As we first blogged a few weeks ago, Project Prevention—an organization that pays female drugs users in the U.S. and UK to be sterilized—has branched out yet again. Following a lukewarm reception in the UK, it has now turned its attention to Kenya, where it plans to start paying women living with HIV to be inserted with intrauterine devices—a form of long-term contraception.
We put some questions about Project Prevention’s latest move to four reproductive rights experts, two of whom have been leaders in the opposition to Project Prevention in the United States.
The women are:
- Elisa Slattery, Regional Manager and Legal Advisor for Africa for the Center for Reproductive Rights, Nairobi, Kenya
- Betsy Hartmann, Director of the Population and Development Program and Professor of Development Studies at Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts
- Anne Gathumbi, Program Manager of the Health and Rights Unit at the Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa, and founding member of the Coalition on Violence against Women in Kenya, Nairobi
- Lynn Paltrow, Executive Director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, New York City
Can you give us some background on Project Prevention and its founder, Barbara Harris?
Betsy Hartmann: Project Prevention used to be called CRACK—Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity. It was founded in 1997 by Barbara Harris, a homemaker from Stanton, California, with the intent of preventing births to drug-addicted women by offering them cash incentives to be sterilized or use long term contraception. In a logic reminiscent of eugenics, CRACK claimed that the children of these women would be a burden on society, winding up in special education classes, foster care, etc. The original billboards proclaimed: "Don't Let a Pregnancy Ruin Your Drug Habit." There was and is no concern for providing these women with drug treatment.
CRACK spread into a number of U.S. cities where staff targeted poor communities of color, sometimes accompanying police on their neighborhood rounds. What was truly astonishing is how much positive press CRACK, and later Project Prevention, received. Fortunately, however, reproductive rights, public health, and harm reduction groups and agencies started speaking out against the organization and exposed its right-wing funding.
What was your reaction on hearing that Project Prevention is now moving into Kenya?
BH: I am extremely disturbed that Project Prevention is moving into Kenya. Concerned reproductive rights, HIV/AIDS, and public health organizations and activists should do all they can now to make sure the organization does not take root in the country.
Anne Gathumbi: We have many concerns with attempts to use money to coerce women into long-term birth control. Interventions for addressing the needs of women with HIV need to be holistic, integrated, respectful, and responsive to the needs of both women and children, and must be based on evidence. Offering money as an incentive to sign up for birth control is coercive and not based on any evidence that it works. What we need are programs that support prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT). These programs are available in Kenya, and they have been well documented and proven to be effective.
Elisa Slattery: Project Prevention is part of the problem, not part of the solution. By fueling negative perceptions and sowing misinformation about HIV-positive women as mothers, it only adds to the stigma and discrimination that interfere with HIV-positive women receiving key reproductive health care, including family planning services, services to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and maternal health care.
Lynn Paltrow: I was appalled, but not shocked, to learn about their latest international endeavor. Project Prevention started by focusing on one set of highly controversial and stigmatized health issues—pregnancy and drug use—and has now expanded to another—pregnancy and HIV.
According to its website, “Project Prevention offers cash incentives to women and men addicted to drugs and/or alcohol to use long term or permanent birth control.” But in Kenya, so far the discussion has focused on IUDs for women living with HIV. Is long-term birth control less problematic than sterilization?
BH: What women living with HIV need are health services that provide safe, voluntary contraceptive options and the kind of prenatal care and antiretroviral regimens that reduce the chances of their babies being born HIV-positive. Giving cash or in-kind incentives for women to undergo sterilization or long-term contraception is a form of coercion and violates reproductive choice and rights.
They push women into making decisions about birth control based on money, rather than which contraceptive is the healthiest and best choice for them. Project Prevention will only further scapegoat and stigmatize HIV-positive women. In truth, the organization's main mission is ideological—eugenics with a 21st-century face.
LP: In addition to the legal, ethical, and moral questions raised by offering money to financially vulnerable women to use certain devices and medications, there are many medical questions that need to be addressed concerning the effects of various methods of long-acting birth control on the targeted women. Depending on a woman’s age and health, long-term contraception may effectively prevent her from ever procreating again.
AG: This is problematic on many levels. First, women living with HIV have specialized health needs. Certain long-term contraceptive devices have been found to result in serious health problems for some women. This is not a decision that should be taken lightly or rushed into for the lure of much-needed cash.
