We just think abortion is this kind of normalized.

I mean, there's even rhetoric saying it should be health care.

Like, it should just be anytime, any reason.

It doesn't matter.

It's just a part of the game.

And if you go over there, I think it would probably be thought of, like, murder, right?

Yeah. Dear Lord, please bless all the listeners tuning in and guide our conversation today. Welcome back to the loopcast.

Today we are talking faith, culture, and politics from a Catholic perspective. We have Tom, Erica, and Josh. And we have some insight into something a little

bit international here. And we are going over to Africa. So something that has kind of buzzed

around on the outside. I've heard and seen places, but no one's really done a good enough

job exposing how much of a problem this is. So we're going to try to do that today.

We are looking at the president's emergency plan for AIDS relief, known as PEPFAR.

Specifically, it started as an AIDS program done by Bush and is now kind of being hijacked by the current administration to go way beyond

the scope of what that is. Erica, we've done a lot of research. We have some insight in this,

even on the Hill. What's going on with PEPFAR? Sure. So there's actually a really interesting

Catholic angle on this. I'll get to you in a minute. So for those who don't know, PEPFAR was

created in

2003 as part of the global emergency response to the HIV AIDS epidemic in Africa specifically.

And it has since then become the most expensive foreign assistance program in history. We've put about

$110 billion into this. And the United States government sites, we've put about $110 billion into this.

And the United States government cites that we've saved probably over 25 million lives.

So a lot of good has been done.

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