it begins

I hadn't intended to blog right now, as this is the time of the month I'm editing a local magazine; I'd included everybody's articles and been seen generally as a good egg, only to find that I'd used the wrong template, and will have to cut several pages. Boy, am I going to be popular...

Then I heard, from the American Life League, that the International Planned Parenthood Foundation (IPPF), descended from the organisation founded by egregious racist Margaret Sanger in 1916, is rising to the crisis. At a time when medical charities are appealing for antiobiotics, painkillers, antiseptics, dressings, cast-material, clean injecting equipment and vitamins, IPPF is appealing for money for condoms.

As if to add insult to injury, the IPPF shows its hand in a 2007 article stating that a key HIV strain came from Haiti. Had they done any research, they would have found that HIV-1 did not come from Haiti but passed through it: as in so many other areas, the island was more sinned against than sinning.

There is a spectrum of views upon the part condoms - and other genuine means of contraception (ie not abortifacients) - can play in relationships, and views on all points thereof are carefully and cerebrally defended. However, what the IPPF is saying with its appeal has no place on that spectrum. It is saying that, to put it bluntly, victims of the Haitian earthquake are too many, too poor and too black. If the IPPF or any analogous organisation is allowed a foothold on the island, doctors and nurses who need vaccines, painkillers, clean injecting equipment etc will find the same that too many workers have found in Africa: that the cupboards are full of virtually nothing but condoms. Please do not donate to this racist organisation and its fellow-travellers.

On the plus side, Pam from Texas has kindly given me details of two organisations in addition to the many which are genuinely trying to help Haiti. Firstly, there's Catholic Relief Services, and also Mercy Corps, which for the present has an anonymous donor matching other donations up to $250,000. So who's that? God knows.