Second, it treats women with HIV as persons lacking capacity to determine the right health choices for themselves and their families. This is a discriminatory attitude that portrays women with HIV as irresponsible and reckless persons. In reality, women living with HIV can and do give birth to healthy babies. Any reasonable woman provided with proper care and factual information will make the right choices regarding her health and that of her baby.
Third, the practice of paying women to accept long-term birth control is not only coercive but also manipulative. Taking advantage of women in resource-poor settings by offering them money is paternalistic, tokenistic, and amounts to blackmail.
Project Prevention’s message focuses primarily on children. Do they offer any support for improving the lives of the mothers (aside from the one-time payment for sterilization or birth control)?
BH: Superficially, at best. Their main concern is to prevent those mothers from having children. If they really cared, they wouldn't be doing what they're doing.
LP: Project Prevention's strategies whether in the U.S. or UK regarding pregnant women and drug use, or in Kenya regarding pregnant women and HIV, have one major thing in common: their framework. The considerable public relations they do to promote Project Prevention all make it appear that the biggest threat to children's health is their own mothers. This model ensures that blame for medical and social ills will be placed on mothers, distracting attention from male responsibility and the public health, political, and economic conditions that profoundly effect the lives and health of children regardless of what their mothers do. Such an approach undermines public will to fund and support effective public health and development models that Project Prevention suggests, falsely, would be unnecessary if only certain women would stop procreating.
AG: This project takes a very demeaning and stigmatizing approach to women with HIV. It is a gross violation of women’s rights to coerce them into long term procedures that deny them the opportunity to make informed choices about their reproductive health and options. The project must be stopped before it takes root in Kenya.
Project Prevention put out a press release claiming that getting HIV-positive women on long-term birth control is the only way to “prevent the conception of a child who will only be born to die.” What is your response to this?
LP: Project Prevention is making claims that lack support in evidence-based research. Clearly the U.S. has extensive experience with preventing perinatal transmission of HIV—reducing it to two percent. So obviously targeting certain women and seeking to prevent them from procreating is not the “only” way to prevent children from acquiring HIV. If we value the women of Kenya as much as we value women in the U.S., we should be promoting those same interventions to pregnant women and new mothers in Kenya as well.
BH: Project Prevention seems to assume that HIV-positive women will necessarily have HIV-positive children. This flies in the face of medical research and scientific evidence. And it ignores the fact that HIV is a chronic condition, not an automatic death sentence. With access to health care and the appropriate medicine, people with HIV—both adults and children—are living much longer lives than in the past.
AG: Project Prevention’s claims are way off the mark. Overwhelming evidence shows that transmission of HIV can be stopped by giving mothers the medicine Nevirapine before delivery. Project Prevention should direct its energies and resources to the already existing successful programs that reduce transmission of HIV from mothers to their babies. The Treatment Monitoring and Advocacy Project, for example, advocates for a four-pronged approach to caring for women and children in the context of HIV:
- HIV prevention in women of childbearing age;
- Preventing unintended pregnancies;
- Preventing vertical transmission (mother to child transmission of HIV);
- Treatment, care, and support for women, children, and families.
How do you feel about Project Prevention’s choice of target population: women who use drugs in the U.S., and HIV-positive women in Kenya. These are seemingly very different populations. Are there any links or commonalities?
BH: Definitely. For one, Project Prevention mainly targets women of color in the U.S., and now it is targeting African women. This is no accident. Project Prevention's racism is very thinly disguised. Essentially, while it targets specific vulnerable populations, it is trying to build support for eugenic and population control measures more broadly. I find this extremely worrying. There is a long history of population control organizations using incentives and disincentives to pressure poor people to be sterilized. These were roundly rejected at the 1994 UN population conference in Cairo, but they persist, for example in China and India. USAID unfortunately is talking about introducing incentives again into family planning programs despite their terrible history of coercion and abuse.
Africa has also become the main focus of population agencies given that in some countries birth rates remain high. Project Prevention is helping spread the message that African women don't deserve freedom of choice and quality of care in reproductive health programs. Also, there have been increasing reports of coercive sterilization of HIV-positive women in other African countries. This is a dangerous trend.
