Young South African victims of "abstinence-only" US foreign aid

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Young South African victims of "abstinence-only" US foreign aid

By Jane Hunter, JewsOnFirst

loveLife is an innovative South African organization that works to keep young teenagers HIV free. Part of its program involves advocating condoms. Of course, that isn't the long and short of what it does. But, loveLife's director believes, that is the reason the organization's funding was slashed.

We found out about about loveLife's defunding from a column in a Johannesburg paper, Business Day. The writer, Nicole Fritz, considers the recently disclosed Bush policy of increasing the proportion of HIV funding that must be used to promote abstinence, while at the same time limiting funds for condoms. She also recalls the earlier US "gag rule" that forbid recipients of birth control funding from advising on abortion. Bush's policy, writes Fritz, "might be said to interfere with recipient state's sovereignty and its people's rights to self-determination."

Click here to read Nicole Fritz's column, "Cash for abstinence with Bush's no-sex diplomacy," Business Day (Johannesburg, South Africa), January 11, 2006.
To read the December 10th Baltimore Sun report on limiting condoms, click here.

Here's a sample of loveLife's vibrant website, which you can visit by clicking here:

loveLife reaches a particularly vulnerable group: pre- and newly-sexually active adolescents ages 12 - 17. Moving beyond the failed "do or die" messages of the past, loveLife takes the straightforward approach in addressing the underlying factors that fuel the spread of HIV, teenage pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases, including society's reluctance to address youth sexuality, the impact of peer pressure and sexual coercion, and the obstacles that keep young people away from South Africa's public health clinics.

Meanwhile, First Lady Laura Bush, on an AIDS tour of Africa, termed the division of funds between abstinence and more scientifically credible programs "fair." Click here to read the report on Advocate.com, which posted it on January 18th.

See also: The Aids Health Foundation, which has a long track record of successful work in the developing world.

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