Bush's International AIDS Policy
Last Summer George Bush took a
trip to Africa to speak on the global threat of AIDS. In previous State of the Union addresses, Bush pledged money and support to fight the
global threat of AIDS. What is Bush's policy to combat these global emergencies? At the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Bush Administration officials "emphasized
abstinence as an important way to combat AIDS."
The decision to
withhold $34 million—about 10 percent of the fund's total budget—from the world's largest international source of funding for family planning came on the last day of the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, where US officials emphasized abstinence as an important way to combat AIDS.
In Washington, family-planning activists and some members of Congress said the decision was a political move to curry favor with conservative voters who want to
restrict family-planning practices worldwide. Some cited a 2002 investigation by a State Department team and a 2003 State Department human rights report, which both said that the fund was working to combat coercive family-planning practices in China.
''Our own State Department gave the UNFPA a clean bill of health," US Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat, told reporters. ''Once again, President Bush right before an election is appealing to a conservative base. They are putting millions of women and children at risk with this decision."
