adoption because his father was black. A month later, Harris reclaimed her son from a social worker and eventually settled with him in California.
Through friends in 1979 she met Smitty, a surgical technician. Two sons quickly followed. Then, craving the company of a little girl, Harris decided to become a foster parent and took in 8-month-old Destiny in 1990. Though born addicted to crack, Destiny was over the worst by the time Harris brought her home. The same could not be said of her brother Isiah. But despite the trauma involved in dealing with his problems, Harris took in their sister Taylor in 1992 and brother Brandon the next year.
Worried at first about supporting such a large brood on his $40,000 salary, Smitty soon came around. "My big concern," he says, "was when would we have to say no?" Together, he and Barbara adopted their four foster kids and added on bedrooms to their toy-cluttered house.
In 1996, Harris caused a national stir when she appeared on Oprah proposing a state law that would make it a crime for a drug addict-to give birth to a child. The bill never made it through the California Assembly, so Harris turned her attention from punishment to prevention.
So far her adopted children are showing no serious damage from their early addiction. But that hasn't deterred Harris from her crusade. Nor have her critics. "The people who come out the loudest against you," she says, "wouldn't take one of these kids home."
Anne-Marie O'Neill
Kelly Carter in Stanton
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