Row and Bee

Author notes

Force of Good in Teh Wurld

Kilre

on Nov. 25, 2009

I'm not normally one to rag on the Pope for being a douchebag…wait, yes I am.

Saying that contraception is against your religion is fine, but fortunately you can't control what other people do in private, as much as you'd like to be able to, you sick fuck.

What am I complaining about today? The rampant misinformation surrounding the effectiveness of abstinence, being "faithful" to your spouse whomever they are, and the use of condoms and contraception. I'm referring to the situation in Uganda, Africa, where the ABCs (see what I did there?) has supposedly dropped the number of cases of AIDS. There's a lot of misinformation to sift through, however; least of which is the many appeals to morality that the Church throws around. For example,

[t]he condom does not abolish the risk of transmitting this horrible and ultimately fatal disease. Intercourse puts the uninfected spouse at great risk. There is therefore a doubt about taking the life of an innocent human being, a dubium facti, which as such, creates the same obligation as certainty. Self-sacrifice and abstinence are the only valid moral options.

Sister Miriam Duggan (Franciscan Missionaries of Africa) and Sister Kay Lawlor (Medical Missionaries of Mary) run a major abstinence program in Uganda. Sister Duggan says that the main reason why AIDS has spread so much in Africa is because of a loss of traditional values. Polygamy was practiced, but virginity before marriage and fidelity within marriage were respected. Media and peer pressure has resulted in promiscuity. The sister's program has shown that chastity is not pie-in-the-sky, but has very real positive results. Dr. Mulcaire-Jones who once believed that it would be impossible to get African men to understand natural family planning, or to adhere to a lifestyle of abstinence and sexual faithfulness in marriage now says "I have found tremendous willingness to hear and adhere to Church teachings about sexual morality - we are having tremendous success - the Catholic Church really does have the answer to this."

Promoters of abstinence-focused HIV-prevention strategies, including the pope, point to Uganda's success in reducing HIV prevalence. While HIV rates climbed in neighboring countries, the proportion of Ugandans infected with HIV plunged from 21 percent in 1991 to 6 percent in 2002.

The success is attributed to the ABC campaign, short for "Abstain, or Be Faithful, or use Condoms." Conservative commentators often reference a Washington Post column from June 2008 by Sam Ruteikara, co-chair of Uganda's National AIDS-Prevention Committee, in which he states that the casual-sex Western agenda forced upon his country in recent years threatens to undermine the success of its homegrown solution.

But Ruteikara, a man of the cloth, and others touting Uganda's success fail to acknowledge Uganda's own data of what actually happened during those years. There's a C in ABC.

As reported in 2006 in the British Medical Journal's Sexually Transmitted Infections, Ugandan government health officials found that the rate of "ever use" condoms rose from 1 percent to 16 percent among women and from 16 percent to 40 percent in men from 1989 to 2000. Condom use during the most recent sexual encounter with a non-regular partner increased from 35 percent to 59 percent among men and 20 percent to 39 percent among women.