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    • April 24, 2012

    Catholic Melinda Gates Fighting for Birth Control

    by Carolyn Moynihan

    Melinda Gates was holding forth at a conference in Berlin earlier this month about the necessity of universal access to contraception in the developing world, claiming that it is the only way that 200 million people who do not already have “access” will have a choice about how many children they will have and when.

    Mrs Gates was one of five speakers on a TEDxChange platform addressing an international audience on global health and development issues. Her 20-minute address, on video as a TED Talk, is linked to the Gates Foundation’s “No controversy” campaign to get the global birth control juggernaut on track again after the slow-down imposed by the Bush administration and the diversion of resources over the last couple of decades to AIDS work. A page on the TEDxChange website informs us:

    This July 11, the Government of the United Kingdom and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will bring together governments, philanthropies, businesses, and global citizens to address the need for increased support for family planning tools. The goal is to deliver more modern family planning tools to more women in the world’s poorest countries.

    On the same page Twitter and Facebook messages from women singing the praises of contraception roll across continuously — responses to the question, “How have contraceptives change your life?” As far as I can see there are no messages from women caught up in the cervical cancer epidemic, the breast cancer epidemic, the ones who had abortions because their contraception failed, the ones who are single in their 30s because its so easy for men to walk away from a sterile woman, the African women who contracted HIV while using injectable contraception, and their men…

    Gates’ No Controversy slogan has also been prompted by the huge controversy that compulsory insurance cover for contraception has generated in the US over the past year. The prominence of the Catholic Church in the controversy leads Mrs Gates to advertise her Catholic credentials (“I consider myself a practising Catholic … my mom’s great-uncle a Jesuit priest…my great-aunt was a Dominican nun…educated by nuns who taught me to question received teachings” etc etc). One of her and her classmates’ questions then, she maintains, was “Is birth control really a sin?”

    Because one of the reasons we have this huge discomfort in talking about contraception is the lingering concern that if we separate sex from reproduction we are going to promote promiscuity. And I think it’s a reasonable question to be asked: What is the impact of contraception on sexual morality?

    As a matter of fact she does not answer that rhetorical question. She only goes on to say that “Like most women, my decision about birth control had nothing to do with promiscuity. I had a plan for my future…” Ah yes, but how many girls and young women did not have a plan when they relied on contraception and abortion to tidy up after their experiments with sex? And what about all the Black and white working class American women who do not have a career, or a husband and three neatly spaced children to show for it?

    Sorry Melinda. Do wish you and Bill would stick to fighting malaria and building hospitals in the developing world.

    This article was originally published on MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons Licence.

    Tagged as: Birth Control, Catholics, Gates

    The views expressed by the authors and editorial staff are not necessarily the views of
    Sophia Institute, Holy Spirit College, or the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.

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    By Carolyn Moynihan

    Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet.

    More from Crisis

    • Catholicmom3

      “…educated by nuns who taught me to question received teachings…”  This makes me so sad.    I wonder if the Diocese of Dallas will question the Ursulines about this?

    • Jhawk77

      The answer – that most Catholics choose to deny – is, “Yes, the use of birth control is objectively a sin.” It’s sad. She could be doing so much good, instead of so much harm. 

    • Tout

      One can be dressed as a nun, claim to be a nun. But it is the life one leads that shows whether one behaves as a real nun

    • Michael Paterson-Seymour

      Am I alone in finding an eerie similarity between the “Truce of 1968,” as George Weigal calls it, when the Congregation for the Clergy decreed that Cardinal O’Boyle of Washington should lift canonical penalties against those priests whom he had disciplined for their public dissent from Humanae Vitae  and the “Peace of Clement IX” during the Jansenist controversy?

      In both cases, after the Church had been riven by a decade-long dispute, a papal document was issued that was intended to be definitive.

      In both cases, the original quarrel was immediately forgotten and argument raged over the scope of papal authority to decide the question.  In the Jansenist case, peace, of a sort, was
      achieved, when Pope Clement IX brokered an agreement that neither side would argue the question, at least, from the pulpit.

      The “Peace of Clement IX” lasted for about 35 years and ended in 1705 when Clement XI declared the clergy could no longer hide behind “respectful silence.”  Eventually, in 1713, he issued Unigenitus and demanded the subscription of the clergy to it.  There was enormous resistance, with bishops and priests appealing to a future Council (and being excommunicated for their pains, in 1718).  As late as 1756, dissenters were still being denied the Last Rites.

      Will the “Truce of 1968” end in a similar fashion?

    • kjd

      “I am a practicing Catholic.”  Ergo, everything I say is true. 

      The Pope, the bishops, the priests — they don’t seem to be claiming to be “practicing Catholics,” so obviously you don’t have to believe them.

      What does “practicing” mean for her?  I’d like these “practicing” Catholics to define their term.  Do they mean regular Confession?  Mass on all Sundays and holidays of obligation?  Belief in the Real Presence?  Prayer?  Belief in the teachings of the Church?

      Or do they mean they go to Mass when it is convenient, take Communion because it is expected (of course, the Host is just a symbol of Christ or our togetherness as Christians), and question the old-fashioned teachings of the Church?

