BUSH AND THE ABCS

It is heartening to see the Bush administration join the global battle against AIDS, which has killed millions in Africa, leaving much of a generation without parents. For once turning against hard-line conservatives who want to advocate for abstinence solely, the president acknowledged that condoms and family planning are important tools in the fight against the deadly disease.

The House had already approved the president’s request for $15 billion over the next five years, more than triple what is being spent now. The money would go to treatment and prevention programs in a dozen African countries, as well as Haiti and Guyana, where the majority of the 40 million people infected with AIDS live. In asking Congress to support the request, the Bush administration has come to see the wisdom of the ABC campaign, which has shown results in Uganda. The campaign is simple: First Abstain. If you can’t abstain, Be faithful. And if that fails, use a Condom. Conservatives have criticized the ABC policy because it doesn’t push abstinence enough and allows funding to be given to organizations that also promote abortion.

A closer look at the Ugandan experience shows that the comprehensive approach now advocated by the United States works. The rate of AIDS among pregnant women – the universal measure of the transmission rate among the population in general – dropped from 21.2 percent in 1991 to 6.2 percent a decade later. This is because the program actually changed behavior.

The percentage of men reporting two or more sexual partners in a year decreased from more than 70 percent in 1989 to 15 percent in 1995. Women were also less promiscuous, reporting a decline in multiple sexual partners from 18 percent in 1989 to just 2.5 percent in 2002. Teenagers also reported delaying sexual activity. Contrary to what critics charge, this was not an “airlift of condoms”; it was an official, all-out campaign that stressed fidelity, but had a back up plan.

The ABC message was promoted in official speeches and school curricula and shown on billboards. Now the task is to replicate this experience across the continent and in other parts of the world by supporting the full compliment of AIDS prevention techniques.

As President Bush correctly pointed out, now is the time to further programs, like ABC, that work, not to argue over philosophy. The House has already watered down the original request by requiring that a third of the AIDS funding be dedicated to abstinence programs. While the president’s AIDS funding request is not perfect, it should go forward. The Senate should get beyond this ideological determination to promote only one aspect of a very successful program. It’s as simple as ABC.