Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad: Aug. 31 The Washington Post on sexism in the U.S. military Nearly eight years ago, the United States opened up all military combat roles to women, clearing a pathway for female service members to join the most elite military forces.
At the end of 2001, not long after George W. Bush became president, there were 40 million people across the globe living with H.I.V./AIDS, which was usually a death sentence for those who lacked access to treatment. Most people with H.I.V. lived on the continent of Africa, where 2.3 million died of AIDS that year. There were widespread estimates that 100 million worldwide would die of AIDS in the following 20 years if something wasn’t done to better distribute treatment.
Support for the program has long been bipartisan, and many of those who urged the passage of the initial $15 billion expenditure were conservative Republicans or Christian evangelicals, who saw saving lives as part of their religious duty. “In adopting this proposal, we show the world that conviction and compassion go together, as we demonstrate that compassion is not a sign of weakness but of strength,” said Henry Hyde, a leading Republican congressman from Illinois.
Early on, there were restrictions on the program imposed by the religious right. The original program required that a third of all prevention money be dedicated to teaching chastity and fidelity, even in countries where transmission was mostly through drug injection. Studies showed that the abstinence effort never worked, but it was seen as a necessary compromise to get conservatives onboard. The abstinence requirement was removed in 2008.
But the report lit a fire under the most fervent anti-abortion Republicans in Congress, including former supporters of PEPFAR. Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey, who sponsored the program’s reauthorization in 2018, wrote a letter to his House colleagues saying the administration’s latest PEPFAR action plan “makes absolutely clear that the new direction of the program includes ‘integrating’ PEPFAR with abortion promotion.” That new direction is nowhere in the report.
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