In which to sex one talks about the United States suffers of schizophrenia. On the one hand, a multimillionaire pornography, one trains advertising and of entertainment that supplies to each imaginable taste and fantasy. On the other hand, the religious right cries out incessantly against the evils of the illicit one to please sexual. In this theater kabuki, takes place a crisis nonrecognized of sexual health of the nation.
Obama has inherited a country in crisis. An increasing fiscal crisis darkened the campaign of 2008 like an increasing hurricane that arrived at its climax at the moment that the voters went to the ballot boxes. They voted to him to a great extent because they thought that it was not, unlike McCain, a Bush reincarnated. Lacking of its evangelical inoperancia of Cowboy, with respect to the bank, the sanitary insurance and the war, Obama are not more than a pale shade of the corporativista perspective of Bush.
The crisis on the sexual health of the country is derived from the fear of the Christian right to the sexual pleasure. This is expressed in the deep opposition to the reproductive health of the woman (particularly the right to the abortion), its adhesion to policies for adolescents centered solely in abstinence, its acceptance of the increase of cases registered of diseases of sexual transmission and AIDS and its reprimands on the increase of pregnancies between the young adolescents and women.
Instead of human policies directed to these thematic ones of sexual health, the presidency of Bush offered only moralistic judgments. Hidden after those judgments it was the fundamentalist belief that the resulting suffering of the problems related to the sexual life, especially the resultants of sex occurred outside the heterosexual marriage, was sign of the God revenge: one receives what it is deserved.
Many hoped that Obama and the democrats gave a more human value group to the policies of sexual health. Still they can.
* * *
The adoption by the Congress of the Stupak amendment to the project of law of “reform” of sanitary insurance (H.R. 3962) reveal the deepening in the crisis of the sexuality. The amendment, devised by the democrat of Michigan, Bart Stupak, medically increases the restrictions to the right of the woman to a safe, legal and reviewed abortion. It was a shining maneuver of the forces anti-election that (apparently) took to the democratic leaders with the lowered trousers.
The question of the federal aid for the abortion was without a doubt going to be the battlefield in the effort of the democrats to approve the reform of the national insurance of health. While It nibbles (1) continues being jurisprudence, the Christian right has mobilized last the three decades and average systematically to restrict the access to the legal abortion. The Christian right embraces so much to republicans as to “Blue Dogs” (2); Stupak is associate with the faction of extreme right, the Family, the evangelical Christian version of the Opus Dei
Adding insults to the insult, 64 democrats voted the amendment. They seem to have forgotten what the Supreme Court of Justice through its judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg recognized: the right to the abortion is in the “center of the autonomy of the woman to determine its own service life, and thus to enjoy estatus of equal citizen”.
Other thematic ones of sexual health comprise of the legislation but they attracted much less attention. These include:
Support to the sexual education. Under the project of law of the Senate, two dispositions are included that seem in contradiction one with the other, result of the classic political commitment. One will destine 75 million dollars to the year to a comprehensiva sexual education. The other will destine 50 million dollars to the year for the education on abstinence; the law project reautorizaría Title V of the abstinence program that expired east summer. Under the project of law of the Senate, there will be support for “clinics of health” in the schools.
(The budget proposed by Obama for fiscal year 2010 is not surprising that redirija bottoms for sexual education from the programs of “only abstinence” towards the programs from prevention of pregnancy. Thus, keeping this double slope, the budgetary proposal includes a provision allowing that those that endorses the programs “only abstinence” receive bottoms).
Support to the prevention of pregnancies. The project of law of the Congress includes the “Healthful Initiative for Prevention of Pregnancy of Adolescents” disposition that creates a program of federal subsidy to support programs “based on evidences” that try to reduce the pregnancies of adolescents; abstinence is not listed as a program “based on evidences”.
Support to fiscal benefits for the pairs in fact. The project of law of the Congress incorporates the language of the proposal “Fiscal Law of Equality for the Plans of Health” that would implement fiscal advantages marital type to the pairs of the same sex. Under the law project, the employees that they have pair in fact would be treated just as “spouses”.
Support to a greater prevention of HIV – AIDS. The law project incorporates the “Law by the early Treatment of HIV” that “would allow the Medicaid programs of the state to provide with treatment of HIV to individuals before developing AIDS”. It would extend the Law of Social Security giving to the States the option to cover people with low income.