AG: The groups selected share similar characteristics: they are on the margins of society, ostracized, and suffer double marginalization. They are blamed for infecting their partners and children with HIV. There is a false assumption that they are weak and lack capacity to decide what is good and bad for themselves. This kind of targeting and labeling women further drives them away from coming forward to access services.
ES: In 2008, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Federation of Women Lawyers-Kenya issued a factfinding report, At Risk: Rights Violations of HIV-Positive Women in Kenyan Health Facilities, which found that HIV-positive women are consistently discriminated against in the health sector when they try to exercise their reproductive choices. They are often denied comprehensive family planning information because of beliefs that HIV-positive women should not be sexually active and should not have children. And pregnant women living with HIV are often abused or neglected when they go to give birth in health care facilities, which threatens their health and undermines efforts to prevent transmission during delivery.
Project Prevention is asking people to donate $47 for the Kenya effort—$40 to pay to the woman, and $7 to pay the doctor. What is your message to people considering supporting this project?
BH: Don't do it. There are plenty of good reproductive health and HIV/AIDS treatment programs that need support. Fund them instead.
AG: Don’t. There are other interventions that are based on evidence and are respectful of the rights of women to exercise the choices that are available.
LP: People supporting Project Prevention will be giving money to a program that serves a political ideology over the needs of women, children, and families. Project Prevention suggests that there is a particular portion of the population that should not be, or that is not worthy of, reproducing the human race. The risk is that this will be easily interpreted to mean that this group is unworthy of being regarded as fully human and deprived of the rights, health, and support to which all human beings are entitled.
At the very least, no one should support this program without knowing much, much more about it. For example, in light of barriers to reproductive health care in Kenya, what health risks do various long-acting birth control measures pose to older women? Will Project Prevention work with programs distributing condoms, encouraging men to use them, and empowering women to ask men to use them? Does the project support HIV prevention and education efforts overall?
ES: The real solution to safeguard the lives and health of women and their children is to ensure that all women, regardless of HIV status, be allowed to exercise their reproductive choices and to obtain the necessary information and services to do so.
All of the "criticisms" of the program sound like ad hominem attacks. "They" are the eugenicists; they are racists; they don't "really" care; the payment of money is "coercion"; it is political.
No one quoted speaks to the rights of the individuals who wish to participate. I find the "anti" arguments shallow, underdeveloped and as yet, unpersuasive. perhaps a better population to ask to speak to the merits, or ethics, of the program is the population agreeing to accept payment. let them speak.
Isn't forbidding individuals from taking payment in return for not reproducing "coercive"? and can it not be argued that denying individuals such a choice is both condescending to their ability to make a decision and paternalistic?
These comments from the so called experts sounds to me to be founded on absolute ignorance and sugestions to interventions that dont take advantages of current trends and existing statistics.We cant join and support programs that have proved to all their capacity to not deliver anything to the HIV infected.Their expertise should meet with innovation and provide practicle solutions to social problems.Ours is a new thinking in HIV prevention.Actuall these women need birth control more than anything else and there is a hige unmet need for birth contron.the money we pay is a small cost we are willing to insure an HIV free generation!!
Willice Okoth
Kenyan representative of Project Prevention
For an individual to make a choice, they must be supplied with factual information. The popoluation(drug addicts and women with HIV/AIDS) targeted is vulnurable and has no access to information. Human rights activist are entrusted with the responsibility to speak up for such populations. How many of us have been paid to receive medical services, this is the first of its kind that i have heard about and i doubt the validity of the reason behind it.
I agree with the activists that this project is targeting vulnurable women of color and i would conclude that they are doing acts of racism. If they targeted drug abuser in the US,and specifically selected those who are people of color despite the fact that the white population also abuses drugs. I would like to trace this issue back in the history of the United states where blacks were said to be a weak population and there they should not be allowed to thrive. They were sterilized althought the practice was later stopped.(culturally alert counseling by Garret McAuliffe p.110-111). This was called Pseudoscience, and with this,according to black 2003,more than 60,000 Americans were sterilised and these were maily based on racial and religious attributes. I would want these the would be implementer of this project to proove beyond doubt that they are not headed in a similar direction.
I would suggest that the organisation stop the practice and if they are to continue, to channel the resources to help women acquire anti-retro-viral therapy, sensitization against druga and treatment of the drug acts and sensitization.
