“Be Fruitful and Multiply” –Genesis 1:28
I have heard recently that the new President-Elect of the United States, Barack Obama, may make some drastic changes in policy on the first day he takes up office. Among them are undoing the Mexico City Policy, which assures that US taxpayer money is not used to fund international groups which participate in the practice of abortion, and also giving taxpayer dollars to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), a tyrannical organization. One of it’s faults – though not in-and-of-itself the worst of it’s faults, has been the leading of an ineffective cash-for-condoms effort to provide aid to Africa. Unfortunately one does not solve real problems by attacking symptoms. As economist William Easterly has pointed out, a condom is one of the cheapest products on the global market. Handing them out to people whom one may believe cannot afford a simple condom but can afford food, clothing and shelter for eighteen years, is just lunacy. Therefore, throwing condoms at population doesn’t do anything. They don’t want condoms, they want the kids. Families in poverty tend to have more children as breadwinners and their actions will reflect this incentive. That is not to say learning about condoms is not important. I subscribe to a Palinist view of sex education which rejects both special interests and abstinence only in favor of a combined teaching of contraception and abstinence alongside one another. But, the point is, Africa needs to develop economically through good policy and protection of property rights to solve it’s woes. UNFPA has run into a stone wall on this issue for decades and will likely continue to do so. Read the rest of this entry »
