Dear Colleague:
 
President Bush's African AIDS Initiative has been turned on its head.
Designed to promote abstinence-only programs and with a conscience clause
to protect religious organizations from secular bias, it has now been
totally absorbed by USAID. The so-called AIDS Czar has abdicated his
responsibility, handing over the over $2 billion dollars appropriated by
Congress to the same population control/family planning establishment that
helped bring us the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the first place.
 
This is not what the President or the Congress intended.
 
Steven W. Mosher
President

PRI Weekly Briefing
20 February 2004
Vol. 6 / No. 7
 

Power Grab by USAID
 
We applauded President Bush's AIDS Initiative to stem the spread of this
deadly disease in Africa. But we warned at the time that
abortion-promoting groups like the U.N. Population Fund and Planned
Parenthood were poised to grab the new funds. And that groups which
promoted abstinence before marriage and faithfulness within marriage would
likely to be shut out.
 
To its credit, the Congress, with the support of President Bush,
established protections-in fact, three protections-against these dangers.
 
Congress created the office of AIDS Czar, "a coordinator of U.S.
government activities to combat HIV/AIDS globally, appointed by the
President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, reporting to the
Secretary of State."(1) This was the first protection. The AIDS Czar would
supervise the disbursement of the funds, making sure that the President's
emphasis on abstinence was preserved and that the money was kept out of
the hands of the USAID HIV/AIDS bureaucracy and its failed and dangerous
"safe sex" programs.
 
Congress also stressed that one-third of the funds for HIV/AIDS prevention
was for abstinence-until-marriage programs. This was the second
protection, created by those who knew that abstinence before marriage and
fidelity within marriage are the only sure protection against sexually
transmitted HIV/AIDS.(2)
 
Finally, Congress enacted a conscience clause, which was intended to
enable organizations like the Catholic Church to opt out of
condom-distribution schemes without penalty. This was the third
protection, necessary because of the insistence of USAID that anyone
accepting HIV/AIDS funding, however effective their programs, had to
accept condoms as well.(3)
 
One by one, these protections have come tumbling down. The first breach
was made by the AIDS Czar himself who, under pressures one can only
imagine, recently turned all of the money over to USAID. This $2.1 billion
dollars will now be spent by the same population control/family planning
establishment that helped to bring us the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the first
place.(4)
 
Phone calls to the AIDS Czar's office are not returned. Its website is
slow in construction, pages relating to funding mechanisms have been taken
down, and it is no longer listed in the State Department directory.(5)
What was intended, by the U.S. Congress and the White House, to be the
flagship operation of the AIDS initiative, has been reduced to a shell of
its former self.
 
Nor is this a temporary expedient while the office gets up and running. A
USAID official smugly informed PRI that, "the Global AIDS Coordinators
office will be utilizing USAID indefinitely-they have been handling U.S.
government monies for some time." So they have, and giving it to groups
with a pro-abortion and anti-natal bias, only now they have vastly more to
play with.
 
As far as the abstinence-only and consciences clauses are concerned,
abstinence-only groups in Africa already report being forced into
consortia with condom-pushers or being denied funding outright. As one
recently complained to PRI, "The country is flooded with adverts for
condoms and 'New Start Centers,' where people can go for HIV testing and
'confidential and professional advice', including 'therapeutic abortions'.
Huge adverts are placed for staff and regional coordinators for
HIV-related organizations . . . Pastors and Church leaders are being
enticed by weekends and conferences in Hotel resorts in an effort to
convert them to the Condom Creed. If the pastors agree they will receive
their reward in the form of four-wheel drive cars and status in the HIV
organizations."(6)
 
This is not what the President and the Congress intended.
 
It remains to be seen what they will do about it.
 
ENDNOTES
 
1. The United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and
Malaria Act of 2003.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. USAID told PRI that of the approximately $2.1 billion in new HIV/AIDS
money this year, $20 million would go to competitive grants managed by
USAID headquarters, while the remainder would go to USAID Missions
overseas.
5. U.S. Department of State, Organizational Directory;
http://www.foia.state.gov/mms/OrgDirectory/d_teltoc.asp.
6. Name withheld by request.
 

_________
Steve Mosher is the president of Population Research Institute, a
non-profit organization dedicated to debunking the myth that the world is
overpopulated.
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© 2004 Population Research Institute. Permission to reprint granted.
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