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You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Women's Rights / The War On Women / The Control of Birth

The Control of Birth

by $8 blue check mistermix|  July 12, 20128:55 am| 40 Comments

This post is in: The War On Women

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The Guttmacher Institute has been studying abortion nullification laws in state legislatures and here’s what you get when you elect a bunch of Republicans.

Melinda Gates is a practicing Catholic and her foundation is giving $560 million to make contraception better and more widely available:

Gates said that in the west the bishops said one thing, but ordinary Catholics did another. “In my country 82% of Catholics say contraception is morally acceptable. So let the women in Africa decide. The choice is up to them.”

She admitted, though, that she had agonised over whether to speak out in defiance of the church hierarchy. “Of course I wrestled with this. As a Catholic I believe in this religion, there are amazing things about this religion, amazing moral teachings that I do believe in, but I also have to think about how we keep women alive. I believe in not letting women die, I believe in not letting babies die, and to me that’s more important than arguing about what method of contraception [is right].”

Letting women decide? Wouldn’t that violate their religious freedom?

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Reader Interactions

40Comments

  1. 1.

    rlrr

    July 12, 2012 at 8:59 am

    Remember the Tea-Baggers claiming it as all about fiscal responsibility and not social issues back 2010?

  2. 2.

    Elizabelle

    July 12, 2012 at 9:01 am

    Melinda Gates’ statement is pitch perfect.

  3. 3.

    the Conster

    July 12, 2012 at 9:02 am

    Game on. Now the Vatican has finally found a worthy adversary who actually does have more money than God, but she should be focusing on the third world country known as the South, also too.

  4. 4.

    PeakVT

    July 12, 2012 at 9:02 am

    Melinda Gates may be too rich for the CC to denounce.

  5. 5.

    Cassidy

    July 12, 2012 at 9:06 am

    Mandatory birth control for Republicans.

  6. 6.

    danielx

    July 12, 2012 at 9:11 am

    Cue the flying monkeys attacking Melinda Gates and then whining because she has so much money she can ignore them and it’s a sinister plot sponsored by that sinister foreigner George Soros and it is so unfair…

  7. 7.

    robertdsc-PowerBook

    July 12, 2012 at 9:15 am

    Mandatory -birth control- burning at the stake for Republicans.

    Fixed.

  8. 8.

    Cassidy

    July 12, 2012 at 9:15 am

    @robertdsc-PowerBook: Okay. I’m open to suggestions.

  9. 9.

    danielx

    July 12, 2012 at 9:16 am

    Also, too – wingnuts must never forget that any statement by Melinda Gates on any aspect of birth control and/or Catholic doctrine is an attack on religious freedom and all Catholics (clergy, that is) everywhere and must resisted to the last dotted I and crossed T. Or something.

    If there’s anything they REALLY hate, it’s when a one percenter says something contrary to wingnut doctrine. Apostasy, thy name is Gates.

  10. 10.

    Patricia Kayden

    July 12, 2012 at 9:16 am

    Why does the Catholic hierarchy think that having an endless number of children is sensible? More potential church members?

    Their anti-contraception policy is just silly (and I don’t understand how it’s Biblical, but I’m not Catholic).

  11. 11.

    amk

    July 12, 2012 at 9:17 am

    Kudos to Melinda for facing up to the misogynistic and retrograde church.

  12. 12.

    Punchy

    July 12, 2012 at 9:20 am

    Melinda Gates may be too rich for the CC to denounce.

    This. There’s no way the Vaty goes Limbaugh Slut on a woman with that much scratch. A mega-rich woman scorned/scolded is likely to be the most frightening thing imaginable.

  13. 13.

    Face

    July 12, 2012 at 9:22 am

    Why does the Catholic hierarchy think that having an endless number of children is sensible? More potential church members?

    Ding ding ding! Winner! One of the few things the RCC and Mormons have in common.

  14. 14.

    NonyNony

    July 12, 2012 at 9:23 am

    @PeakVT:

    Melinda Gates may be too rich for the CC to denounce.

    Some idiot bishop may decide to excommunicate by narrowly reading the Canon Law to claim that she’s promoting abortion and therefore can be excommunicated. Or they may think it’s a brilliant PR move to withhold communion from her until she renounces her stance – because driving her out of her birth church and into a Lutheran or Episcopalian Church instead would just be brilliant. I think even my wife might finally be convinced that the Church is no longer salvageable if they push Melinda Gates out of the Church (she has been using Melinda Gates’s statements and work to convince me that the Church is not a lost cause and that the laity can push back – and she isn’t the only liberal Catholic woman I know who feels that way).

