We can start with contraceptives.
We don't have to restrict this to Africa and AIDS if you so choose not to.
I've read enough of your material to get a feel for where your concerns are with regard to Catholic teaching on contraceptives and how damaging it is to people. However, as is norm, can you please state your case as to why this is so and I will follow with a response and we can get the ball rolling...
Well, right off the bat, I think it's important to recognize that there are a few different reasons for using the contraceptive measures that the Catholic Church objects to.
First, there's contraception for its own sake, i.e. to control one's reproduction. I think this is an absolutely crucial issue for women's rights, especially in the developing world.
Pregnancy can have the effect - intentionally or unintentionally - of controlling women and limiting their opportunities for advancement in society. A woman who cannot choose when she will have her children is a woman whose ability to do things like pursue education or a career can be taken away from her against her will. This is especially true in cultures where women are pressured to marry early.
In addition to the effect on women specifically, a lack of contraception can have a negative effect on society generally, because without it, couples are severely hampered in their ability to ensure that the number and timing of children is within their capabilities. No contraception means more children who are born to unprepared parents; this translates into an extra burden on society.
Second, there's the use of contraceptive methods for other reasons... e.g. disease prevention. In these cases, I think the harm is clear: AIDS and other STDs kill people, and curtailing condom use means that these diseases will spread more easily and infect more people. The Church's position on this issue costs lives.
Setting aside the question of whether it's good or moral for the Church to preach abstinence for unmarried people, I think it's clear that their approach is horribly ineffective. Even with the Church saying "don't have sex", people still have sex. Lots of it. Realistically, our choices aren't between getting people to be abstinent or engage in protected sex; they're between getting people to engage in protected sex or unprotected sex. IOW, the Church can choose between two outcomes:
- Church teaching gets violated and everyone generally stays healthy.
- Church teaching gets violated and lots of people die horribly.
IMO, to anyone who values human life, the right choice is clear. And it's not even about upholding Church doctrine, IMO, because that's a sunk cost: it's common to both options and therefore not a valid basis to choose between them.
But on both issues, I think there's something I think is rather insidious (and I don't think that's too strong a word) about the Catholic Church's approach: they attempt to impose their views on non-Catholics. It would be one thing (though still objectionable, IMO) if they were only trying to forbid contraception within its own membership, but the Church has done plenty to try to work against contraception generally, including for non-Catholics. In the past, they campaigned in many countries for birth control to be illegal. Today, they try to position themselves as an NGO in many parts of the world (and thereby divert funding from other NGOs who could do the same jobs) and ensure that contraception isn't offered as part of the services they deliver.
We even have cases like the African bishop who claimed that condoms were being deliberately infected with HIV by Europeans in order to wipe out Africans. Regardless of your feelings about condoms themselves, I hope you can realize that this sort of rhetoric would have a huge cost in human suffering, since anyone who took the bishop seriously would also be suspicious of other Western aid, such as food or medical care.
So... that's probably enough to get us started. And that's not even getting into my feelings about the theological and logical basis of the Church position on contraception, because if I started going on about the inconsistencies I see in it, I'd be here all day.