Just so you don’t forget, we’re still making our HIV/AIDS relief efforts contingent on the recipient nation being ardently anti-choice.

The announcement, in 2003, that the US Administration under President Bush was to give $15 billion (£9 billion) to help the fight against AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean was welcomed by campaigner Sir Bob Geldof, and others, as a major breakthrough. But, critics argue, it has become increasingly clear that the Bush policy is, in many ways, proving more damaging that helpful, as this Editorial Comment from the Baltimore Sun reveals. AIDS has hit Africa hard. But non-governmental organizations confronting the epidemic have been hit even harder by the Bush administration’s ideologically based edicts. Last month, the UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, and others declared that the administration’s policy of emphasizing abstinence-only programmes and cutting federal funding for condoms has undermined Uganda’s HIV/AIDS effort. Sadly, Uganda is not alone.

This makes it clear that the priority is not helping people; it’s controlling people.