Our program is intended to prevent HIV entry points to children by infected mothers as the vehicle of transmission during pregnancy, during birth and during breastfeeding. It is therefore far reaching in scope yet succinct. We realize that there are several factors that conspireto make it possible for infected women to still give birth to 50,000-60,000 infected children annually in Kenya under the watchful eyes of existing interventions and numerous organizations working around the clock to make this not happen. Postpartum infections are on the rise because women lack resources to acquire commercial formula leading to breastfeeding as the only means of nutrition thereby exacerbating virus transmission to the born child. Previous methods of preventing new infections in children have not been entirely successful especially in places we intend to work. When everybody is talking of the rights of the woman, we focus on the rights of the child to be born healthy, the right of the child to parental care and ultimately there right to life.Indeed,the opening words of Universal Declaration of Human Rights are…every human being is born free and equal in dignity and right.Dignity,right and freedom are grossly violated and compromised when children are born with the virus and as a consequent die before five or have to contend with taking care of their ill parent, life in the streets, early marriages, forced labor and heads of households. We are child-centered so it is only natural that we bring the child’s perspective in conversations we make and programs we do.
Our considered project is consistent with the United Nations Strategic Approach to Prevention of HIV infection in infants thus:
1. Primary prevention of HIV infection in women.
2. Prevention of unintended pregnancies in women living with HIV.
3. Prevention of transmission from women living with HIV to their infants.
4. Provision of care, treatment and support for women living with HIV and their families
Most programs have focused on Element 3 and the provision of a package of services seeking to reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV, including HIV testing and counseling in antenatal care settings, antiretroviral (ARV) drug prophylaxis given to HIV-positive mothers and their infants, safer delivery practices and counseling on and support for infant feeding. Elements 1, 2 and 4 have, however, received less attention. We don’t intend to duplicate what others are doing. We are aware that this approach has been hindered by myriads of issues including access to health facilities, educational level, geography, residence, marital status and most importantly low level of awareness of HIV status. In Kenya for instance, as many as four out of five HIV infected persons don’t know their status, 84% need CTX but don’t know their status. Add this to the fact that prevalence rate in women is 8.7 percent as while 5.6 in men and you will know why we work with this constituency not because we discriminate but because they need our services the most. In our approach, we focus on element 2 which is just another paradigm.
We understand that in order to turn the tide against the rising levels of HIV and AIDS in women and children today, a bold,fresh,innovative and creative approach is required which gives greatly increased emphasis to supporting reproductive choices and meeting unmet need for family planning. Among our key messages are the following:
Reproductive health that make people able to have a satisfying and safe sex life and that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so. Implicit in this last condition are the right of men and women to be informed and to have access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of family planning of their choice, as well as other methods of their choice for regulation of fertility which are not against the law, and the right of access to appropriate health care services that will enable women to go safely through pregnancy and childbirth and provide couples with the best chance of having a healthy infant We understand reproductive health in the context of relationships: fulfillment and risk; the opportunity to have a desired child or alternatively, to avoid unwanted or unsafe pregnancy. We achieve this by spreading evidence-based information to make the infected make informed choices reproductive health choices.
We view birth control is a potent instrument in preventing HIV in women and children. We are expanding and intensifying long term birth control to meet a large unmet need for family planning among all women. Infected women who know their status are in particular need of services that can help them to make informed reproductive decisions and provide them with contraception options. This, in turn, can be expected to avert HIV infection in infants by enabling interested women to prevent or delay pregnancies.
Long term birth control provides intrinsic benefits by saving lives and enhancing the health status of women and their families. Enabling women to time and space births leads to important improvements in their health, combats maternal mortality, and significantly increases child survival.
Financial aid
We aim to incentivize infected women with a view to engendering uptake of HIV treatment, care and prevention, filling the gap of family planning through long term birth control and HIV status awareness. We are working in areas where lack of HIV awareness status makes it hard to benefit from programs intended for prevention, care and treatment. By giving minimum threshold of financial aid, we will reduce poverty in the very short run and to improve the accumulation of human capital for the next generation. Giving an incentive is a small prize we are willing to pay to ensure an HIV free world and alleviate suffering from innocent children.
