Poverty and Norplant Can contraception reduce the underclass? Two stories from yesterday's newspaper: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves Norplant, a contraceptive that can keep a woman from getting pregnant for five years. A black research organization reports that nearly half the nation's black children are living in poverty and that the younger the child, the more likely he or she is to be living with a single mother on wel- fare. "Growing numbers of them will not succeed," the study's author says. As we read those two stories, we asked ourselves: Dare we mention them in the same breath? To do so might be considered deplorably insensitive, perhaps raising the specter of eugenics. But it would be worse to avoid drawing the logical conclusion that foolproof contraception could be invaluable in breaking the cycle of inner city poverty one of of America's greatest challenges. The main reason more black children are living in poverty is that the people having the most children are the ones least capable of supporting them. (The black middle class is growing, but its birth rate is very low.) This trend, as Children's Defense Fund president Marian Wright Edelman has said, "practically guarantees the poverty of the next generation of black children." Now there are many ways to fight back from better prenatal care to better schools. But it's very tough to undo the damage of being born into a dysfunctional family. So why not make a major effort to reduce the number of children, of any race, born into such circumstances? (More whites than blacks live in poverty, though poor blacks make up a higher percentage of people who are more or less permanently on welfare.) No one should be compelled to use Norplant, which involves a doctor implanting matchstick-size capsules in a woman's upper arm. But there could be incentives to do so. What if welfare mothers were offered an increased benefit for agreeing to use this new, safe, long-term contraceptive? Remember, these women already have one or more children. And they can change their minds at any point and become fertile again. (This is not Indira Gandhi offering portable radios to women who agree to be sterilized.) At the very minimum, Norplant, which will probably cost $600 to $1,000, should be made available for free to poor women. All right, the subject makes us uncomfortable, too. But we're made even more uncomfortable by the impoverishment of black America and its effect on the nation's future. Think about it.
