Fox News: Helping Young Girls get AIDS

If I believed Satan existed, I'd swear he was running Fox news. Their reporting is worse than lies, and it is killing real children. Today's story:

"Planned Parenthood Pushes Intensive Sex Education for Kids as Young as 10"

Sounds bad, doesn't it? It's grossly misleading, but it's a snappy headline that appeals to their viewers.

But it gets worse. According to Fox, Planned Parenthood "demands that children 10 and older be given a 'comprehensive sexuality education' by governments," that similar reports "advocated teaching masturbation to children as young as 5." And to top it off, Fox quotes a Catholic spokesman asserting that Planned Parenthood's report is financially motivated because they "make money off contraceptives and abortions."

So what's the truth? The real report, which I encourage you to read yourself (PDF), starts by explaining that these ten-year-old girls (and younger) are child brides, sex slaves, and sometimes prostitutes. They live in countries where most girls will have sex, often forced, long before they turn eighteen.

Did you see that anywhere in Fox's article? No, because their goal is not to report news, nor do they care about helping these children.

From Fox's headline, you'd think Planned Parenthood was advocating that a middle-class ten-year-old girl in Chicago should be shown how to use a condom properly. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Planned Parenthood is advocating education for children, because these children are forced, by customs, economics, and poverty, to have sex far too early. Without sex education, many of these girls will die.

For example, from the article:

19-48%

Percent of young women whose sexual initiation is forced.

Or consider this (abridged):

Faha, 15, is 33 weeks pregnant. Married at 13, Faha was made to leave school as her husband would not allow her to attend. "I was sad. I liked learning and seeing my friends." After her baby is born, Faha would like to wait three years [when she'll be 18] before her next child. She will ask the midwife about contraception.

Does that sound to you like Planned Parenthood is pushing sex education on unwilling, naïve children, against their parents' wishes?

Or consider these facts cited in the Planned Parenthood report:

• In South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, 40-45% of women age 20-24 were married as children.
• In countries like Bangaladesh, Central African Republic, Chad, Guinea, Mali and Niger, more than 60 % of women were married or entered into a union before their 18th birthday.
• One in 10 births worldwide is to a mother who is still herself a child

In fact, the report is not even about sex and contraception at all, it's about making education and human rights, including sex education and sexual rights, available to all, because educated, healthy people raise healthy families.

So what does Planned Parenthood actually suggest? A pretty reasonable list (this is just a sampling):

• Make age- and culturally-appropriate sex education mandatory in school.
• Enact and enforce bans on child marriage.
• Improve education, especially for girls, so that they aren't forced into prostitution or marriage by economics.
• Create jobs for young people.
• Create community-based support programs for marginalized youths.

Did you get any of that from Fox's article? No, nor did most of their readers. Unfortunately, Fox has an audience of people who never dig past the headlines, so their twisted story will stick.

Thanks to Fox news and others of their ilk, Planned Parenthood will be further villified, funds won't be allocated ... and more 13 year old girls who could have had a chance in life will get AIDS or have three children before they're 18, simply for lack of knowledge. It's a terrible thing, and Fox "News" is helping to make it happen.

Slavery and Child Trafficking in Ireland?

What do President George H. W. Bush's chief legal counsel, a baby who was stolen from his mother and sold for profit, and a tormented gay man who suffered from depression and died of AIDS, have in common?

They're all the same man.

Few stories get me as angry as those about slavery and selling children for profit. And although today's story isn't as black and white as many such stories, the shocking part is that it took place in Ireland in the 1950's, and the perpetrators were Catholic Nuns. And in case you're thinking, "OK, just another another overblown exaggeration," think again.

Our story starts in 1952, when Philomena Lee, a young Irish lass of 18 years, became pregnant. Philomena's mother died when she was just six herself, and the nuns raised her. At age 18, she knew nothing of men and the facts of life, and became intimate with a handsome young man she met at the county fair. So far, an all-too-common story, yet hardly shocking.

But for young Philomena, the shame of her pregnancy was nothing compared to what came next. The Catholic Church was so powerful that the Irish government had abandoned its duty, and handed over responsibility – and unchecked legal authority – of all unwed mothers and their babies to the Church. The Catholic Church took full control of these young women, imprisoned them in nunneries, and managed to block all legal interference from the government.

The Church started running it as a money-making business, taking money from the government, while at the same time selling the babies for profit to wealthy Catholic couples in Great Britain and America, even against the mothers' direct objections and refusals.

And the profits didn't stop with the babies. Their mothers were kept in the convent as slaves, forced to work in gardens, kitchens, nurseries or light manufacturing, unless they or their families could buy their freedom at a cost £100, a substantial sum in those days which many couldn't afford. It was slavery, plain and simple.

Philomena's baby became Michael Hess, a chief architect of the Republican National Convention's election strategy, whose brilliant work ultimately won the presidency for George H.W. Bush (senior), and for which he was appointed Bush's chief legal counsel. But unfortunately for Michael, he was also a gay man in a political party that didn't put up with homosexuality. Mike ultimately got AIDS, and died.

But even more tragically, both Philomena and Michael were trying desperately to find each other, to reconnect. Each of them went to the convent, and begged to be introduced, mother and son. Michael probably passed within a few miles of his mother. Yet, the Catholic nuns inexplicably refused, in spite of the earnest appeals of everyone involved. Michael died without ever getting to see his mother again, and Philomena never got to see the man that her little boy had become after he was forcibly taken from her and sold.

My summary barely does justice to this appalling story. I hope you'll read the full story, beautifully and tragically written by Martin Sixsmith of The Guardian.

Those who would claim that without religion, there can be no morality (which is the Roman Catholic Church's official position), need only look at deeds such as these to see that even with religion, morality is difficult to find.