re: #585 Charles

Couldn’t agree more. The “abstinence” programs are nothing but a sop to the religious right. They do NOT work. The people pushing them are more concerned with an imaginary moral issue than they are with people’s real lives.

Here’s the Washington Post’s take on the matter of US aid to Africa under the Bush Administration from 2006.

Sounds like it did a lot of good, despite it’s shortcomings. Congress had to OK these packages; were any objections raised by anyone there at the time? Would any package have passed, even today, if it contained funding for birth control? Seems unlikely. Would Africa be better off had it refused the aid offered? Certainly not.

Two things:

Politics is the art of the possible.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.