Melinda Gates, the wife of billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates, will be hosting a Family Planning Summit in London with two of the biggest pro-abortion groups in the world, the UN Population Fund and International Planned Parenthood Federation.
Austin Ruse, the president of C-FAM, a pro-life group that works to press the pro-life cause at the United Nations, has more information on what’s in store.
“They say they want to raise $4 billion to promote contraception among poor women. This is population control plain and simple, population control aimed at poor dark-skinned women,” he said. “We have tried to get pro-lifers registered for this summit so there can be a counter voice but we are getting shut out by Planned Parenthood.”
In April, Melinda Gates argued that contraception has been mistakenly associated with population control, abortion, forced sterilization, and mortal sin and insisted they are “side issues” that “have attached themselves to the core idea that men and women should be able to decide when to have a child.”
In advance of this new event, Ruse’s group has released an open letter to Melinda Gates.
“We hope to gather 100,000 signatures from all over the world and we will hand deliver them to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters in Seattle, Washington and/or directly on the steps of the Family Planning Summit in London on July 11,” Ruse says.
The letter follows:
We are writing to you from all over the world. We are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents.
We are students, teachers, doctors, lawyers, farmers, laborers, parliamentarians and policy makers, rich, poor and middle class. We are people from all walks of life.
We are deeply concerned with your upcoming Family Planning Summit. The Gates Foundation’s primary partners are NGOs and governments that engage in
abortion and population control campaigns. The Summit’s purpose is to launch a global campaign to pressure governments to encourage women to view children as
burdens and expendable.
First, we understand that participation in the summit is limited only to those who agitate for more funding for family planning. We wonder if you will dialogue with
those who may have another vision?
You say women around the world tell you they want contraception. Perhaps that is because the people surrounding you are devoted to contraception and abortion.
Your summit is organized by – and limited to – pro-abortion and population control advocates.
Second, we understand that the International Planned Parenthood Federation is mobilizing civil society participation. You said specifically in your TED speech that
this initiative would have nothing to do with abortion. We wonder how this can be when your main partner is the world’s biggest abortion provider?
Third, we fear that such a global effort will inevitably lead to abuses. Whenever governments and NGOs get together to encourage poor women to use
contraceptives, the result is often coercion and abuse. In fact, your partners for the Summit – the United Kingdom’s DFID, IPPF and UNFPA – have all been implicated in abuses against women related to family planning.
CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!
Will you hear the voices of women and men who love and want children, or those who have been victims of contraception, abortion and population control campaigns? Will you invite discussion on the consequences of not having, or having too few children? Will you equal or surpass this Summit with support for healthy child-birth programs?
We urge you to re-consider the Family Planning Summit.
We urge you to consider that this mission is fraught with danger and may not be what the women of the world really need.
We urge you to listen to the voices of we hundreds of thousands!
