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Why Are We Still Funding Abstinence-Only Programming?
It seems you can't keep a bad idea down. Even though the Obama administration has pledged that science will finally trump ideology when it comes to global AIDS prevention, we recently learned that U.S. funding for failed prevention programs is continuing.
Obama's commitment to evidence seemed particularly promising in eliminating the programs that promote only the "Abstain and Be faithful" messages (dubbed "AB programs") without giving any information about female and male condoms. But just two months ago, the U.S. government called for proposals to implement AB-only programs in Nigeria for youth and couples.
Get ready for the very ironic title of the government's request: "Providing Quality Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Prevention, Care, and Treatment Services in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)." The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued the request in May.
Within the prevention section, the CDC asks for development of AB-only programs for young people and couples, and coordination of the "Abstinence and Be Faithful Initiative." It also sets targets for how many people should be reached with abstinence-focused interventions. Apparently, they think the "comprehensive prevention" part comes in the brief mention of "targeted interventions among high-risk groups." We can guess that this might be part that (probably) includes condoms, as it targets sex workers, men who have sex with men, and truck drivers -although it's a mystery to me why it isn't spelled out that these programs should include condoms.
Here's the thing that U.S. decision makers still don't seem to get: giving condoms to truck drivers and AB messages to "regular" couples is NOT comprehensive prevention. Marketing female condoms to sex workers while young people can't get access to them is the same rights-violating, health-endangering idiocy that has been failing for the past decade.
This is not hard to figure out. If you give condoms only to groups thought of by society as "promiscuous," what do you think will happen to a woman who insists on condom use with her husband that she suspects of cheating? If you do not provide information about using female and male condoms to young people, even if they successfully delay sex for years, how do you expect them to know how to use them once they start having sex?
"Comprehensive prevention" is not a country-level concept-it is an individual-level concept. Everyone has the right to, and the need for, full information about how to be healthy. That's the only way it makes sense.
Each and every person served by PEPFAR prevention programs should receive full information about how to use condoms, and should have access to female and male condoms. Instead of pouring scarce resources in programs we know don't work, we have got to start only funding true comprehensive prevention.
Here at the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna, so many activists are talking and protesting about funding, demanding world leaders not let up on funding the global AIDS response. We're taking it a step further and asking that world leaders fund programs that work-because especially in this context, it is criminal for the U.S. to fund anything but the best in HIV prevention.
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Show AllBecause in this as in so many other matters Obama is pandering and encouraging an anti-women theocracy movement that is now in control of the republican party and making great headway within the democratic party. Obama befriends right wing preachers that hate women and gays and he is gung-ho for the faith based initiatives that the whacko cults have been pushing for years. If the president looks in the mirror he will see the real enemy.
The wrong-wingers insert themselves in the public educational systems, administration and school boards. The district in which I live has abstinence only by "courtesy" of the religious zealot males on the school board and the superintendant. They passed creationism to be taught in the school district, but it was stricken down by the state legislature. They are also working hard on breaking the unions, privatizing school operations and inserting religion into our children's curriculum. No doubt texas school books are on their way. Wrong-wing religious fundamentalist rule is NO way for OUR public schools to function.
Years of conditioning. That's also why we continue to be in Iraq and Afghanistan and why we continue this stupid war on drugs.
"Why Are We Still Funding Abstinence-Only Programming?"
Because Obama knows that if he tried to end it, the republicans would yell at him and call him names.
How about this for change we can believe in: Let's change our president for a new one that actually as some balls.
How about we just get rid of the system altogether? It's a GIGANTIC FAIL. It's a system that doesn't work on this planet. Wherever it's been tried (Greece, the "cradle of civilization," Northern Europe, the U.S., etc.) it just means humans go in and deforest as fast as they possibly can.
You know a system is wrong when it starts cutting down the trees en masse.
Because Obama stole the primary. Did you help him?
“Why Are We Still Funding Abstinence-Only Programming?”
Because Obama is a capitalist politician who relies on campaign funds from idiots with invisible friends.
"And ZYGOTE is its Name"
from stardust
Hormones rule- silly Obama
Abstinence is a lie.
Hormones rule--men on Viagra,
you have forgotten why.
Hormones rule in war and sex,
homo sapiens die.
And populations do explode,
more babies by and by.
"Better to marry or to burn..?"
This question from ancient past.
Better use CONDOMS all your life,
or kiss good by, your arse!****
As a white person, working on a graduate degree in NAS, I can only hope for the day that the Native peoples again get to dream the dream.
Or maybe next time the whales will get to dream the dream. Or the elephants.
Anything except what is in control now.
*Edited*
I remember Bill Clinton saying that male circumcision could help in **preventing** the spread of AIDS, or something along those lines, at an AIDS conference some years ago. Of course, there were some studies ongoing at that time, but the way he said it sounded like he really believed that it could help. My own thinking was, here we go again, one more American politician trying to influence the fight against AIDS with unproven and ineffective ideas.
Why are we still funding abstinence-only programs for young people? Maybe because young people can't legally consent? Have you even thought about this?
So you want the state to hand over condoms and pills to young people but if they ever do anything then the state can turn around and prosecute?
That's doesn't make any sense!
Please liberals, start making some sense and tell me, can young people consent to sex or can they not?
If the answer is no, then the abstinence-only programs make perfect sense for young people. Why should we teach them anything other than saying "no" to a crime?
Why Are We Still Funding Abstinence-Only Programming?
For the same reason for which William Howard Taft, appointed Governor General of the Philippines by President McKinley, sailed to Italy to meet with Pope Leo XIII circa 1902.
For the same reason that Margaret Sanger was jailed, time and again.
For the same reason that the post of Ernest Gruening,MD in the Franklin Roosevelt administration was changed from Director of the Division of Territories and Island Possessions of the Department of the Interior to that of Governor of Alaskan Territory.