Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Standing in a gilded stateroom in London's Westminster Palace was a slight young woman from Kenya named Juliet Awuor, preparing to tell her story to members of Parliament, heads of British and international NGOs and the press. It was early March and Population Action International's latest documentary--Abstaining from Reality: U.S. Restrictions on HIV Prevention--was making its worldwide premiere in the U.K, followed by events in the Parliaments of Denmark and Sweden. Juliet, who never in her 24 years had left Kenya, had bravely flown to London so she could share her story of contracting HIV the very first time she had sex because neither she nor her boyfriend knew how to use a condom.

Filmed last summer in Kenya and Uganda by former PAI staffer and current National Geographic filmmaker Daniele Anastasion and produced by PAI's Sr. Policy Research Analyst Wendy Turnbull, Abstaining from Reality provides a snapshot of the Bush administration's abstinence-only approach to HIV prevention as part of its global HIV/AIDS assistance.  The nine-minute documentary examines how these ideologically-driven programs are actually endangering the lives of the people they're supposed to be protecting. With the recent resignation of Ambassador Randall Tobias as USAID administrator and the upcoming reauthorization hearings on PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), the film has unexpected urgency and poignancy.

... article continued at RHRealityCheck.org.