Despite Funding Boost, Partisan Fight Expected Over Revised US Global AIDS Plan
WASHINGTON, 1 February: A Democratic plan to reauthorize President George W. Bushs global AIDS plan would revoke (ophæve/fjerne) spending requirements on abstinence education and loosen restrictions on money to some family planning groups.
The draft bill, which the House Foreign Affairs Committee will mark up Thursday (Feb. 7.), would include a huge increase in funding.
But the proposal to lift the abstinence and family planning conditions has infuriated Republicans, who are promising to fight changes they see as undermining the AIDS law and opening a door to funding abortion providers.
– I have wanted to avoid a protracted debate over issues involving assistance for reproductive health and abortion in order to maintain our focus on supporting the successful existing strategy and on meeting the continuing challenge of fighting the spread of AIDS, warned Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the panels ranking Republican, in a letter.
Bush announced his so-called Presidents Emergency Plan For Aids Relief (PEPFAR) with great fanfare in his 2003 State of the Union address. The law (PL 108-25) has provided almost 19 billion US dollar for prevention, treatment and care of AIDS victims overseas. It must be reauthorized this year for another five years.
The Democratic draft would remove an existing mandate that one-third of all HIV prevention money go toward abstinence programs, and another that requires groups to pledge not to work with prostitution groups before getting US money.
– You remove the 33 percent directive and there is good reason to believe that abstinence and be-faithful programs will be simply ignored in favor of condoms, said a House GOP aide, referring to the three prongs of HIV prevention: abstinence, fidelity and condoms.
The draft bill also would allow reproductive health groups to have broader access to US money. – You remove that firewall and you move truly toward an integration of abortion services into PEPFAR programs, said the aide.
Democrats New Direction
The initial law had broad support, but the new disagreements threaten to bog it down in partisan debate over social policy.
Committee spokeswoman Lynne Weil said Democratic staff aides have heard GOP objections and are working to iron them out before the markup. – After all, everyone wants to see this program continue to succeed, she said.
Reports from the Institute of Medicine and the Government Accountability Office say the abstinence spending requirement ties the hands of groups on the ground.
Katie Porter, a legislative policy analyst at Population Action International, said the bill would increase funding to trusted overseas health groups already working to combat AIDS.
– We have this one opportunity to dramatically strengthen the programs and reach that many more people, and that would be a big failure on Congress part to avoid that debate because of an ideological difference about family planning, she said.
– It is ludicrous (latterligt) that US efforts to combat and prevent HIV would not have a strong family planning and reproductive health component to them, noted she.
It is illegal for Congress to fund abortion providers overseas.
The new bill calls for 50 billion dollar over the next five years – a large jump from the 15 billion authorized in the first version. Bush called for 30 billion dollar in this years State of the Union address, but activists say that amounts to no increase, since Congress provided almost 6 billion in the year-end omnibus (PL 110-161).
The administration has questioned whether the target-countries can absorb 50 billion dollar, though AIDS groups point out that they started five years ago from almost zero.
– We estimate that we prevented 200.000 cases in 2006, said Jennie Quick, governmental affairs manager for Population Services International, adding: – We can do more, and we want to do more.
Kilde: The Push Journal
