USAID Gives $50 Million to Pro-prostitution, Pro-abortion Groups

By C-FAM Staff

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) Members of Congress have charged that, as part of a new HIV/AIDS program, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has awarded a $50 million grant to groups that call for the promotion of abortion, the legalization of needle-exchange programs and the legalization of prostitution. The grant is part of USAID’s new CORE program, which is supposed to bring faith-based organizations into the fight against AIDS.

The five grantees are CARE, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Communication Programs (CCP), the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), and the World Council of Churches (WCC).

The International HIV/AIDS Alliance calls for the repeal of laws prohibiting prostitution and needle-exchange programs for drug users. The group says that “Laws and practices that are a barrier to effective prevention must be reformed, in particular laws that.marginalise sex workers [prostitutes].or prohibit the distribution of safe needles and syringes.”

The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW, has performed research in an effort to promote access to abortion in India. In a paper called “Reproductive Rights and Choice: The Role of Abortion in India,” ICRW claims that it seeks to “.better understand the interaction between abortion and women’s ability to exercise reproductive rights and choice” and that the study “is aimed at filling the gap in the documentation needed for policy action that more effectively promotes women’s reproductive health and improves their ability to prevent unwanted pregnancies.”

In a March 13 press release, USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios seemed to signal USAID’s willingness to use the CORE program to fund religious groups that focus on abstinence training, not solely on condom distribution. He said, CORE “gives faith and community-based organization greater opportunities to apply for USAID funding. Faith-based organizations can apply for funding even if their programs to fight HIV/AIDS do not include all the components of USAID’s strategy. If they want to focus exclusively on behavioral change, they can receive USAID funds.” CORE would then reflect the Administration’s “ABC policy,” first announced by Natsios in December, 2002, which states the order of priorities in AIDS prevention as “abstinence, be faithful to one partner, and then use condoms” as a last resort.

Members of both houses of Congress doubt that these five groups will adhere to the Administration’s new emphasis on abstinence and fidelity. In a March 26 column in the “Washington Times,” Congressman Joseph R. Pitts (R., PA) said “A look at the records of these ‘partners’ hardly reveals group[s] committed to the stated policy of the United States. Instead, they buy into the ‘safe sex’ myth of battling AIDS that to this point has failed miserably..How are we to trust that they will adjust their strategy to fund programs that actually make a difference? We can’t.”

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