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Nurse Suing Fort Worth Catholic Charities over Condom Prohibition

By Hilary White

FORT WORTH, Texas, July 25, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Catholic Charities of the diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, is being sued by the former director of its HIV/AIDS program because the organization refuses to make condom use a part of its prevention programs.

Barbara Beaty, a registered nurse, oversaw the Lady Hogan Project which offers medical assistance to people who are infected with HIV and AIDS. She says she was "improperly fired" when she refused to cooperate with a change of policy that disallows staff from encouraging condom use for AIDS prevention.

The suit says not promoting condom use violates "minimum standards of acceptable and prevailing professional nursing practice." Beaty is suing for lost wages and "mental anguish."

Beaty's lawyer, Dusty Fillimore, told the Forth Worth Star-Telegram that the issue is not one of contraception, but one of disease prevention. Beaty is charging Catholic Charities with deliberately withholding information on the prevention of the disease because it prevents employees from talking to clients about condoms, placing them at risk.

"It is extremely troubling that Catholic Charities would attempt to interfere in nurse-patient relationship and try to inhibit or prevent the delivery of critically important health information that could and would save lives in our community," Fillmore said.

But many in the international effort against AIDS in the developing world have pointed to the push for condom use as a major contributor to the spread of the disease. The most successful AIDS prevention program in the developing world, that of Uganda, was derailed by the insistence of international advisors on the promotion of condoms.

In a lengthy op-ed in the Washington Post earlier this month, Sam L. Ruteikara, an official in the Ugandan government AIDS prevention programs, demanded that the western advisors, who control the aid funding, stop sabotaging their successful abstinence based programs in favor of condoms.

"We understand that casual sex is dear to you," he wrote, "but staying alive is dear to us. Listen to African wisdom, and we will show you how to prevent AIDS."

Catholic medical agencies hold that encouraging condom use merely confirms people in their risky sexual behavior without being an effective means of prevention. Condoms can break, and the porous latex allows the tiny virus particles to pass through the barrier, making their use a form of viral Russian Roulette.

International aid agencies promoting condoms in the developing world also acknowledge that one of the greatest problems is compliance; people simply do not use them for every act of sexual intercourse.

Condom failure is listed by most "family planning" agencies as a major reason for unplanned pregnancy, but nevertheless the AIDS prevention industry continues to push condoms as an effective means of preventing the deadly disease.

Even when condoms are used regularly, they it has been shown that they still fail to prevent the spread of viral diseases. A study published in 2006, showed that even with 100 per cent condom compliance, condoms failure results in 30 percent infection rate with the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), which causes cervical cancer.

The study tracked the sexual behavior of 82 female university students who kept daily records, and found that only 70 percent of the women, who reported 100 percent consistent condom use, were virus-free at the end of three years.

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Study: Even with 100 % Condom Use 30% Still Contract Potentially Deadly HPV Virus
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/06062701.html

Uganda AIDS Prevention Success Being Undermined by Infuriated UN Condom-Pushers
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/feb/05020408.html

Ugandan Anti-AIDS Activist Demands UN Fire Lewis For Pushing Condoms
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/sep/05090701.html

World's Most Successful AIDS Prevention Programme in Uganda "Sabotaged" by Western "Experts"
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jul/08071112.html

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