Willice Okoth Onyango
Project Prevention Kenyan Representative
Willice,it’s inherently illogical to say that Project Prevention is protecting the rights of children by preventing their conception. Beings that do not exist do not have rights.
Lydia,that is why we PREVENT.Its all about preventing a problem before it occurs.The benefit of not concieving children who might end up being infected will be reaped in future by HIV cases that never occured.That is the logic
dear Willice,
i find your argument very interesting. is it possible to have your email address with a view to arranging a meeting with you or your representative? i work for an NGO based in Nairobi that deals with human rights issues for people living with HIV
Tess
This WHOLE situation is ILLOGICAL:
First, it doesn't matter what i think! It matters what Africans think. Most likely, we did not even ask them or those infected if they wanted to be prevented from having birth nor should we allow an "American" based "project" to maneuver such operations "over seas."
We know, FACTUALLY, that if a pharmaceutical has a cure they would ultimately refuse to implement such medicine without first analyzing how much PROFIT they can make; this is not 'news'.
We are at a "big crossroad" in "anthropological civilization" as annoying as it may sound now-a-days. To put it simply most of the cures are there, we just cant afford them as "regular people".
In other words, there are affiliated organizations of companies and "regimes" that would rather spend a mere few dollars and commit eugenics rather than spend more money to give everyone drugs that could even heal HIV/AIDS.
The corporate agenda is more important than the agenda of any countries people including in my homeland: America.
I put forth a plan, a solution, if you may--for Haiti (being my parents are from there and i am first generation American) NEARLY A YEAR AGO: a country wide UNIVERSITY; is ignoring that plan not eugenics?! Eugenics is a means to an end for a large group of people opposite of the FREE WORLD Ideology; apparently your prematurely calling it the open society; NO WE ARE THE FREE WORLD.
Being the FREE WORLD now more than ever we must band together; If even one "Eugenicide" goes undetected any one particular nation could be next; i highly doubt many Americans are even aware of this issue. Had i not been a subscriber to the Open Society I would not have even heard that this "Eugenics Operation" was plotting this catastrophe.
Ultimately, cures are available at a price most can not afford and everyone should begin to resist any connotation that is otherwise. This PLUTOCRACY knows it is losing POWER and is internationally scrambling to form a thicker plot that ensures its control over all means and resources; i do not mean to make this political ...i mean to say that if this "eugenicide" persist--any Kenyan should be allowed to press charges to/at the "UN"; that is not a doubt or even a question--i only deal with FACTS.
Eugenicist believe they are "saving lives" and "decongesting society"; being a scientific mind not only do i KNOW there are cures that stem from the "creation" of any "virus" (Virology), I know that Eugenics could just as easily be "rebuddled" in debate i.e.,if the cures or even the research were made available would we not have to worry of the "fetus", or child living a normal life? This should be reported by Africans IMMEDIATELY!
If you can not bring this forth to the UN itself then it was planned that way "via" the corporate agenda. I am not one for conspiracy theories but i am one to take note on Global Policy and Global Media-- and right now both seem to be at a vulnerable point; a point so fragile we may not even have any platforms within a Fiscal Year; a point that exposes our disadvantage: We are seen as "COMMONERS"--STILL!
I am no Kenyan but my advice to any State of Africa (as a NATION) specifically, is to go straight to the UN and claim that a "eugenicide" is being proposed or has already ensued. To be honest, i am as ashamed as i have ever been that this is an "American Operation"; my apologies have been stated, as--this is not representative of me, my thoughts or what i was raised to believe in.
Ricardo E. Francois: "Revolutionary Founder of the International Periodic Table of Elements Stock Exchange &INDEXES"
"Never take NO, for an answer; just keep CLIMBING UNTIL YOU CAN SEE WHAT I CAN SEE..."--RIC
Ricardo,you sound very political which makes you miss the mark of what we are doing by avery HUGE margin.I am a kenyan and after interacting with several of our clients,who are very enthusiastic about what we are doing form them,I am only humbled by overwhelming support to participate in our work and exitement that knows no bounds.You can interpret this to mean anything to you(you will always get any meaning you want out of a situation)but that doesnt make us fail in our promise to bring the much needed help to our clients and protect children who are the ultimate invisible victims of the AIDS pandemic.We are leaving the agenda of cricism to those who are complacent with the status quo and are so rigid to alternatives as we embark on the more urgent theme of alleviating suffering
Tess,My email: owillice@yahoo.com
The evolution of HIV/AIDS remains a ever evolving battle. Sure, this sounds a little extreme but when you think of free will, then who are we to condemn the decision of individuals who want to accept money for not risking, bringing a child into this world with the possibility of contracting HIV/AIDS? It seems to me that Open Society Foundation Readers and maybe even staff, aren't as "OPEN" as they pretend to be. First time that i've noticed a real obvious case of hypocracy.
