African Leaders Ask Congress to Cease Abortion Funding in HIV/AIDS Programs

By | June 8, 2023

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 9 (C-Fam) Leading African political, religious, and business leaders have asked members of Congress to stop promoting abortion in U.S. foreign assistance for HIV/AIDS.

“As you now seek to reauthorize PEPFAR funding, we want to express our concerns and suspicions that this funding is supporting so-called family planning and reproductive health principles and practices, including abortion, that violate our core beliefs concerning life, family, and religion,” said the Africans in a letter to Congress.

The letter signed by 129 African leaders from 15 countries expressed gratitude to the American people for 20 years of financial assistance to fight the HIV/AIDs epidemic and applauded the “original strategy” that respected “values and focused PEPFAR on protecting and preserving life.” However, they are increasingly alarmed in how the abortion issue has become insinuated into the HIV-AIDS programs.

When the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was first authorized by Congress in 2003 it encouraged abstinence, fidelity, and condom use to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, an approach known as ABC. It also required organizations receiving HIV/AIDS funding to pledge not to promote the decriminalization of prostitution. These provisions opposed by Democrat lawmakers have been altered or eliminated over the course of several Congressional reauthorization bills for the $5 billion-a-year program, the largest global health program in U.S. foreign assistance budget.

The letter was addressed to ranking members of both parties in the House and Senate and sent by Ghana’s Speaker of Parliament.

At a recent hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April with U.S. Global AIDs coordinator Dr. John Nkengasong, Senators asked for a “clean” reauthorization implying that proposed text changes would cause delays.

However, a large group of U.S.-based pro-life organizations have asked senior Republican lawmakers to provide a legislative fix to prevent HIV/AIDS programs from being misused to promote abortion and gender ideology.  Conservative groups pressed Chairman Michael McCaul of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and ranking member Sen. Jim Risch of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a letter last month to make necessary changes to prevent a “radical sexual and reproductive health agenda” being proliferated by the Biden administration through PEPFAR channels.

Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), a longtime PEPFAR advocate, expressed similar concerns in a correspondence this week to Congressional colleagues explaining how the Biden administration is using PEPFAR to promote abortion.

“President Biden has hijacked PEPFAR…in order to promote abortion on demand,” wrote Smith. Smith describes for his colleagues how President Biden’s new PEPFAR guidance for country programs in Africa integrates PEPFAR with abortion promotion including in working with organizations to help change country’s pro-life laws.

Smith details how organizations that promote abortion receive billions in HIV/AIDs grants, including groups like Population Services International, Pathfinder and VillageReach. The organizations told the development news site Devex that they comply with U.S. law and do not use U.S. funds for abortion, even though they engage in abortion activities with non-U.S. funding.

One PEPFAR program that increasingly integrates abortion concerns with HIV/AIDS programming is the public-private initiative targeting adolescent girls called DREAMS (Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS-free, Mentored, and Safe). Since 2014 over $1 billion has been directed to DREAMs programs in 16 African countries. In Malawi the program focused on young girls 12-14 years providing access to sexual and reproductive health services, which according to the Biden administration includes abortion.

The letter signatories represent leaders from Ethiopia, Eswatini, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.

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