Condoms Are Our Friends

On President Bush's first day in office, in January 2001, he reinstated the so-called Mexico City Policy, popularly known as the "Global Gag Rule", which denies U.S. family-planning assistance for organizations that use funding from any other source to provide counseling and referral for abortion, lobby to make abortion legal or more available in their country, or perform abortions except in cases of a threat to the woman's life, rape or incest. It was first introduced by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, overturned by President Clinton, and reinstated by Bush.

Though the Bush administration committed $45 billion to fighting AIDS (http://www.pepfar.gov/about/c19785.htm), it required that health workers emphasize abstinence from sex and monogamy over condom use. On January 23, to acclaim from AIDS fighters worldwide, President Obama overturned the Gag Rule again. The International Planned Parenthood Foundation (IPPF) wrote, "The gag rule has had a catastrophic impact on the scope and effectiveness of service delivery of family planning, sexual health and contraception in the world, especially in Africa where only 18 percent of women have access to modern means of contraception, compared to 56 percent in the rest of the developing world."

Education is the centerpiece of the health care services provided by the MSF-run Centre de Santé Biso na Biso in Kinshasa (see previous post), where lectures focus on the benefits of condom use and strategies for convincing customers to use them. The clinic provides some free condoms to patients (though it can't provide unlimited condoms to all who want/need them), and though this may seem like a small thing, the cost of condoms are a business expense that reduce net profit. At the absolute margins, an extra dollar or two can make a huge difference; if you had to choose between eating and possibly (but possibly not) being infected with HIV, what would you do?