    So unless they want to go that far then I don’t see what they can do about her. She’s speaking her conscience and that’s what she’s supposed to do. She’s a lay person and unlike the nuns they have no financial hold on her. Their choices are make a truly stupid PR move that will alienate even more of their female members or suck it up and let her criticize them with a minor amount of pushback.

    Given how stupid the US Bishops have been these days I wouldn’t put much past ’em, but I’d be surprised if they pushed this too far on a lay person (as opposed to the nuns who are supposed to be obedient, Goddammmit!)

  15. 15.

    gnomedad

    July 12, 2012 at 9:24 am

    @PeakVT:

    Melinda Gates may be too rich for the CC to denounce.

    Wanna bet? Our local NPR station interviewed Chicago’s Cardinal George on the insurance imbroglio, and in a moment of transparency the made my jaw drop, he said “Jesus didn’t die on the cross so that we can believe anything we want.” A handy summary of the mindset, I think.

  16. 16.

    Trakker

    July 12, 2012 at 9:26 am

    I’m pretty confident that at some point in the future, all these anti-abortion laws are going to come tumbling down and this will go down in history as just one more example of the radical right being wrong on everything. (I think we’re also witnessing the beginning of the Catholic Church’s death throes.)

  17. 17.

    amk

    July 12, 2012 at 9:28 am

    @Punchy: waiting for limpaugh to call her a slut, any minute now.

  18. 18.

    Silver

    July 12, 2012 at 9:32 am

    @Patricia Kayden:

    A cynical type would say, “Fresh meat.”

    Thankfully, the Catholic hierarchy has done nothing to warrant such cynicism.

  19. 19.

    beltane

    July 12, 2012 at 9:32 am

    I don’t know whether or how badly Melinda Gates will be attacked for this. All I know is that I am grateful someone of her wealth is doing something that helps all women everywhere. She could have picked a less controversial, less important recipient for her philanthropic efforts so it means a lot that she chose to fight the neanderthals head on.

  20. 20.

    Rosalita

    July 12, 2012 at 9:33 am

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Why does the Catholic hierarchy think that having an endless number of children is sensible? More potential church members?

    yup, more people to try and control and soak money out of

  21. 21.

    soonergrunt

    July 12, 2012 at 9:36 am

    @gnomedad: and the rejoinder to that is “that should include made up things with no scriptural authority, such as the ban on birth control, or the practice of the church sheltering pederasts from civil authority and willfully enabling them to continue victimizing children.”

  22. 22.

    speedbumped

    July 12, 2012 at 9:41 am

    I respect the mission and the message, but I do wish that both axes were labelled on that graph.

  23. 23.

    Ohio Mom

    July 12, 2012 at 9:45 am

    Glad to see the Gates family finally do something I can endorse whole-heartedly.

    They’re absolutely destructive and toxic and down right evil when it comes to their meddling in public education. And I’ve read some complaints about how they are conducting their anti-malaria campaign, but don’t know enough to have my own opinion, so any admiration I have for that is tabled.

    But making birth control more widely available? YES.

  24. 24.

    Roger Moore

    July 12, 2012 at 9:51 am

    @gnomedad:

    he said “Jesus didn’t die on the cross so that we can believe anything we want.”

    Yeah, he died so you have to do what we tell you.

  25. 25.

    Roger Moore

    July 12, 2012 at 9:53 am

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Why does the Catholic hierarchy think that having an endless number of children is sensible? More potential church members?

    More altar boys to rape.

  26. 26.

    RedKitten

    July 12, 2012 at 10:05 am

    Good for Melinda! It’s nice to see someone with so much clout taking on those old relics. Now if we could get a whackload of PSAs on TV featuring Melinda Gates and Sandra Fluke, we’d REALLY see some heads explode.

  27. 27.

    TooManyJens

    July 12, 2012 at 10:07 am

    @NonyNony:

    Some idiot bishop may decide to excommunicate by narrowly reading the Canon Law to claim that she’s promoting abortion and therefore can be excommunicated.

    That would be a good trick, since she’s very deliberately focused on contraception and not promoting abortion at all. You can’t even tell where she stands on abortion from any of her public statements, except that she clearly thinks that it’s a good thing that abortions would be prevented if women had access to voluntary contraception.

    And no, she is not too rich to be attacked by the Religious Right — it’s been going on since she started the No Controversy campaign a few months ago. But the attacks on her are relatively muted so far, and have a very different flavor from the attacks on Sandra Fluke. We’ll see what happens after this announcement, though.

  28. 28.

    Nate

    July 12, 2012 at 10:27 am

    This statement by “practicing Catholic” Melinda Gates reminds me of the fable of the frog and the scorpion.

    Of course they’re going to work to deny women their right. That what they do. And if she’s going to continue to “practice” (i. e. give them money), she’s somewhat complicit. If she wants to make a difference, she should publicly renounce the church.

