Pope says condoms don't work

Pope Benedict XVI is visiting Africa this week and, in a continent that sees 2 million people die of AIDS every year, with 25 million dead so far, proclaimed that not only do condoms not protect against AIDS, they could make the crisis worse.

A statement like this, frankly, boggles the mind.

I understand that the Pope wants to encourage sexual relations only in the confines of a committed, loving, heterosexual marriage. While this of course means that Catholic gays and lesbians must either live a celibate life or choose damnation (and the possibility of sexually transmitted diseases), it also means that heterosexuals, even those who are faithful to their partners, cannot be protected from deadly diseases.

It is not just the immoral and irresponsibile who have sex outside of marriage and thus risk exposure to HIV and other diseases. Especially in Africa, where at least 50% of all HIV infections are now found in women and girls, victims are very often drawn from married women, whose partners have sex outside of the relationship.

In much of Sub-Saharan Africa, women are at especially high risk of AIDS not because they have sex outside of their marriage, although many do, but because many African cultures allow multiple sexual partners for men, and, for migrant workers, prostitutes. Because women in many African cultures cannot say no to sex, and because violence, and sexual violence, are very high in these cultures, women are especially at risk.

For a woman, then, even a committed and faithful one, a condom could be her only way of keeping herself safe, whether having sex with her husband, boyfriend, or other man.

For the Pope to ignore the realities of these women (and girls) is horrifying, and makes me feel as if he is more interested in maintaining strict control over believers than in protecting millions of lives per year.

Contraception saves money

MSNBC just reported that government spending on family planning (ie birth control) not only prevents millions of unwanted pregnancies, and prevents abortions, but actually saves money!

Who knew?

Oh, yes. Smart people already knew that providing not only access to birth control, but funding for the poor to get it, prevents unwanted pregnancies, which is one reason why funds for family planning were initially inserted into the big stimulus package, but were then removed because conservatives freaked out.

The Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health policy institute, reports that for each dollar spent on family planning (primarily through Medicaid), four dollars are saved in costs associated with unplanned pregnancies and births, and that almost 2 million unintended pregnancies were avoided (including 400,000 teen pregnancies) in 2006 alone. That means either 2 million unwanted babies, or two million abortions, were avoided that year, because of federal and state-funded family planning for the poor.

While feminists and women's health activists have long considered birth control to be basic health care for women, much of this country's right wing still considers access to contraception to be a sign of loose morals, and a slippery slope leading to baby killing.

If right wingers were truly concerned about "baby killing," they would realize that access to affordable and reliable contraception actually prevents abortions.

But preventing abortions, ultimately, is obviously not important to people like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council who said, "The issue is whether taxpayers should fund, and thereby encourage, behavior that's risky and morally questionable."

Way to see the big picture, Tony. Fretting about unmarried people having non-reproductive sex is the moral concern; not the millions of unwanted pregnancies, unwanted babies, and abortions which result from poor education, lack of opportunities, and lack of funds.