They're spaying and neutering humans now. Holy crap.

The headline of the UK's Daily Telegraph article was the first shocker: "First drug addict sterilized under 'cash for vasectomy.'" Humans are paid 200 pounds (or $300) to self-sterilize in England? It brings to mind mobile ASPCA trucks and Bob Barker's closing message on every "Price is Right" episode. Treating addicts like stray animals, is going too far; even for a country responsible for Simon Cowell.

Then comes shocker #2: "Project Prevention, the charity running the scheme, has made similar payments to thousands of men and women in America in a crusade to prevent them having children who may inherit their addictions," continues the article.

Wait, it's an American organization? Turns out the attempt to keep drug addicts from having kids was set in motion in 2006 right here in the States and has now sterilized at least 3000 people nationally through permanent measures like tubal ligation and vasectomies.

The reasoning is to protect unborn children from a life of addiction and neglect. Deborah Harris, the organization's founder, launched the program after adopting four children born to drug-addicted parents. But her methods have met with outrage from several women's advocacy groups, especially after Harris made the following statement in a 1999 Marie Claire article: "We don't allow dogs to breed. We spay them. We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet these women are literally having litters of children."

Comparing women in crisis to dogs is not only cruel but hopeless. What kind of society gives up on its own people, many of them victims of circumstance? And what will cutting off their human right do to their will toward self-betterment? It also calls into question carrot-dangling to a person who may not be of sound mind, ill-equipped to turn down a small sum of money in exchange for a life-altering decision. Paging Rod Serling, we've got a "Twilight Zone" episode on our hands.

But the first Brit to take the offer, a 38 year-old heroin addict named John who has battled addiction for close to 30 years, doesn't understand the hesitation.

"It came as a bit of a shock to me knowing I was the first in Britain," he told the BBC this week. "I would have thought people would be snapping up the offer as soon as it came apparent." But not everyone is ready to forget about a future in parenting, even if they're in the throes of addiction. Or maybe they're not willing to give up on themselves.