As the U.S. presidential election heats up, maternal health initiatives may fade into the background of daily news, but the need for something to be done still looms large over the poorest countries in the world.
We know abortion access isn’t a positive long-term solution for maternal deaths, and we know, pretty much for a fact, that it won’t empower the women living in these countries. Looking at the number of women in Africa living with HIV, we can begin to understand what choices those women do and don’t have when it comes to their sexual health.
In Southern Africa, the HIV statistics for young women are high. In Nomasonto’s village, over half the young women aged between 20 and 24 are living with HIV[…]
The most compelling risk factor is women’s lack of power to ensure they have safe sex. There is evidence that many women are unable to abstain from sex, guarantee that their partners will be faithful or insist on the use of condoms […]
In many African countries, particularly where people have been displaced by war, women are extremely vulnerable to sexual violence and “transactional sex”. Even in countries where there is no war there is a high level of coercive sex. In one survey, 40 per cent of young South African women reported being sexually abused before they reached the age of 19.
Pooling our resources into providing abortion access won’t elevate the status of women in these regions or keep them from contracting HIV. Giving women the resources and support they need to say “no” to sex really is a life or death situation. Let’s focus on that.
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My daughter wrote a book entitled Science Sold Out – on the topic of whether of not HIV leads to AIDS. This is the assumption behind all the science, although the theory has not been definitively proved.
In her research, she discovered that HIV testing in Africa is very unreliable. Even the packages call for two tests in order to verify results. How many African women will get two tests? Also testing during pregnancy can lead to many false positives. Therefore the numbers of HIV positives is extremely high, and may in fact be inaccurate. This leads to all sorts of women and children being medicated with drugs that are quite toxic, when they may not even need them.
We take all these HIV results as authentic, when the means of testing are highly dubious. Yet, we run with all these stats which are incredibly alarming and also force people to take antivirals when they may need quite some other medical care.
There are so many health issues in Africa that contribute to very poor health, tb and malnutrition being very high. And yet, AIDS gets all the attention and all the money, and one has to wonder why.
I can’t help but wonder if the vast profit behind HIV medications drives the testing and the practices.
1. Southern Africa and South Africa are two different things. Southern Africa is a region which depending on your definition can stretch as far North as the Saharan desert. South Africa is a country.
2. Women in sub-Saharan Africa do not have the right to say “no” the way Western women do. Some of these women have been subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM) so they are not even having sex because it feels good. Women in Sub Saharan Africa also suffer from the largest amount of children per women (in Niger, women average 6 children) but also have the highest infant mortality rates in the world. These women don’t need “moralizing”. Their own cultures have did a very good job of “controlling” them, they need condoms.
You are correct Michelle – Women in sub-Saharan Africa do not have the right to say “no” the way Western women do. That is exactly why the culture itself needs to shift in these regions. To state that these women “need condoms” is being flippant and naive. The article clearly states “The most compelling risk factor is women’s lack of power to ensure they have safe sex. There is evidence that many women are unable to abstain from sex, guarantee that their partners will be faithful or insist on the use of condoms […]”
You agree that these women do not have the right to say “no” the way we do. Do you really think that they have any more success in convincing their partners to wear condoms? Read the last phrase of the quote again if you missed it first time.
The president of Uganda and his wife, by their own visible lifestyle and actions and their proactive educational reforms, were able to cause a radical shift in their country’s cultural approach to sex, and thereby dramatically reduce the rate of HIV (before the NGOs started busting their way back into the country). A cultural shift IS possible for the African countries. Unfortunately, no one makes any money by empowering women (AND men) in self-respect and self-control. So the NGOs just keep throwing condoms at the African countries, into the hands of people who won’t use them. And the problem does not go away.