Hi Frosty,

Interesting article.  I wanted to say, about your suggestions for contraception, that Haitian women should have a wide range of contraceptive (and abortion) choices and supports for those choices.  As a young woman I would have hated to have had depot provera.  Although many women like it, it can be unpleasant for others. It is in your body for months and if you cannot get it removed, you have to put up with the unwanted effects.   Sure, depot provera should be available, but so should condoms, the pill, IUDs, and the other methods.  The so-called 'rhythm method' or the temperature taking one are not reliable and I would not be supporting them.

The thing is that good birth control programs require good clinics providing information to men as well as women, offering permanent and temporary solutions, and they should also offer support and personal development in the form of groups to encourage solidarity and learning in populations that are severely marginalised.  The Haiti populations are barely literate and it is not surprising that they have little control over what happens to them.  Literacy is the other thing that clinics could provide.

Does the Catholic Church have the ability to actually prevent clinics being established to help with birth control in Haiti, do you know?

If we are going to promote birth control I think we have to promote it properly.  It has to be linked to the good things in life, to personal development and learning and solidarity - all the things the Church as fallen down on as it has sided with big business in a land where much of the land now belongs to foreign corporations and where the problems are greatly magnified on what they were in the 1960s and even in the 1980s.    It's no coincidence.  Populations out of control go hand in hand with corrupt governments and churches and US Aid, I am afraid.

 I don't know why Frosty cares so much about Haiti.  If he doesn't like Haiti, stay the hell out.