The program has saved over 25 million lives. Republicans want to kill it...

George W. Bush, the infamously anti-gay and neoconservative former U.S. president who invaded Iraq on a lie, has criticized congressional Republicans for threatening to defund the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a largely successful African HIV-prevention program that he launched back in 2003. “There is no program more pro-life” than PEPFAR, he wrote.

Though PEPFAR is estimated to have saved over 25 million lives, its funding is set to expire on September 30. Congressional Republicans are falsely claiming that the program promotes abortion and using its re-funding as a bargaining chip in budget negotiations. Republicans have threatened to defund the entire federal government at the end of the month unless they’re allowed to slash military diversity programs and military aid to Ukraine and to increase anti-immigration measures at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We are on the verge of ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic. To abandon our commitment now would forfeit two decades of unimaginable progress and raise further questions about the worth of America’s word,” Bush wrote in an a Wednesday opinion article in The Washington Post.

  • tsonfeirEnglish
    51·
    10 months ago

    I’ve never actually met a Republican who was FOR life. They’re just FOR control.

    • Ragdoll X@lemmy.world
      15·
      10 months ago

      100%. There are plenty of studies showing that supposed “pro-life” sentiment explains little of the left-right difference in abortion support.

      A 2014 study analyzed the data of more than 7400 people and found that “perceptions of preborn humanness explained very little of right–left differences in abortion support, and the association between preborn humanness perceptions and abortion opposition was no stronger for those on the political right (vs. left).”4 And a 2022 poll by Pew also found that a third of Americans simultaneously believe that a fetus is a person with rights and that the decision to abort should be up to the woman. This means that the majority of people who believe that life starts at conception (about 59%) still believe that women should have the right to an abortion.10

      By contrast, a 2017 study found that sexism accounted for 30% to 70% of the left-right difference in abortion stance even after controlling for other relevant variables.5 An earlier study found that authoritarianism had a significant correlation with an anti-abortion position and aggression towards women,6 and a 2019 study found that right-wing authoritarianism had a significant correlation with anti-abortion stigma both before and after controlling for other variables.7

      • tsonfeirEnglish
        31·
        10 months ago

        Haha. He’s a born Republican. Or a hexbear, I can’t tell.

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
      62·
      10 months ago

      The core value is “There are out-groups the law must bind but not protect, and in-groups the law must bind but not protect.” Hence the republicans who get abortions for themselves and close ones, but don’t want it for anyone else.

      You can also describe it as “No one tells me what to do. I tell other people what to do.”

    • Poggervania@kbin.social
      34·
      10 months ago

      They’re for whatever the fuck gets them corporate money, same as Democrats (to a lesser degree).

      You know who else benefits from anti-abortion laws and lowering the working age requirements? Corporate businesses do.