  29. 29.

    BenA

    July 12, 2012 at 10:46 am

    I do appreciate a lot of the work the Gates Foundation does, but they just seem so limited in the way they go about doing it. With the amount of wealth Gates has at his disposal he could do much more. My guess is that he’s got, what with the ALEC support and the educational philosophy, a libertarian bent.

    Of course I’m listening to the NPR report and they talk about the problems with access and religious hostility towards contraception… and I thought they might have been talking about Oklahoma or Mississippi and not Africa and Asia.

  30. 30.

    peorgietirebiter

    July 12, 2012 at 10:50 am

    Why does the Catholic hierarchy think that having an endless number of children is sensible? More potential church members?

    The Church probably considers their farm team as added value but it goes back to the predominate view of all Christian societies that sex is icky. They all held the view that contraception was an intrinsic evil, a gateway sin that led to recreation. After all, the virgin Mary isn’t venerated by the Church for her homemaking skills?

  31. 31.

    Bubblegum Tate

    July 12, 2012 at 10:55 am

    Melinda Gates is awesome. That is all.

  32. 32.

    Ronzoni Rigatoni

    July 12, 2012 at 11:15 am

    Yaay for the Gates! And to think, I used to beg the gods daily to consign them to hellfire for all eternity (this was before XP). Now I would recommend sainthood.

  33. 33.

    gwangung

    July 12, 2012 at 11:23 am

    My guess is that he’s got, what with the ALEC support and the educational philosophy, a libertarian bent.

    This guess is wrong.

    You can check the record of giving over the past 20 years. He’s a socially liberal Democrat, like his late mom. Not that being a socially liberal person can’t make some stupid decisions….

    But it probably took Melinda to express it more fully.

  34. 34.

    The Other Chuck

    July 12, 2012 at 11:43 am

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Why does the Catholic hierarchy think that having an endless number of children is sensible? More potential church members?

    Not really. It keeps them poor, uneducated, and controlled. Power as always is its own end.

  35. 35.

    pseudonymous in nc

    July 12, 2012 at 12:57 pm

    The education stuff is something you can see broadly across west-coast techies: self-taught nerd brainiacs who did their innovative stuff way outside of the traditional education system, and who now think that it can be bottled and institutionalised. Steve Jobs sang from the same hymnsheet.

    The Gates Foundation is in an odd place right now, based on what I’ve heard from people doing stuff with them. It’s still a young organisation that hasn’t developed many of the problems that plague more established NGOs — its approach is highly driven by data and specific, measurable local outcomes. But as it grows and broadens its scope, it can’t avoid being political.

  36. 36.

    HyperIon

    July 12, 2012 at 2:26 pm

    Maybe I’m missing something here. I can’t see that anyone has pointed this out in the 35 comments already posted.

    On my monitor, the graph is meaningless.
    No numbers on the y axis. Is the baseline around 15 and the spike about 18? Could be. But then the outrage would be sort of silly. Or is the baseline around 100 and the spike is 300? The point this post is making sort of depends on the values on the y axis, no? But there is no way to figure that out from the graph as shown on my computer.

    But, but…there’s a spike!

    This is classic chart junk.
    mistermix, are you numerate?

  37. 37.

    Merryl

    July 12, 2012 at 3:02 pm

    Going from the report linked to by the graph, the 2011 spike is 80, and the current value for the 2012 data point is 39, so there’s your y axis.

  38. 38.

    James E. Powell

    July 12, 2012 at 3:29 pm

    The block-quoted portion of Ms. Gates’s remarks would make an excellent TV ad. Here in the states, it wouldn’t cost more than $10-20 million to get that message into nearly everyone’s home. I am confident that a super-majority of Americans of all faiths already agree with it. The ad would have the effect of reinforcing those beliefs and encouraging them to restate them and act on them.

    Promoting the use of contraceptives will reduce abortions. I can’t think of any other thing that would do more to reduce abortions. So why do anti-abortion people oppose contraceptives? Somebody should ask them and make sure that they answer.

  39. 39.

    Elizabelle

    July 12, 2012 at 4:20 pm

    @Patricia Kayden:

    What I think is hilarious about the Catholic Church’s anti-birth control dogma:

    it underpins yet another reason not to allow priests to marry.

    Because, think about it, you could end up supporting a family of 8 per priest in the rectory.

    On the positive side, supporting that many mouths is probably still cheaper than sexual abuse settlements and litigation.

  40. 40.

    baby gates for stairs

    July 17, 2012 at 11:09 am

    Very great post. I just stumbled upon your weblog and wanted to mention that I’ve truly loved surfing around your weblog posts. After all I’ll be subscribing for your feed and I’m hoping you write again soon!

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