George Bush is a privileged human being. He has never known poverty. His only (published) problems have been self-indulgence and the excesses of affluence. Any illness in his family has been dealt with by the very best private medical care in the world. He has limited his family size, we know not how, but we assume by expert advice from medics, and not by abstinence.
George Bush can afford to be a right-wing "evangelist", but can he ever be forgiven for lacking the compassion and understanding we would expect from a Christian?
He does not have the first idea about the agony of a woman, violated, tormented and raped, now pregnant with the rapist's child, who is probably from a different culture or religion. The pain and trauma of nine months of pregnancy, perhaps compounded by HIV/Aids contracted from her attacker.
He cannot understand the rejection, the desolation of a woman in that plight or the abandonment and neglect of her existing children. George Bush can indulge in luxuries like promoting abstinence, except with one pampered partner; he can express the horror of abortion, when every child he has created knowingly can inherit the earth from his family and will never go hungry.
It is easy to claim purity and principles when you have never faced the future alone as many women all over the world have to do.
George Bush's answer to unwanted pregnancies and Aids is abstinence. Very simple if you can achieve it, but what hypocrisy he displays.
He encourages a consumer-mad society which advertises everything using sexual images ? food, cars and cosmetics all need sex to sell. It would appear to the ignorant (and George Bush prefers them so ? too much sex education encourages sexual activity he claims) that to be modern human beings we must be sexy and have sex with whoever ? it sells!
The results are catastrophic. Worldwide. Every minute 190 women are facing an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy and 10 teenage girls will have an unsafe abortion, in many cases leading to death.
Everyday another 15,000 people are infected with HIV. Everyday people are denied the advice and services they need for reproductive health.
There is a chronic shortage of condoms, even those who have been educated enough to use them. In Botswana, for example, where HIV infection affects 39 per cent of the population, fewer than two condoms for per adult male, per annum are available.
It is estimated that 13 billion condoms will be required by the developing world and Eastern Europe by 2015 which will cost $1.25 billion and currently only 27 per cent of these costs are borne by donors.
Millennium goals on maternal and child health and HIV are slipping badly and the world's population goes on rising to an estimated nine billion by 2050 (six billion at present). This means more poverty, more starvation, more disease and civil war and migration away from the poorest countries, seeking a better life.
So what is George Bush doing? He takes pride in announcing $15 billion over the next five years to "fight" Aids and contributes a tiny sum to the Global Health Fund, which was set up to fight HIV/Aids, TB and Malaria.
But strings are attached to the $15 billion and the money is very slow to appear. HIV/Aids services have to be delivered with reproductive health and family planning services where they exist and because these programmes ? brilliantly provided by UNFAA and organisations like Marie Stopes International ? include abortion advice, the USA will not contribute to them, even the HIV/Aids element.
All over the developing world, sexual health and maternal programmes are closing down because of lack of funds from the USA. Maternal deaths from illegal abortion and childbirth will rise even higher. Millennium goals will fade.
Neither must the money be used on cheaper, generic drugs for the fight against AIDS, TB and Malaria because George Bush says not.
To sum up, George Bush's $15 billion is a direct subsidy to the American Drug Industry and the presidential elections loom.
Hoorah for George Bush and his own brand of evangelism.
