This guy has more influence on American international health policy than do the lives of African women.
“Pro-life” activists are angry at people they call “pro-aborts” — because progressive politicians want reality-based HIV/AIDS prevention strategies in Africa. The strategies being promoted have nothing to do with abortion, but that doesn’t matter — yelling “abortion” is a convenient way for anti-choicers to distract from the fact that their “pro-life” policies are killing people.
President Bush returns from Africa, where he justifiably touted the success of his AIDS relief initiative, to face a battle with Congress over that laudable program. Bush wants to nearly double funding, to $30 billion over the next five years, for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief; the House wants to spend $50 billion and expand the program to fight malaria and tuberculosis. But that $20-billion dispute probably won’t generate as much heat as the provision in the bill, written by the late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Burlingame), killing the requirement that one-third of all funds spent on AIDS prevention go to programs that promote abstinence until marriage. The State Department and some House Republicans oppose the bill, which is now spearheaded by Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village) and is slated to be considered by a House committee next week.
The religious right has begun whipping up the hysteria, calling the Lantos bill the “Pro-Aborts Emergency Plan for Abstinence Reduction.” In fact, the bill would do nothing to alter the long-standing ban on U.S. funding for abortion. What it would do is increase the availability of contraception for poor African women — and that is desperately overdue.
Nothing about abortion. Nothing about reducing abstinence. The plan is about recognizing that abstinence isn’t a cure-all when millions of women die after contracting HIV from their husbands (pdf) and when women lack the power to negotiate sexual and marital relationships.
Conservative “pro-lifers” aren’t stupid; they know that these are the facts on the ground. But because reality conflicts with their ideology, they ignore it, even at great human expense. We say this all the time on this blog, but it’s worth repeating: Political “pro-life” groups do not care about life. They are more than satisfied letting millions of people die, so long as they can keep promoting their dogma.
Religious groups are fixated on the need to stop HIV transmission through premarital and extramarital sex, but what’s killing African women by the millions is unprotected sex with their husbands. Yet the United States spends more on promoting abstinence and fidelity programs ($198 million in fiscal 2007) than on promoting condom use ($147 million in 2007). Roughly 10 million African girls under the age of 18 are married each year, many to older men who seek HIV-free brides. To those wedded to HIV-positive men, marriage often means a death sentence. They have little power to control their husbands’ condom use or extramarital behavior; they are more likely than young men to contract HIV; and those who know they’re infected and do not want to bear children often have no access to contraception.
Have I mentioned that not a single “pro-life” group in the United States favors contraception access? And that the anti-contraception, anti-condom movement in Africa has been almost entirely created by American anti-choice organizations, effectively ushering in the preventable deaths of millions of African women, men and children?
By providing life-saving drugs to HIV-positive pregnant women, the president’s program claims to have prevented 157,000 infants from becoming infected. This is a huge accomplishment. What the U.S. funding hasn’t done is reduce unwanted pregnancies. In a clinic in Uganda where pregnant HIV-positive women were receiving anti-retroviral treatment, 93% reported that their pregnancies were unintended. It’s no surprise that many HIV-positive women do not wish to bear children whom they might infect with the virus or leave orphaned. It’s cruel to deny contraception to such poor and sick women should they desire it. And as a public health matter, it’s far cheaper to prevent unwanted pregnancies than to prevent mother-child HIV transmission. Yet U.S. funding for family planning has flat-lined.
Although some U.S. religious conservatives find contraception objectionable, most Americans do not. Congress should take note and expand funding for family-planning programs to help the HIV-positive girls and women.
Let’s hope a new administration will bring some real help to women, men and children here and abroad.
You know, I read stuff like this, and I think: The president of South Africa thinks beets and garlic can cure AIDS. The president of the United States thinks abstinence lectures can cure AIDS.
Which one is more ignorant?
Oh I get it! We’ve all just had different definitions of “success.”
Whereas, the pro-choicer belives that successful sex ed programs reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and STDs…
The pro-lifer believes successful sex ed programs are programs in which their message is told and everyone signs an abstinence pledge.
So really, this was all a big misunderstanding and we should congratulate the conservatives on their “success” … [/sarcasm]
The pro-lifers believe successful sex ed programs are programs in which all the students walk out agreeing, or at least parroting, that premarital sex, contraception, and abortion are sinful.
They don’t actually care what anyone does. Only that everyone gets “the Good News.”
I disagree, they care very much what people do. For them sucess means more of “certain” people dying needlessly. The higher the death numbers climb in Africa the more of a “success” it is.
Well, condoms probably wouldn’t be as effective in curtailing HIV than would, say, promoting marital fidelity, which is what the bill proposes to do, now would they?
If women have no power to get men to use condoms, why promote condoms? That’s the “duh” moment for your Friday, Jill.
