By Congressman Joe Pitts

In his 2008 State of the Union Address, President Bush said, “Our Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is treating 1.4 million people.  We can bring healing and hope to many more.  So I ask you to maintain the principles that have changed behavior and made this program a success.”

The President was referring to the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR).  Introduced in 2003, PEPFAR was a foreign aid health initiative unparalleled in its size and scope in the history of the United States.  The program was a bold response to the sky-rocketing prevalence rates of HIV/AIDS in many of the poorest countries throughout the world.  The President and Congress dedicated $15 billion over the next five years to treat and prevent HIV/AIDS. 

PEPFAR has worked to support life-saving antiretroviral treatment for over 1.45 million men, women, and children worldwide.  In comparison, only an estimated 50,000 people were receiving treatment through the U.S. aid at the time President Bush originally announced the initiative.    Much of the aid has focused on treating 1.3 million individuals in the 15 focus countries in sub-Saharan African, Asia and the Caribbean.  The program has provided mother-to-child HIV transmission prevention services for women during more than 10 million pregnancies.  In addition, the program has achieved what many thought to be impossible—it has helped to reduce HIV prevalence rates.

PEPFAR expires at the end of this year and has to be reauthorized in order to continue these life-saving services.  Unfortunately, instead of debating how much money will be dedicated to this worthwhile program, Congress is suddenly arguing over the most basic elements that have proven successful in preventing and treating AIDS abroad.  Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has drafted a bill that removes important provisions of the PEPFAR program.
    
The rewrite eliminates an important provision that ensures priority funding for the highly effective abstinence and fidelity programs, which have reduced HIV rates in African nations that have implemented it.  These programs teach life skills, personal empowerment, and responsible decision-making.  Though behavioral change has proven to be the key indicator in preventing HIV/AIDS, it is not being implemented by any other AIDS relief program, and its requirement is necessary to ensure the continuation of a comprehensive, effective, and balanced approach that is saving lives.
 
Perhaps the most puzzling change in the Democrat draft is the exclusion of a provision that bans funding to groups that do not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking—this provision is necessary to combat the exploitation of women in host countries.  American taxpayers have a reasonable expectation to believe their tax dollars will not be going to individuals that support the trafficking and exploitation of women.
 
In place of these key provisions, the bill would require the controversial integration of family planning services, without putting into place any protections to ensure that HIV/AIDS relief dollars are not used to advocate for abortion in Africa.  This bill would re-direct critical HIV/AIDS funding towards family planning, in spite of the fact that international family planning services currently receive over $441 million in federal funds.
 
Furthermore, the message that family planning is the means for preventing mother-to-child transmission is culturally inappropriate.  As the State Department points out, this bill “wrongly suggests it is necessary to prevent children from being born in order to prevent them from being born with HIV, when in fact, PEPFAR currently supports highly effective methods of preventing mother-to-child transmission.”  This proposed approach will transform our reputation in Africa of altruistic intervention to one of cultural imperialism through population control.  It is unfortunate that a program intended to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS would be used to push a culturally inappropriate and ideologically driven agenda.
 
PEPFAR cannot fall victim to partisan politics in Washington; there is simply too much at stake.  This program represents a light of hope for many individuals who would otherwise receive no aid at all.  PEPFAR was crafted in a bipartisan compromise and should move forward as the same bipartisan program that has successfully saved lives over the past five years.

Congressman Joe Pitts represents the 16^th Congressional District of Pennsylvania.

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