Women Could Be ‘Big Losers’ in War on Contraception, Opinion Piece Says

Women could be "among the big losers" if the Vatican and the Bush administration win the "war on contraception," Caryl Rivers, a professor of journalism at Boston University, writes in a Women's eNews opinion piece. Rivers says that the administration continues to spend "millions of dollars to encourage ineffective 'abstinence-only' policies," with one-third of the HIV/AIDS prevention funds authorized in the five-year, $15 billion global AIDS initiative going to abstinence-only programs. In addition, a Vatican official recently said that HIV can "pass through the condom barrier," Rivers says, adding, "It's hard enough getting men in many countries to use condoms when they think they will work. If they believe condoms are defective, that belief will literally be a death sentence for millions of women." Rivers concludes that "[w]hen churches get involved in the war on condoms, tragedy is often the result" (Rivers, Women's eNews, 12/10).