Media bias stories bore me, and thus I discriminate about which bias I cover. This McClatchy story got my attention. It has the perfunctory “It’s all Bush’s fault,” that all media bias must by statute contain, but this story goes further. It actually calls babies a disease, a disease caused by George Bush, a disease caused by George Bush by keeping contraception funding flat. No, not reducing funding for contraception, keeping it flat by choosing to send billions to Africa to fight HIV. The monster.
Promoting birth control in Africa faces a host of obstacles — patriarchal customs, religious taboos, ill-equipped public health systems — but experts also blame a powerful, more distant force: the U.S. government.
Under President George W. Bush, the United States withdrew from its decades-long role as a global leader in supporting family planning, driven by a conservative ideology that favored abstinence and shied away from providing contraceptive devices in developing countries, even to married women.
Bush’s mammoth global anti-AIDS initiative, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, poured billions of dollars into Africa but prohibited groups from spending any of it on family planning services or counseling programs, whose budgets flat-lined.
Got that? While Bush sent billions to Africa to fight HIV, and saved countless lives by doing so, he is to blame for Africa having many more lives. See, many more living Africans equals “bad news.” Not just bad news, it is a disease which Africa must eliminate.
However, researchers, Africa experts and veteran U.S. health officials now think that PEPFAR also contributed to Africa’s epidemic population growth by undermining efforts to help women in some of the world’s poorest countries exercise greater control over their fertility.
Epidemic. Babies are an epidemic, a disease. But no worries, there is a cure.
President Barack Obama has begun to roll back some of the restrictions. In a sharp turnaround, the administration has called family planning “an important component of the preventive-care package of services” for HIV patients.
In March, Congress raised global family-planning funding by 18 percent, to $545 million, the first substantial increase after more than a decade of stagnation. The Obama administration has called for another 9 percent hike in 2010 and issued guidelines encouraging PEPFAR-funded agencies for the first time to link family-planning services with the anti-AIDS effort.
It is sad and telling that the President who did the most to save Africans is maligned for his efforts and the first African-American President who does whatever he can to make sure that there are less actual Africans is lauded.
If anyone ever asks you for banal evidence the culture of death, just point them to this article.
December 14, 2009 at 5:22 pm
So in this scenario the white man who works to fund policies resulting in more healthy blacks is bigoted. At the same time the black man who pushes for limiting the number of blacks in the world isn't.
Got it.
"Dear God, please lead me back to that wormhole leading to this bizarro universe. I'll be good, I've really, really learned my lesson. I WANNA GO HOME!"
December 14, 2009 at 6:13 pm
This stuff frustrates me, because there is no logical way to argue with "less life = good". It feels like trying to argue against "black = white". And it scares me, because I may die in fifty years or so, but what about the insane world my kids are going to have to live in…
December 14, 2009 at 6:21 pm
"Media bias stories bore me…"
I guess that's why you post at least 5 a week then.
December 14, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Patrick, you totally have to see this (money quote):
"We tend to think of Mao, Stalin and Hitler as the greatest mass murderers of all time, but has anyone bothered to calculate out how many tons of emissions they prevented?"
December 14, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Anonymous, please read the next 9 words after your quoted phrase and think before posting.
Rachel, I'm feeling the same way. I guess in times like this we must be grateful for the lives we have and for the ability to stand up and speak out against things like this article. Certainly we cannot argue with this logic as it is so far gone, but in speaking the truth, we can convert souls.
Thanks for posting this Patrick.
December 14, 2009 at 9:51 pm
I'm at a loss as to what to do. I am watching my kids grow up in this world. I pray for them, I try to be a good example. I try to teach them to question everything the media and schools feed them. I try to highlight the reality of the people behind the music, the movies and the lies. I try to do all this while respecting their ultimate rights to chose their own paths.
But I worry. It's not me I worry about, I've been through the wringer and have arisen, I think, all the wiser.
But my kids! My grand kids! Your kids!
God help us all.
The Church needs to become more assertive.
December 15, 2009 at 1:00 am
Post from diziizleyelim is extremely offensive.
December 15, 2009 at 12:19 pm
"If anyone ever asks you for banal evidence the culture of death, just point them to this article."
Yeah. Just make sure they read the WHOLE article, not just the selective editing done for this post.