“We have been going in the wrong direction”

…by not promoting “family planning services” globally, says a Washington research professor, who also happens to be on President-elect Obama’s advisory committee for women’s health.

Public-health policies of President George W. Bush’s $45- billion PEPFAR program have brought AIDS drugs to almost 3 million people in poor countries such as Rwanda and Uganda, more than under any other president. Still, requirements that health workers emphasize abstinence from sex and monogamy over condom use have set back sexually transmitted disease prevention and family planning globally, said Susan F. Wood, co-chairman of Obama’s advisory committee for women’s health…

Obama “is committed to looking at all this and changing the policies so that family-planning services — both in the U.S. and the developing world — reflect what works, what helps prevent unintended pregnancy, reduce maternal and infant mortality, prevent the spread of disease,” Wood said.

Let’s look at what has been tried in the current administration, and how it has worked.

Under President Bush, the U.S. has provided more money to fight AIDS than during any other administration.

This is a fact that gets no attention in the mainstream media.

Seven years ago, before the Bush program began with about $15 billion, only about 200,000 people in poor nations got treatment, and few of them were in Africa.

The emphasis on abstinence and fidelity “has been shown to have demonstrable success in Africa,” said Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association in Washington. “It would be more than unfortunate if that policy was changed.”

If the story is largely ignored, this facet is especially so:

Both Republicans and Democrats have indicated support for the focus on abstinence and education that goes along with PEPFAR, which has also been shown to reduce the spread of HIV in countries such as Uganda, Huber said.

“If the president-elect wants to be science-based in foreign sex-education policies, it would be wisest to continue this way because it’s shown to be effective,” she said.

This will continue to be distorted by the media, along with reporting on abortion and embryonic stem cell research, among other issues.

Take this issue, the goodwill for the historic election of Barack Obama and deep satisfaction that the nation has finally reached this monumental turning point…from the pro-life, conservative movement. You have to hear the personal expressions of profound joy and regret, simultaneously. (Sort of like Dickens: It was the best of time, it was the worst of times…). From the editor of the National Catholic Register:

Rebecca Teti at FaithandFamilyLIVE.com…shares her high emotion after Nov. 4 as a white woman who grew up in a black neighborhood in D.C. Her heart is elated and pierced by the Obama win, both at once.

“Is it a great thing, a cathartic thing, a potentially healing thing for the country and for all of our people that we just elected our first African-American President?” she writes…. 

“It’s bittersweet in the extreme, however, that the man who embodies the triumph of our founding principle ‘all men are created equal’ with respect to black persons should be so unwilling to extend to the unborn the same right to be included in the family of men. It shows he doesn’t know the meaning of his own triumph, and it’s a blot on his achievement much as the institution of slavery was a blot on the American founding.

See, this is what I don’t get. Because it seems so clear. 

“For one class of persons, [the election] was a resounding triumph. For another, it must be acknowledged, it was a dismal defeat. Voters in Michigan amended their Constitution to permit creating embryos for the sake of experimenting on them. An effort to ban abortion in all but the hardest cases fell in South Dakota.

“There will be no pro-life woman in the new Senate.

“And the first black President will, if he keeps his promises, be also the most hostile to the inalienable rights of the unborn of anyone ever elected to the highest office in our land. He who epitomizes the rights of the descendants of slaves will work to further disenfranchise this nation’s unborn. He of all people should know better. He breaks my heart.”

She ends the piece with a note of hope:

“I pray for President-Elect Obama. I wish him well because the weight of the world is on his shoulders and because I wish my country well.

I join my voice to this sentiment.

“You know, it is the year of St. Paul. Is it too much to hope for another dramatic conversion? Change can happen.”

I sincerely believe that.