The face of AIDS is female. Marie Coco, writing in Newsday says, "Hers
is not a picture Americans want to see but . ... The International
conference on AIDS in Barcelona bares the truth. Women
-- heterosexual women in sanctioned relationships are the world's chief
victims of AIDS." By extension, so are their babies. And 94% of them
live in poor countries where their access to birth control and medical
care is almost nil.
When we realized what was happening to women in Afghanistan under the
Taliban, we were outraged . When we heard statistics of women in Africa
and Asia dying by the thousands of AIDS we were frightened. Naively we
thought the richest nation in the world would, at the very least, give
lip service to the health and welfare of women throughout the world.
Wrong. Once again last week the Bush administration blocked money for
family clinics abroad, this time in a rebuff to its own Secretary of
State, Colin Powell. It denied the grant of $34 million which had been
appropriated by Congress to the The United Nations Population Fund.
The Executive Director of UNFPA, Mrs. Thoraya Obaid said, "the decision
not to grant the $34 million in 2002 will cost thousands of women and
children their lives."
Why did Bush block it? He alleges that UNFPA gives tacit support to
China's one-child policy which allows abortion. But according to
Susan Cohen of the Guttmacher Institute, "The United States has
constantly monitored the UNFPA program in China and in other countries
and has praised the program for improving the status of human rights in
countries where it functions. This is about an Agency that has nothing
to do with abortion, that has nothing to do with coercion." UNFPA
operates projects that provide contraception and gynecological services
for women, teen pregnancy prevention and HIV/AIDS prevention in 142
countries -- without help from the United States.
Women all around the globe are being hurt by the views and political
influence of the American religious right.
But let's go back a little for some more of the picture.. On his very
first day in office, President Bush re-instated the "Global Gag Rule,"
a Reagan administration attempt to insert contentious domestic abortion
politics into the international arena. The Mexico City Policy, the Gag
Rule, prohibited foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
receiving U.S. funds from providing abortion, abortion counseling or
related services with their own privately raised funds (no taxpayer
money involved). This denial holds even where the services are
provided in countries where abortion is legal and the NGO's practices
are consistent with local law, policy and standards of medical practice
.
President Bush Senior continued the Gag Rule, President Clinton
rescinded it, and President Bush Junior, under pressure from his right
wing, reinstated it. By eliminating these funds we are denying to women
around the world who have no other way to get it, access to birth
control information and contraceptives and some protection against
HIV/AIDS.
But that's still not all. Back in 1979 America helped the U. N. write
an international bill of rights called the U. N. Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Since then
170 countries have ratified it. The United States, along with
Afghanistan, is one of the 19 members who have not ratified it. Ellen
Goodman wrote, "By not joining the international community America
damages its authority to call others to account."
Three for three. We cannot solve the frightening spread of HIV/AIDS
alone. But in our position of leadership and wealth, we do have an
obligation to help.
Compassionate Conservatism. Where is the compassion?