Four prominent pro-lifers, including a physician working in Africa, expressed in a New York Times op-ed their excitement about pro-life prospects since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. But they also called for protection of a program that has saved millions of lives in Africa but which might be cut along with other foreign aid programs.
“The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a multibillion-dollar global health initiative started under President George W. Bush, has brought hope to H.I.V.-positive mothers across Africa, and put the end of AIDS within reach,” wrote the four self-identified pro-lifers – Leah Libresco Sargeant, Dr. Matthew Loftus, Dr. Kristin M. Collier, and Kathryn Jean Lopez. “Through H.I.V./AIDS prevention and treatment, PEPFAR has saved 25 million lives and, by preventing mother-to-child transmission of the virus, allowed nearly eight million babies to be born free of the disease. But President Trump’s 90-day freeze of foreign aid programs and sudden stop-work orders have halted this work.”
The authors said that treatments provided through PEPFAR provide the “same kind of hope we’ve tried to give mothers when we’ve stood outside abortion clinics to offer alternatives, or counseled women through high-risk pregnancies.”
Libresco Sargeant is the author of The Dignity of Dependence and runs the newsletter Other Feminisms. Loftus is a family medicine doctor at the PCEA Chogoria Hospital in Kenya. Collier is an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan. And Lopez is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.
The Trump administration on January 24 ordered a stop-work for all global health funding, including PEPFAR.
The authors of the Times op-ed acknowledged that waivers signed by the Trump administration are supposed to keep some lifesaving aid going.
“But they haven’t been enough to fully restart operations. That’s because bank and email accounts have been locked, invoices are not being paid and there’s no way to fund ongoing work,” they said. “Organizations on the ground need formal clearance to operate, but, in many cases, the U.S.A.I.D. workers who provide that clearance were placed on leave. On Friday, a federal judge ordered the temporary reinstatement of hundreds of these workers, but these programs require more stability than appeals, injunctions, and stays can provide.”
One of the op-ed authors, Dr. Loftus, works at a mission hospital in Kenya that since the Trump stop-work order has seen no funds for its more than 3,160 H.I.V. patients and the 42 workers serving them.
The authors warned that if PEPFAR aid is ended, there could be 230 H.I.V.-positive babies born in South Africa alone every day.
“It’s a thrilling time to be alive, when it is newly legal to protect life in the womb at home and when we can extend protection to babies born abroad,” the authors conclude. “PEPFAR is the kind of world-reshaping project that only America can achieve. In the next 50 years, we should see the end of any baby contracting H.I.V. from his or her mother. Don’t throw away this incredible victory.”
