The Gates of Hell Temporarily Prevail
Editor’s Note: The Bill and Melinda Gates’ Family Planning Summit in the
UK concluded yesterday, with staggering high-dollar commitments from nations
and agencies all over the globe. C-FAM Director of Operations Lisa Correnti and
activist Wendy Wright, working with pro-life watchdog Turtle Bay and Beyond,
were present, keeping a sort of mini-journal of events. Here are some of their
chilling reports:
Today on World Population Day,
government officials and charitable foundations have convened at the UK Family Planning summit co-sponsored
by the Gates Foundation and DFID - the UK’s development aid program, to seek
financial commitments to further implement population control efforts in
developing countries. Government official after government official and
spokespersons for billionaires foundations are all reading from the same
script; family planning programs are necessary to save lives of poor women and
their children. Their flawed methodology is the same; make long-term
contraceptive methods available to poor women and adolescent girls in every
area of the globe. The prevention of an unplanned pregnancy amounts to an
averted maternal or infant death.
A late morning panel hosted by Dr.
Rajiv Shah administrator of the United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) featured a re-commitment by the U.S. which has been funding
reproductive health and family planning programs at $640 million since Hillary
Clinton and President Obama have been in leadership. A video of Sec. Clinton
praised the attendees and underscored the U.S. commitment to family planning
restating “that reproductive rights are human rights.”
Financial commitments from this
mornings sessions are the following:
UK (DFID): Aid for family planning will increase from £90 million each
year to £180 million – more than £1.4 billion over eight years. EU:
Currently $100 million euro on Family Planning, pledged an additional $23M for
commodities. Germany: Doubling bilateral commitment from $50 to $100m
every year from 2012 to 2015 Korea: Double its investment over next few
years from 0.125 to .0.25%. Past year $5.4 million. France: Commits to
additional €100 million for FP Australia: Australia plans to spend an additional
AUD58 million over 5 years, doubling annual contributions to AUD53 million by
2016. Hewitt Foundation: $20-22 mil for international population work
which includes $13m for advocacy to assure support continues. Packard
Foundation: $24 million to be used for 1) demand 2) quality and 3)
advocacy. Michael Bloomberg: $50 million Dutch: Increase of $100
million, from 370 to $470 million.
Pharmaceutical companies that are
sure to capitalize on this initiative were also present to announce their
contribution:
Merck announces $50million
partnership with Gates Foundation with “choice as the central pillar.” Doubling
capacity to reach increased demand for implants. Pfizer: Expanding of
Depo-Provera by 50% to increase supplies to $1 billion injectibles.
The afternoon panel should produce
additional commitments.
In the afternoon session of the UK Family Planning Summit Melinda Gates pledged to
increase support for family planning by $560 million through 2020. This
addition to current funding will bring the total to $1 billion over the next 7
years. Imagine if this funding was directed to providing clinics in the poorest
regions of the world rather than for implants, injectibles, and sterilizations.
What a shame!
The UK Family Planning summit has
concluded and the total financial commitment by attending countries and foundations amounts to $4.6
billion, which exceeds the $4 billion goal. The Gates Foundation was clear from
the onset that it expected solid commitments from countries that attended. Now
as one of the presenters said from a prominent foundation “we need to create
the need through education.”
Apparently much of the unmet need is
from women who don’t know they have an unmet need. Leave it to affluent western
nations, billionaires foundations and pharmaceutical companies to do this.
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