Maintaining the glorification of the fear with denunciations of “committees of the death”, the right has been rebelled against these modest programs. The republican Michele Bachmann noticed that the clinics of health of the schools would offer abortions to the students. Matt Barber, director of cultural subjects of the Liberty Counsel, preservative legal group, affirms that “the operations would be provided as much with change of sex for Americans as for illegal immigrants who suffer of Disorder of Identity of Sort (according to the Psychiatric Association of the USA), duty free, courtesy of the contributor. The present price of this procedure can exceed the 50,000 dollars”.
The organization “for Americans Truth about Homosexuality” is positioned against which she sees like the invasion of the “lobby gay”. It notices that the adoption of analytical categories as “sexual direction” and “identity of sort” undermine the moral order of the nation: these terms “promote the fiction especially, between the students, of which the homosexual behavior is natural and it does not suppose risks for the health, admitting here that this behavior supposes specific problems of health”.
One already only can hope that the modest provisions that support the sexual health do not undergo the same destiny that the abortion when the project of final law of the health insurance encarrile its end in the consensus process search.
* * *
The sexual health of the nation is in crisis and why would not have to be it? The Great Recession combined with the “Great Imperialistic Madness”, the military misfortune that began in Afghanistan, was towards Iraq and now it extends to Pakistan (the next one will be Egypt) is having innumerable disasters. How in a society marked by increasing levels of unemployment, bankruptcies, expropriations, people without ceiling and violence, would not hope that the sexual life reflected the crisis? The present rise in the indices of diseases of sexual transmission, adolescent pregnancies and HIV – AIDS is indicating of this crisis.
In the decade between 1997 and 2005, the level of diseases of sexual transmission (including syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea) increased a 55% (of 0 ‘ 94 million to 1 ‘ 4). According to the CDC (Center for the Control and the Prevention of Diseases) it had registered 1 ‘ 5 million cases of diseases of sexual transmission in the 2008. The most disquieting cases, those of adolescent girls between 15 and 19 years that supposed 409,531 cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea. Worse it is the situation of the afroestadounidenses, that represent 12% of the population of the USA, and almost counted around a 71% of the registered cases of gonorrhea and half of all the cases of chlamydia and syphilis.
The pregnancies of adolescents increase. The Guttmacher Institute indicates that there was a total of a million pregnancies (that is to say, natural births, abortions and abortions) between the adolescent young people between 15 and 19 years in 1990; in 2002, the pregnancies of adolescents fell to 746.800. Much more problematic: the Federal Forum Interagencies on statistics of the Childhood and the Family states that the pregnancies of adolescents grew between 2005 and 2006, coverall between adolescent girls between 15 and 17 years (like the daughter of SARAH Palin, Bristol, embarrassed to the 16 years).
HIV – AIDS increases. In the 2007, there was approximately 1 ‘ 2 million registered cases. Nevertheless, the CDC indicates that the AIDS indices enter the men of 15 24 years increased during 1997 – 2006. What affirms unequivocally: “The epidemic of HIV – AIDS in the afroestadounidenses communities is one continued crisis of sexual health for the USA. At the end of 2006 there was an estimation of 1 ‘ 1 million people living with HIV of which almost half (46%) was black/African Americans.
The increase in the diseases of sexual transmission, in HIV – AIDS and in the pregnancies of young women indicates that the USA must in one go surpass the tyranny of the right; antisexual Christian values that were implanted under the policies of “abstinence” from the administration Bush. The women, the poor women (especially the afroestadounidenses) and the young people are the proverbial “canary in the coalmine” in the crisis of emergent sexual health in the USA.
From the Civil War, the right only had once as much power as the exerted one under Bush. It happened in years 20, when the movement in favor of the dry law, anti immigration, the Kuklux Klan and the eugenistas pressed to reform amendment 18 establishing the Prohibition, celebrating their whiteness with lynchings and supporting the casino Capitalism that took to the country to the Great Depression. To one it has left to ask itself solely if nothing else that another one and still greater depression combined with a genuine “world war” is the unique forces that can suppress the Christian right.
The stench of the administration Bush, like a channel in drying, today continues choking our possibilities. The term “crisis” seems inadequate to catch the magnitude of the social breakup bequeathed by the presidency of Bush: a catastrophe of the financial capital without historical precedent; increasing levels of unemployment, bankruptcies, expropriations, individuals without ceiling and violence; a crisis in the system of health in increase; two military shipwrecks in the occupations abroad; a population of well armed enrabietada right and; and an increasing distance between rich and poor. Only Herbert Hoover could have bequeathed similar inheritance to its successor.