Is someone going to play the world’s tiniest violin for the guy up above, or should I?
Why promote condoms to men who use prostitutes and then come home to their wives rather than just lecturing the men about staying faithful and then ignoring their actual actions?
I think you just won for Stupidest Person On The Internet. Congratulations.
Hint: “woman” and “wife” are not synonyms.
Because increasing the social acceptability of condom use wouldn’t have any effect on how receptive men are to their use – is that your proposition here?
Not to mention, promoting fidelity is fine, but why the heck wouldn’t one want to have a way for women who know they aren’t the only woman their guy sleeps with to protect themselves?
Do you really think it’s easier to get the entire population to commit themselves to eternal monogamy than to make condoms more acceptable? And why wouldn’t you do both – you know, back-up plans?
Is the funding going to dry up before that time though? I’m just wondering if a flawed policy in effect is better than nothing until the next admin gets in. I’m not trying to minimize the horrific effect of abstinence-only funding, but no funding could be disasterous and Bush would just veto any changes because it’s basically all he has left. It seems the smart move would be to double the funding first, then bide your time until you can make changes.
People have been “promoting marital fidelity” for thousands of year with very limited success. It’s nothing I want to see my tax money spent on.
Condoms aren’t the entire solution if they aren’t always used but I don’t see anyone saying they are.
A few things:
1. We should also be promoting internal “female” condoms that women have greater control over.
2. Destigmatizing condom use and making condoms more widely available will encourage men to use them, whether women have the power to demand condom use or not. Wider condom use will go a long way in preventing HIV transmission.
3. Wider contraception access — which is a huge part of the issue, not just condoms — gives women greater autonomy in general. And if you read the article, you’d see that many HIV-positive women would like to prevent pregnancy so that they don’t give birth to HIV-positive children; contraception gives them that ability.
4. Many women lack the power to negotiate condom use, but not all. Wider condom accessibility would allow some women the ability to require safer sex. And, as I said in #2, condom use isn’t all about women’s requirements — it’s also about men making healthy choices. We should be promoting that.
And yes, you did just win the prize for Stupidest Person on the Internet.
Haha! That made my day.
Anyway, the thing that the antis don’t understand is that pro-choicers don’t object to abstinence. We object to abstinence-only programs, because they do not work. Billions of dollars shouldn’t go to a program that doesn’t work to a continent that has more HIV/AIDS cases than any other. If abstinence-only doesn’t work here, it’ll only be less successful there.
check out this amazing recent pro-choice rant by Bill Clinton… http://feministing.com/archives/008650.html#c134674
is it just me…
or is this a deliberate policy? i mean, the apparant policy to spread HIV in countrys’continents that that united states doesn’t like?
maybe that sounds totaly bitchy or paranoid, but i really do have to wonder what the fuck Bush thinks he’s doing? its either A) ALL of these people are so stupid/ignorant/uncaring (not just about their own religious laws, but about the deaths of untold numbers of people, including BABIES) or B) they are deliberatly cultivating a genocide.
okay, yes, either-or logic tends to be flawed. but, i have another (relatively unknown) piece of data to throw in that…
(some*) people decended from people who survived the Black Plague have a genetic, partial immunity to HIV. which doesn’t include most of the population of Africa. “Americans” don’t need to worry, because they have “proper” European ancestry – those in “America” who DO need to worry aren’t “proper Americans”
okay, yeah, conspiracy theorys at 530 in the AM. but still…
*scientists are split as to HOW MANY people this includes. i can’t find the studies. but thats not totally surprising, i think i pulled them off of college websites, when i was writing an anthropology paper, and i’m at a different school now. but the studies i read had worked in China and various parts of Europe, Africa and South America. i will try to find it after sleep…
Babies.
The forced birth lobby protest with bloody pictures of aborted fetuses, and little babies.
We SHOULD show them worse, hold up to their faces what they try to shove out of their reality.
Pictures of the fetuses saved, that became orphans, with the stats and lines of what happens to them then.
Pictures of the children born with aids.
Pictures of the women who died of aids, contacted from husbands who cheated, husbands who they can’t say no to, husbands they didn’t chose. Pictures of the children they’ve left behind. Pictures of how much of an hellhole a village can become when aids overwhelms in.
Shove it in their sanctimonious faces.
[...] the people who are suffering and dying as a result of our international policies (preemptive war, “pro-life” health care, etc) will be just thrilled to hear that God is on the GOP [...]
As much as I want to pretend that I am above all of that…
HELL YES!
I’m sorry, but if most people who consider themselves “pro-life” actually were made to sit down and look at what their preferred policies do, actually forced to, say visit and volunteer, helping women and children in Africa, who are dying of AIDS, and hearing their stories, if they actually were forced to listen, then I reckon the “pro-life” movement would be shedding its members like nobody’s business.