On Roe v. Wade's Anniversary, Obama to Begin Mopping Up Bush's Misogynistic Mess

By Emily Douglas, RH Reality Check. Posted January 22, 2009.

Obama is also likely to take early action lifting the ban on federal funding of stem cell research, reports the San Francisco Gate. 

PEPFAR: Good on Access to Treatment, Failure on Prevention

Josh Ruxin of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria discusses PEPFAR's shortcomings on the Huffington Post, saying PEFPARs prevention programs failed the "real-world test":

Fidelity programs implied that women with few decision rights over sex simply had to remain faithful to avoid AIDS. Meanwhile, their husbands were out contracting the virus and passing it to them. It was supremely disempowering, misogynistic and, ultimately, deadly. Lifting the gag rule and bundling family planning, contraception, HIV prevention, and maternal and early childhood health together is essential to fighting this disease and restoring womens reproductive rights to the program.

While programs discouraging premarital sex have delayed the age of first sex (called sexual debut), they may have increased the risk of AIDS. How's that? Students taught to abstain appeared more likely to practice unsafe sex when they did start. Thus, the administration may have managed to generate more, not fewer, AIDS cases by pushing this largely religiously-driven policy into practice. In a sexually-transmitted disease epidemic, people need to be able to talk about sex. By restricting passage of information about safe sex, PEPFAR utterly failed the "real world" test.

Several anti-choice organizations are calling George W. Bush "the most pro-life President ever," reports CNS News. Bush’s January 18 declaration of "National Sanctity of Life Day" was the "culmination of eight years of pro-life policies that included sustained opposition to embryonic stem cell research; the appointment of two pro-life Supreme Court Justices; an executive order barring federal funds to be used for abortion- related projects abroad; and a rule protecting federally funded health employees from taking part in abortion-related activities or other practices that conflicted with their religious views."  CNS News outlines the administration's many actions that curtail women's right to reproductive choice -- and, for that matter, won't do much to reduce the rate of abortion, either.

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Emily Douglas is the Assistant Editor at RH Reality Check.

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