U.S. funding supports contraception, not abstinence

[Sgt_Sweaters]

“Abstaining from abstinence,” from WORLD magazine.

Funds are slacking and the Ugandan ABC program is taking blows.

A hike in HIV infections is what Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa, another witness at the congressional hearing, is trying to avoid. An advisor to Ugandan First Lady Janet Museveni, Mr. Ssempa runs an abstinence program geared toward university and high-school students. Six months ago he told WORLD that U.S. abstinence funds were going to old-school family-planning programs in Uganda (see “Hooked on failure,” Nov. 6, 2004). The campaign eventually brought him to Washington this month.

“Today the abstinence messages are gone,” Mr. Ssempa told the committee panel. “Gone are the ‘AIDS kills’ ads warning teenagers to abstain. Gone are the signs that once warned truck drivers to ‘drive home to their wives.’ The abstinence billboards have been replaced with new billboards advertising condoms with slogans like ‘so strong, so smooth.’ And the HIV/AIDS rate has begun to tick upwards.”

Many funds go to contraceptive providers (e.g., Population Services International). If they so much as mention abstinence in their safe-sex curricula, the U.S. can “count funding for them toward the ‘A’ in ABC.”

 

[bogeyjlg]

What, do you think, is one of the reasons why Muslim fundamentalist think we are evil?