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Just (don't) do it: Bush's dangerous abstinence policy
By Josh Katz
October 26, 2004
In June, President Bush stated that the U.S. should take heed of the message of
countries such as Uganda, which promotes condoms to curtail the spread of
sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS. Now, do not be tricked by Bush's
smooth rhetoric. In fact, this is not, and never has been, his policy on the
matter. Quite to the contrary, Mr. Bush has been an abstinence man since before
the day he entered the Oval Office. Perhaps Bush complimented Uganda's condom
strategy because, remembering his days as a frat boy at Yale, he realized that
abstinence just doesn't work in this country. However, as Amy Coen, president
of the Population Action International, said on the matter to The New York
Times: "I can't believe the president actually used the C-word" [condom].
"That's not one that comes easily to him. But it's one thing to use the word
and another thing to actually fund it."
The truth of the matter is, if Bush's record has anything to say about it,
abstinence is the way to go. Government aid toward organizations that promote
abstinence has taken off since Bush took office. Led by a conservative,
abstinence-driven wing of his political base, consisting largely of religious
groups, Bush has invoked a program of direct federal aid to these community
groups that support the anti-sex cause. The Clinton administration asked
Congress for $60 million in abstinence advocating programs. For the fiscal year
that began on Oct. 1 of this year, the Bush administration has asked for $272
million. That's a lot of lack of sex. In securing these funds Bush has diverted
great sums of money away from family planning clinics.
Bush's compliment to Uganda's sex education loses some bearing when one looks
at his global AIDS prevention program. Starting in 2006, over one-third of the
money sent abroad for AIDS prevention will go to promotion of abstinence.
Senator John Kerry strongly believes in a program that deals both with the
encouragement of abstinence and contraception.
The abstinence-contraceptive debate is no new argument. However, with the
coming election the issue is, and obviously should be, gaining importance. More
and more, it feels like Bush is attempting to phase out education on
contraceptives in favor of abstinence, in a concerted effort to counteract the
effects of television, movies and the internet that inculcate sex into the
minds of children and teenagers. But I am not being original when I say that
sex is not going anywhere in the media, and sex will remain a part of society
for a long time to come. With FOX shows like Who Wants to Have Sex With My
Daughter? (no this isn't real, but give it a few weeks), and weekly anal sex
columns in The Cornell Daily Sun (okay, maybe monthly), blatant sexual
references are something that we have to deal with in contemporary society.
Abstinence is all well and good, and clearly should be encouraged as "the best
way" to prevent STDs and teen pregnancies; however, for the Bush administration
to put abstinence at the forefront of its agenda and taxpayer-funded budget, it
is simply being anachronistic and delusional about reality. It has been
reported that almost half of high school students are sexually active. Sex
happens, and because of that we need powerful government initiatives to educate
the populace on the use of contraceptives. Besides, the only way the government
can make pre-marital sex seem uncool is for Dick Cheney to come forward and say
that he had pre-marital sex.
Many sexual health groups have expressed their profound opposition for the Bush
administration's policies. For example, Advocates for Youth, an organization
dealing with teenage sexual health, was given three federal reviews last year
because it was falsely accused of using its funds to promote sex before
marriage. According to James Wagoner, the president of the organization, who
was quoted in the Times, "For 20 years, it was about health and science, and
now we have a political ideological approach." Therefore, he is arguing that
science is one of the major victims of the administration's policies. In fact,
a large number of congressional conservatives were for cutting federal money to
these organizations because they believe their programs are a waste of time and
money. Republicans in Congress wanted to take away funding from The Center for
AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California in San Francisco, which
performs such studies as preventing drug abuse and H.I.V. among female Asian
sex workers at massage parlors, even after the funding had been approved. In
other words, the Bush administration, along with many conservatives in
Congress, has downplayed multiple organizations that seek nothing else but to
solve many current societal problems, in favor of its highly anachronistic,
hard-lined policy on abstinence, which is affecting an ever-widening circle of
health services.
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