More Misery In Africa, Thank GWB And The Christianists

Africa has had plenty of problems from the time Europeans began to meddle in it. That would be centuries of miseries mostly attributable to whites. This is scarcely to minimize African abilities in misery making, something not missing. Sometimes what could loosely be termed as good intentions go seriously awry.

McClatchy reports on a baby boom swamping Africans and pushing families into poverty. The culprit? BushCo and his Christianist allies insistence that birth control be uncoupled from US aid.

Under President George W. Bush, the United States withdrew from its decades-long role as a global leader in supporting family planning, driven by a conservative ideology that favored abstinence and shied away from providing contraceptive devices in developing countries, even to married women.

Bush's mammoth global anti-AIDS initiative, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, poured billions of dollars into Africa but prohibited groups from spending any of it on family planning services or counseling programs, whose budgets flat-lined.

If you ever wonder why theocracy makes me grit my teeth, read the entire article and think about the legacy of BushCo.