Voice of America reports today that about one in two young girls in the slums of Kenya have traded sex for sanitary napkins.
Lydiah Njoroge, field officer for the Freedom for Girls Program, explains:
The least [expensive] in the market is 40 shillings … a packet that has eight pieces in it. So, because this girl cannot afford 40 shillings — their mother, their parents are poor, they have other things to provide food and shelter – sanitary towels are not a priority. So the girl just goes [and] has sex with an older man, most of the time not the same man — they would have one this month, another one next month, so they are very, very at risk of having HIV.
Meanwhile, here in the United States, liberals fret over whether conservative Catholics should have to buy women the pill. This is Western myopia at its finest. Little girls in Kenya don’t care whether Americans drive big SUVs or keep their houses heated at 72 degrees in the winter. They care about where they can find sanitary napkins. And the answer to that question isn’t redistribution of sanitary napkins, but implementation of governments and economic systems that allow products and services to flow easily and freely to those who need them.
We could send boxes of sanitary napkins to Kenya right now, and they’d likely never reach their target – the corrupt government would steal and sell them. The lack of sanitary napkins in Kenya isn’t the fault of Wall Street. It’s the fault of Kenyan corruptocrats and the liberals around the globe who enable them.
It’s about time we stopped worrying so much about enshrining America’s “positive rights” culture here at home and started worrying about how to allow others the law, order, and negative liberties they so desperately need.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.