    • Galena56

      What exactly is meant by the “developing world?”  Its kind of obvious that the world is developing or “progressing” but that doesn’t mean that this “progression” is a good thing.  It seems that the issue that Miss Gates should be addressing, since she’s speaking on the topic of health, is the bad health issues that are taking place because of birth control.  If women are fighting for a cause that relates to women than maybe they should address the women that have suffered from birth control.  Or perhaps she should address how, by using birth control, women are not being helped, but men are, because it makes it possible for men to be irresponsible and unattached.

    • Sue and Don Wollschleger

      Mrs. Gates is very ignorant of her Catholic faith thinking that her so-called ”credentials” make her catholic. The Church must takesome responsibility for her and others ignorance because Her Bishops and Priests dropped the ball. But, of course, ignorance is not a defense and Mrs. Gates needs to purchase The Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can not pick and choose what you want to believe (obey) and what you don’t want to believe (obey).The sixth commandment states “Thou shalt not murder”. Abortifacient and contraceptions murder the tiny developing baby (embryo). To understand that statement you would need to understand human fertilization, embryo implantation and the first week of life go to http://www. lifeissues.org. Abortion, of course is just plain murder. If we do these things we are not obeying God’s commandments we are, in fact, murderers and those who promote such things are just as guilty.  Jesus said in John 14:15 – “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” So, if we don’t keep His commandments I guess we actually hate Him. May God have mercy the Church, His people and on the USA and her people.
       

    • Ken

      Ms. Gates and President Obama’s view is the same as Margaret Sanger’s the founder of Planned Parenthood. Control the birth rate of the undesirables by any means.

    • Austin

      The best way to stop abortion is to prevent unwanted pregnancies.  The best way to avoid unwanted pregnancies is via sensible contraception.  The vast majority of the laity practice contraception because it makes sense.  Everyone cannot handle ten children.

      • kjd

        I’d like to believe that, Austin, but it just isn’t so.   As contraception became popular, abortions went up.  Why?  Because abortion is the only sure way to stop an unwanted pregnancy. 
        When women can stop a pregnancy by an easily procured abortion, men feel they are no longer responsible for any resulting baby — it is now solely the woman’s “fault” if a baby occurs.  So we have the ridiculous cases of one man having 5 or more children by 5 women and one woman having 5 or more children by the same number of men.
        There are ways for women to determine their fertility, but this is not something you do when you have casual sex. When Obama said he didn’t want his daughter punished (by having a baby), he wasn’t thinking of her being married!

      • Bob

        Our society is flooded with “sensible contraception” and there are still 1.3 million abortions a year in this country. And please don’t say that without birth control there would be more abortions, that is untrue. Contraceptives such as the pill have created a fornication mentality in our society. What is wrong with treating sex with dignity and respect that should be saved as a life producing gift for our spouse in marriage? Instead it is treated like ride at Disney World. And ahhhhhh yes…..the “I’m a practicing Catholic and I think….” crowd such as Melinda Gates should pick up the Catechism, read the section on contraception being intrinsically evil, and follow that teaching like a true practicing Catholic.

    • hombre111

      Most non-Catholics try to understand the Catholic teaching on contraception and consider it quaint and simply wrong-headed.   Known fact:  The earth’s water supplies and natural resources are limited.  Known fact:  As more and more nations like China and India become industrialized and move beyond a mouth to mouth existence, they want to live according to the wasteful model of consumption modeled by the United States, including this writer and the readers of Crisis.   Known fact:  A collision is coming between growing consumption and the resources of the earth. 

      And so non-Catholics cannot imagine why in the whole wide world, the Catholic Hierarchy continues to push an approach to world population that does not convince even the average Catholic. 

      • Bob

        Because there is a better way, and that way is following Catholic teaching. And I agree with you, maybe we all should consume less, share more with our neighbor and the poor. Some studies have shown that if managed properly, the world’s resources can handle 35 billion people on the planet. But sterilizing our bodies and killing off our unborn in the womb is not the answer. “The Catholic Approach” is respect and dignity for our fertility and each other, love and care for one another…….what’s your problem with that? Also, China’s forced sterilization and abortion, one child policy will cuse a collapse of their population (and economy) by 40% in 50 years.

        • hombre111

          World resources “managed properly” is a key statement.  But in a democracy this is not going to happen because people will not vote for self sacrifice.  In a democracy that is a capitalist state, that is certainly not going to happen because the maxim is maximize your profits, minimize your losses.   So, what you propose is like learning to walk to the moon.  Wish we could, but given the reality of things, we won’t.

          I agree with you about China.  They are already facing huge problems. 

          But this is an enormous problem that is not going to be solved by following Catholic teaching.   A)  Most people are not Catholic and most of them disagree with Catholic teaching.  B)   Respect and dignity for our fertility might not mean having more children than our fragile world can support. 

      • Duney

        You don’t have a clue on what you speak.  You could put all the people in the entire world – yes, all 7 billion of them in the state of Texas and each person would have about 1000 SF EACH.  One river in America could supply all the water needed and the farmland would supply all the world’s population EASY from American farmland alone.   Do some research before you pop off when you don’t know what you are talking about.