Medicine: Bush Gives Global AIDS Fighters Ultimatum

and once again demonstrates that you can never underestimate the president's power to make a dumbass decision, hurt people, and make it sound morally superior all at once.

U.S. groups fighting AIDS overseas are being given an ultimatum by the government: Pledge your opposition to sex trafficking and prostitution or do without federal funds...

[Kent Hill, acting administrator for global health at the U.S. Agency for International development says] the pledge is a tool the United States can use to make sure none of its money goes to support a practice he called degrading and debilitating.

"Prostitution worldwide has always been connected to human rights violations, dehumanization, and organized crime," Hill said. "The vast majority of people, globally, do not find themselves there by choice."

Sounds good, right? Even pro-women, right?

[Terri Bartlett, vice president for public policy at Population Action International, a health advocacy group for women's issues,] said that while she agreed with the pledge requirement's premise that prostitution is a harmful occupation, it may have the unintended effect of deterring prostitutes from seeking help by unnecessarily singling them out.

"We want to build trust and reduce stigma," Bartlett said of dealing with the high-risk population of prostitutes. "This policy flies in the face of what we know works."

The most disturbing thing to me is the obvious non-sequitur from Mr. Hill's statement that most women do not find themselves in prostitution by choice. So, groups shouldn't help women who are sex slaves because that's somehow supporting a disgusting practice? Since preventing women with HIV from getting needed treatment is sooo humane. Thanks, jackasses.