Melinda Gates Wants to Change the Catholic Church’s Teaching on Contraception

International   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Jul 12, 2017   |   3:33PM   |   Washington, DC

Despite being raised Catholic, Melinda Gates and her billionaire husband, Bill, donate hundreds of millions of dollars to pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes International.

In a recent interview, Gates said she hopes Pope Francis will change Catholic Church teachings on artificial contraception to align with her own views.

Pro-lifers have different opinions about birth control; some argue that it could help prevent unplanned pregnancies and abortions and others argue that contraception can lead to abortion when it fails. The Catholic Church opposes artificial contraception and abortion. It teaches that Christians should not use artificial means to prevent a new human life from being conceived during sexual intercourse.

Gates does not follow her church’s teachings, though. She told the BBC in an interview that contraception helps prevent poverty, and she hopes the Catholic Church will embrace it someday.

The Catholic Herald reports more from the interview:

Gates said her charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, works “very extensively with the Catholic Church” and has had “many discussions with them, because we have a shared mission around social justice and anti-poverty”.

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I think what this Pope sees is that if we are going to lift people out of poverty, you have to do the right thing for women, and so we have agreed at this point to disagree,” she said.

She added that Pope Francis has not changed Church teaching “yet”, but “these things take time”. She said she was “optimistic” the Church would change its teaching “over time”.

Some also have speculated that Pope Francis may weaken church teachings about the sanctity of human life, from conception to natural death. However, the pope has been a strong advocate against abortion and for the right to life.

Earlier this week, Gates announced plans to give a 60-percent increase in donations to population control measures across the globe. That amounts to an additional $375 million in the next four years, with about two-thirds of that specifically allocated for teen programs.

Gates said the funding will go to contraception and sex education; but the money also will indirectly fund abortions, too. The billionaire family already gives money to some of the largest abortion chains in the world, including Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes International.

“This is a difficult political climate for family planning,” Gates said at The Global Family Planning Summit this week in London. “I’m deeply troubled, as I’m sure you are, by the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts.”

While Gates Foundation funds cannot be earmarked for abortion, the fungibility of money makes it easier for pro-abortion organizations to provide abortion internationally.  In other words, every dollar the Gates Foundation gives to Planned Parenthood for distributing birth control or building an abortion-friendly clinic frees up a dollar in Planned Parenthood’s budget to spend elsewhere.

According to the Gates Foundation grant database, the foundation gave Planned Parenthood of America, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, and Planned Parenthood of Western Washington about $71 million from before 2009 through 2013. Additionally, the Gates Foundation gave $46.1 million to Marie Stopes International, a British abortion chain, in 2012.

Much of this giving is focused on Africa, Asia and Latin America, where abortion-providers like Planned Parenthood, Marie Stopes and Ipas seek to overturn pro-life laws and sometimes even provide illicit abortion drugs.