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Thu 25 Sep, 2003 07:39 am
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites)'s anti-abortion policy has forced family planning clinics in poor countries to close, leaving some communities without any healthcare, according to a report issued Wednesday.
Even faith-based clinics that promote abstinence -- in line with White House policy -- have had to close, according to organizers.
Under the policy, known as the Mexico City rule by supporters and the Global Gag rule by opponents, foreign family planning agencies cannot receive U.S. funds if they provide abortion services or lobby to make or keep abortion legal in their own country.
A survey of Ethiopia, Kenya, Romania and Zambia by Population Action International and the Planned Parenthood (news - web sites) Federation of America showed the rule had forced clinics to close and left many men and women without access to contraceptives that could prevent both unwanted pregnancies and AIDS (news - web sites).
"You cannot separate HIV (news - web sites)/AIDS, reproductive health and abortion," said Hillary Fyfe, who heads the Family Life Movement of Zambia, a faith-based group working with adolescents on sex education.
While her group does not promote abortion or even condom use, it does talk about the possibility, and that was enough to lose U.S. funding, Fyfe said. Three clinics in Lusaka closed this year.
For real, Deb. (dyslexia's cite is from Yahoo)
What this country needs in more Republican atheists.
un huh. PDiddie will say that's only half right.
Forced sterilization of "undesireables" (anyone not wasp with an income over 75,000/yr.), force breeding programs, where young, fertile lower class women at about the age 12 are "bred" to provide children for the infertile upper classes, execution of those with HIV or other "socially unacceptable" diseases. Excuse me whilst I go take a tylenol, thinking like a far righty makes my head hurt!
Why can't the United States government and there policies stay out of all other soveriegn nations business. It would be a better world.
Power.
Not to create, but to control.
This is a perfect example of why church and state should never be combined. What a shame that the USA government has betrayed one of its strongest tenets.
Does the religious right think that it is moral to let people die in order to prevent instruction in birth control or information about abortions?
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