House Democrats are putting the finishing touches on a bill that would designate $50 billion more in HIV/AIDS prevention. The proposal, which is expected to be marked up in the Foreign Affairs Committee as early as next week, puts the liberal agenda before patient care.An early draft of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) reauthorization, authored by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), is over 120 pages long. The phrase "family planning" appears on every page. For those new to the ways of Washington, D.C. "family planning" has come to mean "unrestricted abortion."
What's most offensive about the bill is how Democrats plan to deal with mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Through medicine, President Bush's program has provided mother-to-child HIV transmission services to more than 10 million pregnant women in PEPFAR's 15 focus countries. Rep. Lantos and Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would just as soon see the mothers-to-be kill their children in the womb as give them both a chance to live.
Your representative needs to hear from you that Rep. Lantos's bill to eliminate PEPFAR's abstinence component in favor of more "family planning" initiatives is completely unacceptable. This proposal would accomplish nothing but inflict more death on an already suffering continent.
Will America have a legacy of death or life in Africa? You decide.
(Family Research Council update)
