Africa: Leaders Ask the USA to Respect Their Convictions

This coalition of African leaders has called on the U.S. Congress and Senate to exclude abortion funding from HIV/AIDS prevention programs on the African continent. They particularly target the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

They demand that this plan be “respectful of our beliefs” regarding the sanctity of the life of the unborn child and that it abandon funding for abortion. “We ask that PEPFAR remain true to its original mission and respect our norms, traditions, and values,” they explain.

“As you now seek to reauthorize PEPFAR funding, we want to express our concerns and suspicions that this funding is supporting so-called family planning and reproductive health principles and practices, including abortion, that violate our core beliefs concerning life, family, and religion,” the letter states..

The leaders further specified their desire to ensure that the U.S. government “does not cross over into promoting divisive ideas and practices that are not consistent with those of Africa.”

“We thank the American people for their extraordinary generosity and solidarity with us and ask that our voices be heard and acknowledged and our beliefs safeguarded in future PEPFAR programming,” the letter concludes.

PEPFAR was authorized by the U.S. government in 2003, to promote “abstinence, fidelity, , and condom use to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.” It required groups receiving funding “to pledge not to promote the decriminalization of prostitution,” according to the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam). It is “the largest global health program in the U.S. foreign assistance budget.” It receives $5 billion a year.

But C-Fam noted that “one PEPFAR program that increasingly integrates abortion concerns with HIV/AIDS programming is the public-private initiative targeting adolescent girls called DREAMS (Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS-Free, Mentored, and Safe).” Thus, “since 2014, more than $1 billion dollars has been directed to DREAMS programs in 16 African countries.”

So-called “sexual and reproductive health services” — an umbrella term that the Biden administration constantly uses to imply abortion — were given to 12 to 14-year-old girls in Malawi. According to the government website, DREAMS seeks to “empower adolescent girls and young women and reduce the HIV risk through youth-friendly reproductive health care.”

“The Biden administration has repeatedly pushed its abortion agenda onto nations that defend the unborn. In February, LifeSiteNews reported that the U.S. government pressured the small country of Benin to abandon its pro-life values and remove its support of the Geneva Consensus, which declares there is no international ‘right’ to abortion.”

Africans have expressed similar complaints about Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his country’s attempt to impose abortion on their culture.