I think this is really troubling. This group is going to go in and wave cash in front of very poor women -- more cash then some of these women see in a year!! -- and we're supposed to believe that this is not coercion?? Of course it is! People have been known to sell organs for cash. Don't bribe women to make medical decisions. This is blatantly unethical. This is not like using cash as an incentive to encourage using condoms, IUDs can cause complications for women who already have health problems, like HIV. There would be outrage if we started this "have an operation, get cash" scheme in mainstream society. HIV-positive women are not expendable. They have rights, too. If you care about women and if you care about families, support health care services that work.
Lisa,We have taken ethical considerations in place.Our clients will go through a guidance and counseling session,we will tell dangers and benefits of IUD then based on informed consent,one participates or participates not
we Africans know that some foreign agents are infecting Africans with HIV virus
Stop further stigmatization of women who are HIV
By Mary Njeri the Executive Director of Coalition on Violence Against Women in Kenya COVAW(K)
It is unfortunate we have spend time and energy discuss PP other than encouraging women to live positively and appreciating the improved health health now available. women's, health and human rights organizations around the world marked "African Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Rights Day on last month and what came out clearly is that over the years, women and their bodies have become the battleground of international development policies.
And that services that are being provided normally have little or no considerations of women’s needs, their wishes or their circumstances.
To make matters worse, women who are HIV apart from being discriminated against majority of them continue to experience violence.
If the government can allow the Project Prevention to operate in Kenya it will be going against its own laws which safeguard the rights of the PLWHA and women included.
Systematic stigmatization of women who have HIV/AIDS, including targeted instances of forced sterilization and coercive abortions, particularly in the context of Namibia and now maybe home, Kenya is slowly being used to discriminate against women.
While the cases of sterilized women may be yet to be revealed, the concept of Project Prevention undermines health and well being of women and their unborn children. This goes against the principles of regional and international instruments we have ratified as a State and also the new constitution under the Bill of Rights and also in the case of The African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights on the rights of women in Africa
(ACHPR) Article 14 on Health and Reproductive Health Rights explicitly states that women have the right to control their own fertility.
As women human rights activists, we should collectively say no to Project Prevention before it takes root in Kenya. We should immediately prioritize addressing coercive and forced sterilization of women living with HIV/AIDS, raise our voices and condemn such atrocity in the spirit of implementing the main theme of the African Women's Decade "Grassroots approach to gender equality and women's empowerment". Empowering of the women at the grassroots would lead to more informed consent.
Offering USD 40 for an IUD is a form of mediocrity. This is derogatory and is an infringement of their human rights and bodily integrity.
Its amazing that you think stopping conception will be the end of the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus! What about the men who will sleep with these women, are u going to sterilise the whole population? How does it work,all i hear is that you re saying eradicate the kenyans and then HIV/AIDS will disappear from the surface of the earth.
I wonder how you are giving children a right while denying them a right to be born, denying them a right to life through bribing their mothers to use IUD by giving them a one time payment. Why dont you give them information and let them exercise choice without paying them. Why then do u only emphasise one method of contraception and then call it choice?
There other diseases like Asthma, anaemia, schizophrenia,that children inherit from their parents, have these diseases been eradicated through such methods, isnt it worse that they are incurable and spread to all the family throughout all generations! I have seen children who have had to live with such torture but they are always supported to survive. I know you will retariate saying that those diseases do not have enough effects unto the children but what i want to say is that, the solution that you are bring up is not logical. It doesnt have enough evidence. Its baseless and unachievable. It only has "negative achievement"
Suffering of these children can be reduced with giving the women prevention information and helping them exercise their choice, how many time have women or men been paid to use condoms or to abstain, or to use other contraceptives.
Find ways of using that money in a way that exercise the choice of both women, children and the general population.