Seeing is Believing: Questions about Faith-Based Organizations Involved in HIV/AIDS Prevention and Treatment

For many years, faith-based health providers have received enormous sums of money from both state-based and private entities to provide healthcare services. More recently, that healthcare has included treatment for people living with HIV and AIDS. Unfortunately, many of these providers do not provide a full range of preventative care, especially advice on the use of and access to condoms to prevent the spread of HIV. Too few people have questioned whether the faith-based groups’ use of those funds is as effective as it might be. This report raises some of those questions and provides some proposals for how we might move forward towards more transparency.

 

Shotgun Adoption

The National Abortion Federation estimates that as many as 4,000 CPCs operate in the United States, often using deceptive tactics like posing as abortion providers and showing women graphic antiabortion films. While there is growing awareness of how CPCs hinder abortion access, the centers have a broader agenda that is less well known: they seek not only to induce women to "choose life" but to choose adoption, either by offering adoption services themselves, as in Bethany's case, or by referring women to Christian adoption agencies. Far more than other adoption agencies, conservative Christian agencies demonstrate a pattern and history of coercing women to relinquish their children.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

In 1968, Catholic Church doctrine forbade the use of contraception. Forty years later, the Church's teachings are irrelevant at best to American Catholics, but outright dangerous for those living in the developing world.