http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/international.cfm?id=635232003
Bush 'killing women' with pro-life aid TREVOR GRUNDY THOUSANDS of African women are being condemned to death because of America’s refusal to give any aid money to health workers giving abortion advice, it was claimed last night. Health workers and human rights campaigners are furious at American government policy which prevents overseas family planning aid going to any organisation that offers women abortion counselling, provides abortion services or campaigns for a change in abortion laws. They claim the so-called Mexico City Policy, or ‘global gag rule’, zealously supported by fundamentalist Christians in the US, is being used to force an anti-abortion agenda on developing countries ravaged by Aids and struggling to cope with a population explosion. Some 78,000 women die each year as a result of unsafe abortions, many of them in Africa. The Mexico City Policy was instituted by Ronald Reagan during a visit to the Mexican capital in 1984. While it was temporarily suspended by Bill Clinton, it was reinstated by George W Bush within hours of his taking office in 2001. Last month, amid a blaze of publicity, the American president appeared to make a magnanimous gesture when he announced that $15bn of US Aids funding would not be subject to the rule. However, critics have accused him of actually using the new cash to impose Draconian new restrictions on American funding. The gag rule has never applied to Aids funding, but now groups that provide Aids prevention as well as abortion services must keep their abortion and family planning operations separate. ‘They are playing a deadly game; an unconscionable game’ The gag rule would force perennially underfunded health workers and Non-Governmental Organisations with proven track records of success against Aids to set up separate buildings - even book-keeping systems - in order to continue to receive funding from the US. It is expected that many will simply shut down their family-planning clinic altogether to qualify for Aids money. In many African communities the best health care is found at women’s clinics. Half the victims of Aids in Africa are women. Now health workers, lawyers, human rights activists and women’s advocates are calling on Bush to abandon his plan to replace established scientific and medical techniques to fight the spread Aids in Africa with a politically acceptable form of Christian fundamentalism which they say threatens the lives of millions of women. Gloria Feldt, of the American group Planned Parenthood, said: "It is so disingenuous. They’re [the US government] spinning this by saying they’re not putting in a gag rule that never belonged there in the first place." She added: "Those who are attempting to impose their own theological perspective instead of applying proven public health practices are playing a deadly game; an unconscionable game." Recently hundreds of African officials have held an emergency summit meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where they expressed outrage about America’s "arrogance" and lack of understanding about the problems they face in the battle against the 21st century’s fastest spreading killer disease. They plan to send their communiqué to leaders at the United Nations, the African Union and the Commonwealth with a message warning the world that if Bush has his way, it will seriously hamper attempts to half the spread of Aids and HIV. Women’s rights campaigners are also furious that Christian "missionaries might soon partly replace experienced medical technicians who are demanding that African women and girls be afforded clean and safe clinics and hospitals where abortions can be carried out. The Bush administration has made it clear that religious groups are the preferred providers of social services in developing countries." Frances Kissling, a Canadian author and women’s rights campaigner, said: "Given the president’s belief that religious groups are the best providers of social services, we can expect they will be favoured recipients of the funds. "Will evangelical Christian groups who still believe that homosexuality is a sin that can be cured by prayer proliferate? Will Catholic groups that abhor family planning offer anything that prevents Aids other than abstinence?" Dr Jenny Tongue MP, the Liberal democrat spokesperson for International Development, added: "President Bush is doing this because some of these programmes are also trying to combat unsafe abortion which is a major cause of material death in poor countries." Susan Armstrong a Scottish journalist who writes about Aids for the World Health Organisation, said: "It’s a fact borne out in one country after another, that making abortion illegal doesn’t stop it from happening - it just makes things more dangerous as desperate women have to resort to backstreet abortionists with their dirty twigs, needles, sharpened bicycle spokes and all kinds of corrosive potions which they shove into the womb." Ana Oliveria, the executive director of a gay health group in New York City, points out those only African countries in tune with Washington’s moral agenda will receive any of the $15bn from Bush’s Aids war chest. "The distribution of funds over five years is a method that connects the funding for Aids with the governments that America is friendly with and supports. The governments that aren’t on side with America won’t get anything." For instance, Zimbabwe is not on the Bush administration’s list, although the country of 12.5 million people is suffering from one of the worst Aids outbreaks in Southern Africa with more than 2.3 million children living with Aids and HIV. The epidemic, so far, has caused over 200,000 deaths, making orphans of over 800,000 children. Other Sub-Saharan countries that will be excluded from US funds are Angola, Congo, Malawi, Somalia and Zambia, the latter because it objects to receiving GM modified food as famine relief. Marianne Haslegrave, director of the Commonwealth Medical Trust in London, said she was "terribly worried" about the impact of the American government’s anti-abortion stance on attempts to reform relevant laws in developing countries. Haslegrave explained that after independence swept Africa in the 1960s, there were very few countries which abandoned, or updated, inherited British laws which prohibited abortion except in the most extreme circumstances. The other epidemic IT IS estimated that almost half of the 78,000 women who die each year as a result of unsafe abortions live in Africa. More that 30,000 women in Africa die every year from complications of abortions that are self-induced or performed by unqualified personnel. According to the World Health Organisation, in Ethiopia alone more women die in hospitals from complications of unsafe, usually illegal, abortions than from almost any other cause. Some 70% of women brought to hospital suffering from serious problems caused by back-street abortions die. Around 70% of the 42 million people in the world living with HIV or Aids come from sub-Saharan Africa, where the virus has killed more than 14 million people. The latest figures from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAIDS) show that 10 million young people aged 15 to 24, and almost three million children under 15 are living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. Without a massive expansion in prevention, treatment and health care, the death toll from Aids on the continent is expected to continue to rise, reaching a peak towards the end of this decade, according to UNAIDS. Four southern African countries have seen the proportion of adults infected with HIV rise far higher than was thought possible. Nearly 39% of adults in Botswana are infected, 31% in Lesotho, 33% in Swaziland and nearly 34% in Zimbabwe. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
