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Abstinence message slammed
14/07/2004 14:14 - (SA)
Bangkok - US President George W Bush's dream of braking the spread of Aids by encouraging sexual abstinence among young people came under withering fire at the global Aids conference on Wednesday.
Bush's special envoy on Aids, Randall Tobias, was loudly jeered by activists, who held up signs saying "HE LIES", as he came to deliver an address that gave a big push to the so-called ABC campaign.
The A is for Abstinence; B is for Being Faithful; and C is for using Condoms if those other two approaches fail.
ABC is only one prong of the US strategy to tackle Aids, and others include multibillion-dollar initiatives to carry out vital research, provide drugs to poor and sick people and train doctors, nurses and health workers.
But at the 15th International Aids Conference here, ABC has become a fierce target of controversy.
Many experts said the initiative's focus on abstinence - often reinforced as a moral or religious doctrine by church workers - was not only fruitless but also potentially lethal for young people.
Abstinence should be offered as an option but only alongside education on reproductive health and awareness about safe sex, some said.
Others suggested youngsters should be clearly told that oral sex and masturbation were fun and safe alternatives to intercourse.
Not a sufficient
ABC "is not a sufficient means of prevention for women and adolescent girls," said Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, a Saudi woman who is executive director of the UN Development Fund for Women (Unifem).
"Abstinence is meaningless to women who are coerced into sex. Faithfulness offers little protection to wives whose husbands have several partners or were infected before marriage. And condoms require the co-operation of husbands."
This was not only the case in sub-Saharan Africa, she said.
Studies had found that in the United States, those states where there was the biggest abstinence campaigns also had the highest rates of sexually-transmitted diseases.
Equally important was empowerment for women, a broad phrase that means ending stigma and sexual prejudice and giving women the laws, social rights and medical care to protect themselves, said Dennis Altman, a professor of politics at LaTrobe University, Australia.
ABC is "the old Nancy Reagan [dictum] of 'just say no'," he said. "You have to actually be in a pretty good position of power to 'just say no'. Most young women are not in that position of power."
Raoul Fransen, a young Dutch aid worker in Africa who has HIV, said "rather than being taught not to have sex, young people... should be enabled to make the choice, be this abstinence or partner reduction or having access to condoms that is right for them.
"They should be supported in discovering their sexuality, its pleasures and its risks. The key lies in giving us a choice, not an ideology."
- AFP
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