Why won’t the pope let women protect themselves from HIV?
From The Guardian UK:FULL ARTICLE HERE
papal representatives are putting doctrine before African women’s health Nancy Goldsteinguardian.co.uk
Now, it’s June 2011, the 30th anniversary of the Aids pandemic, and the Holy See is at it again.
Who can forget Pope Benedict XVI‘s first tour of Africa as pontiff in spring 2009? He told the continent hardest hit by the global HIV/Aids crisis that more stringent moral attitudes toward sex would help fight the disease – indeed, that condom distribution “increases the problem”. There was no sign that his Holiness understood the depth of the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounted for 75% of all HIV-related deaths that year, or had made any attempt to reconcile religious doctrine with compassionate public health policy.
Now, it’s June 2011, the 30th anniversary of the Aids pandemic, and the Holy See is at it again.The Holy See has left no doubt about their stance.
For months now, their all-male team has been trying to strip all references to sexual and reproductive health and rights from the meeting’s declaration; gutting all mentions of education and prevention other than marriage and fidelity; and insisting that “families” be replaced with “the family”, as though that monolith even exists or that it provides some kind of magic shield against HIV.
Either the Holy See does not understand, or does not care that their hardline stance is not actually “pro-life” in any sense. They ask that paragraph 60 of the declaration, which addresses research and development for treating and curing HIV, delete all mention of “female-controlled prevention methods”. This despite the fact that female condoms and the very promising looking microbicides now being developed have no relation to abortion and represent the single greatest potential life saver for women worldwide.
Today marks the opening of a United Nations general assembly “high level meeting” on Aids in New York City that will evaluate the progress of that body’s response to the pandemic over the past five years and set the agenda for the next decade. Serra Sippel, president of the Centre for Health and Gender Equity (Change), declares that “this meeting is where we decide how serious we are about beating HIV, and how serious we are about women’s equality.” If so,
…….Strauss-Kahn is a metaphor for the present neoliberal system. It sucks the blood of countries in crisis, such as Iceland, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and now Spain, as was previously done with Brazil and the countries of Latin America and of Asia. To save the banks and enable repayment of debts, it devastated societies, forced workers out of their jobs, privatized public goods, cut salaries, delayed retirement ages, mandated longer work hours. All because of capital. The enforcer of these world policies is, among others, the IMF, of which Strauss-Kahn was the central figure. What he did to Nafissatou Diallo is a metaphor for what he was doing to the countries in financial difficulties. He deserves jail not just for the sexual violence against the hotel maid, but even more, for the economic rape of the people, that he committed from the IMF. Español El lector o la lectora pensará que es una tragedia que el Director-gerente del FMI, Strauss-Kahn, diera alas a su vicio, la obsesiva búsqueda de sexo perverso, corriendo desnudo detrás de una camarera negra en la suite 2806 del hotel Sofitel de Nueva York, hasta sujetarla y forzarla a practicar sexo, con detalles que la Fiscalía de Nueva York describe minuciosamente y que, por decencia, no voy a decir. Para él no era una tragedia, sino una víctima más entre otras que ha hecho en este mundo. Se vistió y se fue directo al aeropuerto. Lo cómico fue que olvidó el móvil en la suite y así pudo ser detenido por la policía cuando estaba dentro del avión. 
The Free 