New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff's wrote an excellent piece this week enititled "Can This Be Pro-Life?" It focused on USAID's defunding of the reproductive health NGO Maria Stopes International. Under the banner of "pro-life", Kristoff explains, this action will lead to the deaths of countless mothers and children in Africa, where pregnancy is already the leading killer of women between fifteen and forty-five years old. Maria Stopes International's family planning services can only be described as life-saving: it rescues women from dangerous childbirths, STDs, debilitating conditions like fistula, and allows them to begin to lead lives outside of the home. What Kristoff failed to account for however was who instigated the defunding except in a vague way: "There is something about reproductive health — maybe the sex part — that makes some Americans froth and go crazy," he insufficiently explained. It's not just "some" Americans who are responsible for US government's outrageous action, but rather, a well-funded and well-organized coalition with tremendous lobbying power: America's so-called "pro-life" movement.

Birth control is the only proven factor in reducing abortion. Yet somehow, not a single anti-abortion group in the U.S. supports contraception. The shockingly high rates of teen pregnancy in America—on par with Third World countries and four times as high as the European Union—are direct consequences of the pro-life movement's strength in our country, as are disproportionately high rates of AIDS contraction in regions where contraception is not taught in schools. Now our domestic anti-choice groups are exporting their dangerous efforts beyond our borders, which, coupled with lack of healthcare and extreme poverty, will result in even more dire consequences. One such group, Human Life International, boasts on their website about bringing about the destruction of 10 million condoms in Tanzania, where almost 9 percent of the population, roughly 1,600,000 people, have AIDS. In her signature loony reasoning, American Life League president Judie Brown thanked HLI's founder for teaching her that "the practice of contraception always leads to aborting babies." These extremists ignore all scientific and statistical data in order to pursue an agenda that is anti-health, anti-women, and anti-life.