- Comprehensive Sexual and Reproductive Health
- Family Planning
- Women, Girls, and HIV
- Maternal Health
- U.S. Foreign Policy & Funding
- Watch: Making U.S. Foreign Assistance Work for Women and Girls in Ethiopia
- Global Health Initiative
- Integrating HIV/AIDS and Sexual and Reproductive Health: U.S. Foreign Policy
- Female Condoms: Dual Protection
- Global Gag Rule
- Helms Amendment
- Foreign Assistance Budget
- Foreign Assistance Reform
- Kemp-Kasten Amendment
- Abstinence & Fidelity
- Anti-Prostitution Pledge
- The Critical Role of Advocacy in Foreign Assistance
- Why Women and Girls?
Abstinence & Fidelity
When Congress reauthorized the Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008 , it loosened, yet maintained, a funding preference for programs that focus on abstinence and faithfulness to the exclusion of condom education. Also, the implementation guidelines for this law go even further to restrict condom distribution to those 15 and older. These preferences have undermined comprehensive, rights-based approaches to sexual and reproductive health. CHANGE’s field visits have uncovered several examples of how abstinence-only approaches interfere with the distribution of life-saving information and tools. For example, in the Dominican Republic, the government recently lowered the age of reproduction from 15 to 10 in consideration of the high number of pregnancies and STIs occurring in this age group. However, groups receiving U.S. funding could only provide condoms to young adolescents who have told program staff that they are sexually active. Because youth often find it difficult to reveal that they are sexually active, this restriction impedes a much-needed service.
Listen: "Obviously there’s a threat to women being free to make these decisions on our own." --Serra Sippel, CHANGE president, on abstinence programs and women's rights on KRXA, a San Francisco-based radio station.
Watch: CHANGE discusses abstinence-only requirements in the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in "PEPFAR Comes Under Fire at AIDS Conference," Global Health TV, July 2010:
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- Sexual and Reproductive Rights and the U.S. Global Health Initiative
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Voluntary family planning is an indispensible component of HIV prevention and treatment. - Fact Sheet: Global Democracy Promotion Act of 2011
The Global Democracy Promotion Act of 2011 provides that the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act cannot impose eligibility restrictions on international recipients of U.S. aid that would be illegal if imposed nationally. Would constitute a legislative repeal of the Mexico City Policy, also called the Global Gag Rule. - Female Condoms and U.S. Foreign Assistance: An Unfinished Imperative for Women’s Health
Female Condoms and U.S. Foreign Assistance: An Unfinished Imperative for Women's Health, summarizes U.S. support for female condoms, identifies barriers, and offers concrete recommendations for improving U.S. efforts to increase access and availability of female condoms. - Fact Sheet: Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Act
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In the absence of community-based efforts to alter the social structures that promote infidelity, public health programs which aim to reduce married women’s risk by telling men to be faithful will not succeed. - Research Summary: Marital Sex and the HIV Risk for Women Worldwide
Globally, women’s risk of contracting HIV is heightened if they are married, largely due to men’s extramarital sexual relationships. Despite this clear risk, current efforts to prevent the spread of HIV fall far short of protecting married women. - Human Trafficking, HIV/AIDS, and the Sex Sector
Current U.S. foreign policy relating to adults in the sex sector violates basic human rights, distracts from effective anti-trafficking efforts, and directly impedes global health programs intended to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS.
Related Links
- Americans for UNFPA
- Center for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA)
- Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR)
- ForeignAssistance.gov
- International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF)
- International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC)
- Ipas
- PEPFAR Watch
- Population Action International (PAI)
- Prevention Now!
- Reproductive Health Matters
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