AHS Views

After adopting four of the eight children borne by a crack addict in Los Angeles, Barbara Harris started a charity designed to prevent addicts from getting pregnant. It’s the harm reduction end of things – not as good as the mother’s getting the addiction help they need, but it is certainly best for the babies.

What happens to the kids of crack addicts? Check out these scenarios from the Do It Now Foundation:

A baby girl is born in Boston, three months early. She weighs less than three pounds, and clings to life through a tangle of tubes and wires that provide what her mother cannot-intensive care.

A five-year-old in Los Angeles bounces from foster home to foster home, wearing down would-be caregivers with his outbursts. When things don’t go his way, he kicks, screams, rips at his hair, and bangs his head on walls.

A girl is found dead in a New York apartment. Her neck is broken, but she also has a broken arm, cuts and bruises on her face, and welts on her buttocks. She was five years old.

Her nine-year-old brother was luckier, but only a little. Police found him in a closet, with both legs — and eight other bones — broken. Covered with bruises, he was hiding from the monsters who hurt him — his crack-addicted parents.

Are these extreme scenarios? Perhaps. But no matter what the scenario, it’s never pretty.

So why don’t the parents of these kids use birth control?

“I’ve spoken to many over the years and asked them why they don’t use birth control and they’ve told me that all they’re thinking about is getting high and how they’re going to do that,” Ms. Harris told a reporter.

Consequently, she’s paying them to use birth control.

If someone you care about is on drugs, get them into drug rehab now. Every day they’re on drugs risks their lives, and the lives of their children – even those not yet born.

If I were a cop I think one of the most difficult situations I would have to face would be what children of drug addicts go through. Actually, I don’t need to be a cop to see it – I’ve witnessed some of it myself, but nothing as severe as the stories I’ve heard.

What happens to the kids of parents who need addiction help? They get taken care of by court-appointed special advocates (CASA) who do their best to help the parents keep the kids and, if the parents are too destructive, find them another home.

If finding kids another home the right thing to do? As much as some experts agree that being with natural parents is healthy, there’s nothing health about being with parents who are snorting coke, smoking grass, or using speed or heroin. Not only is it a dangerous environment, it is often emotionally unstable, kids don’t get the attention they need, or the quality of family life that ensures they’ll have a good start, and a good future.

There are plenty of people with kids taking drugs. In a sober moment, consider what the ideal would be for raising those kids, and look for addiction help services. The alternative may be, one day, having your kids taken away from you and putting them up for adoption.