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Melinda Gates, the “first lady of Microsoft”, who is giving US$4
billion to reduce births in poorer countries, is due to attend a summit
with world abortion leaders on 11 July. Mrs Gates has said she does not want to fund and support
abortion.
SPUC challenges the suggestion that the money will not help promote
abortions.
Mrs Gates wants to focus on contraceptives. In a recent interview
she said: 'From the very beginning, we said that as a foundation [the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation] we will not support abortion, because we don’t
believe in funding it'.
She is expected to reiterate this at the family planning summit in
London this week. Fiorella Nash, a SPUC researcher, responds in this
video and asks whether Mrs Gates’ intervention will save lives or cost
lives:
VIDEO: “The
real reasons for maternal deaths around the world"
SPUC believes that efforts to elevate abortion as a human right
will be a key policy aim of the summit, which is expected to be dominated
by pro-abortion organisations such as the International Planned Parenthood
Federation (IPPF), certain UN agencies, Marie Stopes International (MSI),
and Ipas, the hand-operated abortion-device company.
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Key stakeholders such as the British and
US governments, IPPF, MSI, and Ipas are committed to pro-abortion
policies and practices. These
governments and groups include contraception and abortion in the same
healthcare packages that they export to the developing world.
Abortion and contraception are seen as part and parcel of family
planning and so-called reproductive rights.
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Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of
state, has said that you
cannot have maternal health without reproductive health. ‘Reproductive
health’ includes abortion. Pro-abortion governments such as the UK
refuse to differentiate between money spent on abortion and
contraception overseas.
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Melinda Gates will be funding all types
of hormonal contraception – pills, injections, implants, patches, IUDs,
rings etc. Each of these has
the potential to cause an abortion by preventing the human embryo
implanting in the womb of his or her mother. Women are rarely
told this when being given such drugs.
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When 'contraceptive failure'
occurs, and a baby is conceived, family planning NGOs will promote
chemical or surgical abortion as a back-up. Far from avoiding
abortions, the Gates family planning summit may increase the number.
Increasing contraceptive prevalence may often increase abortion rates,
contrary to expectations.
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In a letter to The Financial Times,
IPPF and Marie Stopes International say: “This initiative is
invigorating the international sexual and reproductive health and rights
community.” It is naive of Mrs Gates to think she can ring-fence the
funding of contraception with these partners.
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In June 2011 Mark Pritchard MP asked the
Secretary of State for International Development to look into how
much the DFID spent on abortion. Andrew Mitchell replied that: “the
Government have no such plans. It is not possible to disaggregate UK aid
spending for safe abortion from wider expenditure on areas such as
reproductive health care, maternal and neonatal health and health
personnel development.”
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IPPF and allied groups refused to accept
US government funds under the Bush administration when the funds were
restricted to non-abortion family planning projects.
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In 2008, the Gates Foundation gave
over US$2.4 million dollars to IPPF Europe Network, and over US$6
million dollars in 2009.
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The Marie Stopes International Global
Impact Report for 2010 estimated that MSI had performed 1.3 million
abortion and post-abortion procedures.
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The latest project launched by
DFID is called Preventing Maternal Deaths from Unwanted Pregnancy (PMDUP).
DFID will give £67 million pounds over 5 years from July 2011 to
June 2016 via MSI and Ipas, to carry out and promote abortion and
contraception in 14 countries.
Comments on this blog? Email them to
johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk
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