From "Bush Doubles AIDS Relief Funding While Congress Introduces Bill to Cut Modest Abstinence Requirements" by John and Steve Jalsevec, posted 6/6/07 at LifeSite.net
On May 30th President Bush announced his plan to double the funding to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The original commitment made by the President in 2003 was $15 billion, making the sum of the new funding $30 billion. If Congress approves the President’s funding, then in total the United States Government will have spent $48.3 billion on fighting AIDS over the space of ten years.
“Once again, the generosity of the American people is one of the great untold stories of our time,” Bush said in announcing the proposed funding increase. “Our citizens are offering comfort to millions who suffer and restoring hope to those who feel forsaken.”
Even prior to the announced doubling of PEPFAR funding the AIDS relief plan was the largest commitment ever by any nation for an international health initiative dedicated to a single disease. PEPFAR has made available antiretroviral drugs to literally hundreds of thousands of AIDS sufferers since its inception, and has helped prevent AIDS infection in countless others.
At the same time as Bush has announced the unprecedented increase in funding for PEPFAR however, a number of senators, led by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) have introduced a bill that, if passed, would strike down a PEPFAR requirement that says that a certain amount of the program’s funds must be spent on abstinence education and promotion.
...since the initiation of the program in 2003 pro-abortion/contraception/family-planning organizations have repeatedly accused the Bush administration of ideological bias and of hindering the fight against AIDS by requiring that money be spent on what they believe are ineffective abstinence programs. Instead these groups call for the widespread provision of condoms as the most effective means of prevention.
Thought for the day: Morality is 100% effective in preventing AIDS.
Pro-life/pro-family advocates, on the other hand, point towards the consistent success that abstinence education has had in lowering the infection rates, and point out the serious dangers of pushing condom use as a primary means of fighting AIDS, given the failure rate of condoms. In 2003 the United Nations AIDS agency (UNAIDS) admitted that condoms have a significantly high failure rate in protecting wearers from the transmission of AIDS.
In Uganda, on the other hand, where abstinence was stressed as the primary means of AIDS prevention and the use of a condom as a last alternative, AIDS rates fell dramatically. Pro-family advocates are wondering why the very small abstinence requirement is being contested when it has obviously helped save so many lives.
... A serious concern about the Bush initiated AIDS program is that the United States’ Global AIDS Coordinator, with the role of leading the implementation of President Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, is Mark Dybul, an active and “open” homosexual.
Dybul was sworn in by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice October 10, while his homosexual “partner”, Jason Claire, held the Bible.
Read the whole article.
