Letters to the editor
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Rest of the story
Last week we heard part of the story about President Bush traveling through Africa, talking up his five-year, $15 billion anti-AIDS initiative. The initiative directs one-third of the new AIDS prevention money for Africa to groups that exclude condoms and rely on "abstinence-only" messages.
Planned Parenthood wants you to know the rest of the story.
Stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS is too important to divert funds to programs that fail to educate people about all of the ways to prevent transmission. Groups that exclude condoms and rely on "abstinence-only" messages censor critical and life-saving information. The ultimate effect -- and intent -- will be to cut off HIV/AIDS prevention and educational funding to organizations that are in the best positions to battle the epidemic and to give comprehensive information -- family planning and reproductive health care providers.
This policy can be added to a long list of anti-choice efforts to isolate and stigmatize family planning providers and deny women access to reproductive health services. Instead of focusing on saving lives, Congress and the White House are playing a deadly and unconscionable game of politics.
Kate Clement
Planned Parenthood
of the Rocky Mountains
Steamboat Springs
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