Melinda Gates defies the Vatican over birth control

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Yesterday, at a family planning summit in London, the billionaire philanthropist and practising Catholic Melinda Gates made a historic pledge: She vowed to dedicate her life to improving access to contraception for women in the developing world, backing up her words with a $560m donation to family planning services.

The Independent praises Mrs Gates, “That Mrs Gates is a devout Catholic only adds to the commendation she deserves for her efforts to address the issue,” and Saska Graville in women’s magazine Red contrasts her achievement with the sad fate of Eva Rausing, another billionaires in the news this week. Charlize Theron (@CharlizeAfrica) speaks for Hollywood's many philanthropists with an interest in Africa: “Did you guys see this video from @melindagates and @gatesfoundation? So powerful – check it out!”

Praise from other sources has been more muted. Al Jazeera's Manuela Picq accuses Gates of ‘let them eat cake’ irrelevance: “Approaching contraception as the one silver bullet is misguided. In healthcare, it is usually not one thing, but a broader array of factors, an integrated healthcare system that saves lives.”

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan also urges caution. Last month he told the BBC of the cultural difficulties surrounding birth control “It is difficult for you to tell any Nigerian to number their children because…it is not expected to reject God’s gifts.”

Meanwhile, Gates’s Vatican-flouting stance has been predictably controversial in the Catholic press. Matthew Hanley of The Catholic Herald criticises a “fundamentally evasive approach to maternal and infant mortality”, arguing that “artificial contraception, by virtue of the resulting collapse of marriage, has had an impoverishing effect [in the developed world] – even if the affluent consider it a routine accessory.” She has, however, been publicly supported by the nuns of the Ursuline Academy of Dallas who issued a statement proclaiming themselves “Proud of Melinda French Gates, her dedication to social justice, her compassion for the undeserved…”

As Time magazine points out, in the US especially, her pledge has political as well as religious resonance: “conservative religious groups, particularly in the US have tried to link family planning to forced abortion. In 2002, President George W Bush cut funding to the UN Population Fund completely, turning birth control in to a bad word. The cause has yet to recover. Backing from Gates, a Catholic who is respected by conservatives and liberals alike, could turn this around.”

There have also been kind words from closer to home: @BillGates tweets “Proud of @melindagates for her work to expand family planning tools for poor women. Take the pledge at #nocontroversy.”

Source

[TheFeniX]

Praise from other sources has been more muted. Al Jazeera's Manuela Picq accuses Gates of ‘let them eat cake’ irrelevance: “Approaching contraception as the one silver bullet is misguided. In healthcare, it is usually not one thing, but a broader array of factors, an integrated healthcare system that saves lives.”

I almost pulled a muscle rolling my eyes at this "do everything or do nothing" argument.

I've done a good deal of indirect work with the Gates foundation over the years while running around Texas working at dozens of schools and libraries. Classy people all around that seems to understand you can't fix everything, but fucked if you can't do the best with what you've got.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Use of contraception +sex ed is sorely lacking in such nations, it was on the news about girls who are only 15 or so and pregnant. The last thing that famine-ravaged nations need is yet more mouths to feed.

[madd0ct0r]

The gates foundation are also doing huge amounts with other things affecting child mortality such as vaccinations, water ect.

the logic (as I understand it) is
1) we've got shit loads of stuff to fix in the world, up to and including climate change
2) all of these problems are easier to solve if we can get the population down or at least stable
3)improving child mortality followed by family planning is the most efficient way to do this.*

*they used to do it the other way round, but found the results weren't supportng the hypotheisis. It's a very engineering approach with huge pressure on efficiently using resources.

[Esquire]

Use of contraception +sex ed is sorely lacking in such nations, it was on the news about girls who are only 15 or so and pregnant. The last thing that famine-ravaged nations need is yet more mouths to feed.

Interestingly enough, the exact same logic contributes to early marriages and therefore more children, according to a Washington Post article I'd link if I could find it. Families (especially in Nigeria, apparently) marry off their daughters to get them out of the house and to get their bride price, but then the new couples do what married people do and start making more people.

Irony: it's what's for breakfast.

[someone_else]

Families (especially in Nigeria, apparently) marry off their daughters to get them out of the house and to get their bride price, but then the new couples do what married people do and start making more people.

Last time I checked, youngsters (males anyway) want to fuck like rabbits regardless of marriage, so this may not be a huge factor.

If there is no sex-ed makes lots of sense to marry daughters asap, otherwise you will 100% end up with her pregnant and the (young) father runs away. If she is married she stops being a mouth fed from your resoruces.

If you are a ruthless sonovabitch' anyway.

[Irbis]

Praise from other sources has been more muted. Al Jazeera's Manuela Picq accuses Gates of ‘let them eat cake’ irrelevance: “Approaching contraception as the one silver bullet is misguided. In healthcare, it is usually not one thing, but a broader array of factors, an integrated healthcare system that saves lives.”

Yeah, solving this issue does need to get rid of an array of factors at a time...

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan also urges caution. Last month he told the BBC of the cultural difficulties surrounding birth control “It is difficult for you to tell any Nigerian to number their children because…it is not expected to reject God’s gifts.”

...that is, first, to deal with the worst, namely, to get rid of people like two above from anything resembling decision making

Sadly, right wing loonies throw a fit every time better education mitigating the influence of idiots is mentioned, so, yes, what Melinda is doing might be one of the best solutions (for now). Thankfully not all humans are bigots/uneducated idiots.