Power Grab by USAID

February 20, 2004

Volume 6/ Number 7

Dear Colleague:

President Bush’s African AIDS Initiative has been turned on its head. Designed to promote abstinence-only programs and with a conscience clause to protect religious organizations from secular bias, it has now been totally absorbed by USAID. The so-called AIDS Czar has abdicated his responsibility, handing over the over $2 billion dollars appropriated by Congress to the same population control/family planning establishment that helped bring us the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the first place.

This is not what the President or the Congress intended.

Steven W. Mosher

President

Power Grab by USAID

We applauded President Bush’s AIDS Initiative to stem the spread of this deadly disease in Africa. But we warned at the time that abortion-promoting groups like the U.N. Population Fund and Planned Parenthood were poised to grab the new funds. And that groups which promoted abstinence before marriage and faithfulness within marriage would likely to be shut out.

To its credit, the Congress, with the support of President Bush, established protections-in fact, three protections-against these dangers.

Congress created the office of AIDS Czar, “a coordinator of U.S. government activities to combat HIV/AIDS globally, appointed by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, reporting to the Secretary of State.”(1) This was the first protection. The AIDS Czar would supervise the disbursement of the funds, making sure that the President’s emphasis on abstinence was preserved and that the money was kept out of the hands of the USAID HIV/AIDS bureaucracy and its failed and dangerous “safe sex” programs.

Congress also stressed that one-third of the funds for HIV/AIDS prevention was for abstinence-until-marriage programs. This was the second protection, created by those who knew that abstinence before marriage and fidelity within marriage are the only sure protection against sexually transmitted HIV/AIDS.(2)

Finally, Congress enacted a conscience clause, which was intended to enable organizations like the Catholic Church to opt out of condom-distribution schemes without penalty. This was the third protection, necessary because of the insistence of USAID that anyone accepting HIV/AIDS funding, however effective their programs, had to accept condoms as well.(3)

One by one, these protections have come tumbling down. The first breach was made by the AIDS Czar himself who, under pressures one can only imagine, recently turned all of the money over to USAID. This $2.1 billion dollars will now be spent by the same population control/family planning establishment that helped to bring us the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the first

place.(4)

Phone calls to the AIDS Czar’s office are not returned. Its website is slow in construction, pages relating to funding mechanisms have been taken down, and it is no longer listed in the State Department directory.(5) What was intended, by the U.S. Congress and the White House, to be the flagship operation of the AIDS initiative, has been reduced to a shell of its former self.

Nor is this a temporary expedient while the office gets up and running. A USAID official smugly informed PRI that, “the Global AIDS Coordinators office will be utilizing USAID indefinitely-they have been handling U.S. government monies for some time.” So they have, and giving it to groups with a pro-abortion and anti-natal bias, only now they have vastly more to play with.

As far as the abstinence-only and consciences clauses are concerned, abstinence-only groups in Africa already report being forced into consortia with condom-pushers or being denied funding outright. As one recently complained to PRI, “The country is flooded with adverts for condoms and ‘New Start Centers,’ where people can go for HIV testing and ‘confidential and professional advice’, including ‘therapeutic abortions’. Huge adverts are placed for staff and regional coordinators for HIV-related organizations . . . Pastors and Church leaders are being enticed by weekends and conferences in Hotel resorts in an effort to convert them to the Condom Creed. If the pastors agree they will receive their reward in the form of four-wheel drive cars and status in the HIV

organizations.”(6)

This is not what the President and the Congress intended.

It remains to be seen what they will do about it.