AIDS Invading China
AIDS is on the move in China. ATM northeast province of Heilongjiang in recent years has seen a growing number of HIV carriers and full-blown AIDS patients. At the end of October 2004, 56 new HIV carriers and AIDS patients, representing a 50% increase, had been detected in this province with a population of nearly 40 million, according to the Heilongjiang Provincial Health Bureau.
In the past, Central China’s Henan Province has been plagued by AIDS, but Heilongjiang has remained untouched.
Although government health officials have worked hard at curbing the disease, the infection has already spread to 39 counties across the province. Only Mudanjiang region in the province’s east has not reported any cases.
The province will set up county-level AIDS surveillance agencies, said Xing Jichun, director of the Disease Control Department of the health bureau, although limited financing has slowed the work.
Government health officials have been working in central China’s Henan Province to contact people with a history of selling blood and thus found 20,000 new HIV carriers.
Blood transmission is the main means of the spread of HIV/AIDS in the Henan Province, accounting for nearly 60% of the infected. Sexual intercourse accounts for 16% and intravenous drug use for 6%. The source of transmission of the remaining 18% is unknown.
The increase concerns government officials as “before 2002, most AIDS patients were discovered to have a history of drug-taking or using prostitutes,” said Wu Yuhua of the Virus Research Institute, Heilongjiang Provincial Disease Prevention and Control Center. “But now we see a trend of spreading from the high- risk group to the general population.”
Li Fangchao, “Heilongjiang’s HIV/AIDS sufferers on the rise,” China Daily, 25 November 2004, www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-11/25/content_394883.htm
Abortion in France
Three of four French women between the ages of 20 and 44 use some form of contraception while the number of abortions in France remains high. Despite massive contraceptive use, 30% of pregnancies are unplanned. Two-thirds of unplanned pregnancies occur in women using a contraceptive. One-half the unplanned pregnancies are aborted.
The abortion rate in France has remained constant at about 14 abortions per 1,000 women over the past 15 years. France’s ministries of Social Cohesion and Health estimate that 206,000 French women underwent abortions in 2002, an increase of 1.7% compared to 2001, with 11,000 being under the age of 16. (Girls under age 18 do not need parental consent to abort their babies.)
While abortion has been legal in France for 30 years, it is allowed during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy only, according to Agence France-Presse. In addition to surgical abortion, the morning-after pill is available.
Economics have helped pro-lifers to fight the abortion battle. Agence France- Presse reported that according to Maite Albagly, secretary-general of the French Movement for Family Planning, about 40% of the private clinics in the Paris area have closed abortion units over the past two years because “the procedure is not considered profitable.”
“Because the number of doctors carrying out terminations is limited, the waiting period can easily stretch to three or four weeks, and that is too long,” Albagly continued.
“Obstacles to Abortion in France 30 Years After Legislation,” Medical News Today, 24 November 2004; “Contraception and Abortion: the Situation in France,” Genethique Press Review, 8–19 November 2004, www.genethique.org, “France: Abortion Figures on the Increase,” Genethique Press Review 1–5 November 2004, www.genethique.org
China and Abortion
Normally, we celebrate each and every new restriction on abortion, especially in China, where the bloody mills have been working overtime for a quarter-century now. But it is hard not to be troubled by the reasons given for this new ban on second- and third-trimester abortions. Guiyang (where Steven Mosher was arrested on a trip to China’s interior in 1980) isn’t banning abortion to protect the unborn, but because women are in short supply and they need to “produce” more of them. We think this is what the Pope means when he condemns the modern “instrumental” worldview.
“Abortion of 14-week fetus banned,” China Daily, 16 December 2004, www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-12/16/content_400627.htm
