What worries me, and many other adoptive parents I know, is that Madonna's mission to Malawi will scare off countries that currently allow adoption, fearing the worldwide publicity will create the perception that their children are for sale. She's given international adoption a major image problem. It's already bad enough that when you adopt overseas people think you're "skipping off to buy a baby," as I've been told, and that was before Madonna made headlines.

Plenty of adoptive parents figure out pretty quickly that if you want to avoid problems, do a little research and avoid countries with dicey adoption histories and poorly established programs. In my family, we never considered pressing a country closed to outside adoptions for an exemption; but then again, we hadn't donated $3 million to one of them either. We did think a lot about how our child would view his adoption when he grows up. We dismissed a possible facilitator because she seemed, well, shady. As my husband pointed out, you don't want "60 Minutes" showing up at your door 15 years later, informing you that your baby broker was corrupt. Try explaining that one to a vulnerable adolescent. 

The late Rep. Tom Lantos of California, who until his recent death was chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, lambasted the PEPFAR opponents a short time before he died. He cited studies that "found that the abstinence-only earmark has forced a reduction in programs preventing transmission of the virus that causes AIDS from mother to child, has reduced prevention efforts with high-risk groups, and has undermined efforts to implement [prevention] programs."

With regard to the opposition to the integration of HIV/AIDS and birth control services, Lantos added, "this provision will ensure contraceptive assistance to HIV-positive women who wish to delay or prevent a subsequent pregnancy. Do the people objecting to this provision want to stand in the way of a sick woman trying to avoid getting pregnant?"

I have friends who are such committed Bush-haters that they find it impossible to believe that he has ever done anything morally right or geopolitically beneficial; when I point out that his global AIDS initiative has saved thousands and possibly millions of lives, they quietly admit they didn't realize that.

It's very cheap and easy for a lame-duck president to make financial commitments his administration will never have to keep. Bush's extension is aimed at keeping his AIDS initiative going after 2008, by which time he will have left office. But his successor will pay a political price if he or she breaks this funding promise.

None of this, of course, makes up for Bush's blunders in the Middle East and elsewhere, but at least give the guy his props. He's showing people overseas that the United States isn't just about bombs and oil.