Vatican: Melinda Gates ‘off the mark’
August 2nd 2012
Under the headline “birth control and disinformation,” the Vatican newspaper took to task Melinda Gates, wife of the Microsoft founder, who announced in early July that the couple’s foundation would give $560 million during the next eight years to increase women’s access to artificial contraception.
Written by Giulia Galeotti, a frequent contributor on abortion and other life issues, the article on the front page of the July 29 edition of L’Osservatore Romano said Gates is free to make charitable donations to whomever she wants, but not to spread incorrect information.
In an interview July 10 with The Guardian, a British newspaper, Gates identified herself as a practicing Catholic who “struggled” with the idea of publicly opposing church teaching to promote a project aimed at giving 120 million women in developing countries access to contraceptives by 2020.
Gates said she felt compelled to act to “keep women alive. I believe in not letting women die, I believe in not letting babies die.”
In the Vatican newspaper piece, Galeotti wrote, “The American philanthropist is off the mark,” the victim of “bad information and persistent stereotypes on this theme. To still believe that by opposing the use of condoms, the Catholic Church leaves women and children to die because of misogynist intransigence is a baseless and shoddy reading” of reality.
Read the rest of this article: Catholic Free Press
More on this issue: Reproductive health
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- UK Government, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to host Family Planning Summit
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- IPPF commit to improve access to family planning
