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Melinda Gates Pledges $560 Million For Contraception
theodp writes "Melinda Gates has pledged $560 million as part of a campaign to expand access to contraception for women. From the article: 'The funding commitment was unveiled on Wednesday at the London Summit on Family Planning alongside pledges totaling $4.3 billion from the British government and leaders from African nations wrestling with the health and social problems brought on by high rates of unplanned pregnancy.'"
Kidding aside.
She and her husband continue to show the best side of capitalism. For those that assume that wealth necessarily leads to avarice, it's delightful to me to see the Gates Foundation making that case more difficult to prove.
To hear her explain the contraception issue:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/415947/june-27-2012/melinda-gates
Gotta hand it to her, that's pretty cool.
[SHOW SOME LENIENCY TOWARDS
You hate her because she supports persons right to decide over his or her own body?
... breaking down the religious monopoly on this discussion? Abstinence has been shown to not work, yet it plays to the religious agenda
Many may well consider such acts of philanthropy completely altruistic. Whether you agree with the cause or not, only the most cynical of people would view it as 'marketing' or 'self promotion', and even if it actually is that; so what? The people who will benefit from it wont care - it doesn't matter what the motivation for doing it is, the end result is what is important.
Personally, I think the motivation is truly altruistic and comes from a genuine desire to do good in the world. The point I would make is; anyone 'richer than God' is going to acquire the same philosophy. Why are mega rich people altruistic? Because they can be. When every conceivable want and desire is met, what is left but to be generous to your fellow man?
I for one would welcome the opportunity to do exactly that myself. If only I had some software I could sell to IBM.
The sad thing is you're probably serious and worse yet there are plenty of nutjobs in the world that support your view. This charitable donation is a big step forward for the affected people and is definitely a step towards clawing their way out of poverty.
You appear to be confusing contraception with abortion. While abortion is an issue still much debated, the ethics of contraception are more-or-less settled now for everyone except the Catholic church and a few other religious groups, and even they don't equate it with murder.
You forget our lord and saviour....
There is no stopping the physical and psychological needs of horny teenagers. They are going to do it with or with out a condom. wouldn't you rather give them the option??
You forget our lord and saviour....
That was just a sampling error.
>Her solution for the problems of the world: kill humans. It's terrible, because there is people asking job and food, and she worry about kill humans before they have rights.
Every sperm is sacred, right mate?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0kJHQpvgB8
--
BMO
contraception != abortion.
I know, it's very difficult to understand the difference, but trust me, there is one...
I'm no fan of abortion for controlling overpopulation, so birth control is the lesser of two evils. To their credit, the Gate's are being pro-human with their fortune, and I wonder what I would do in their position. Do I build bridges, dig wells, hand out laptops? Money/food/supplies sent to poor countries never seems to get to the people in need, getting stolen by corrupt local officials somewhere along the distribution line. So, if you were in the Gate's position, how would YOU spend your money for the common good?
> There is a big difference between wanking in the toilet n aborting a baby.
But we arent even talking about a "baby" because in the early weeks of pregnancy, there is no baby. There is a big difference between a bunch of cells that have the potential to grow into a baby and an already grown up baby.
I know that it is hard to draw an arbitrary line, but a line has to be drawn _somewhere_, since pretending that a single fertilized egg is the same as a living, breathing, feeling human baby is ridiculous.
The greatest theologian of the Catholic Church, Hans Kung, is barred from teaching doctrine by the same Ratzinger. In effect, Catholic thought has been hijacked by a relatively small clique of backward authority figures. You could say the same thing about the British Conservative Party and the Church of England. Comment on the USA would be superfluous, as HuffPost does a rather thorough job. Eventually, Popes die.
The point is that Melinda Gates is more typical of Catholics than is the Pope, and Hans Kung articulates the beliefs of educated Catholics far better than Ratzinger's entire hierarchy. It is the Pope that needs to go into unearned retirement.
And, for information, I'm a kind of atheist. I just think that clear thinking about what goes on in religions is much better than simple name calling.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
What has this got to do with abortion or the support of it??? She is donating money for contraception
Here's a secret: there is no God and you have no soul. There is no 'spark of life'. Life doesn't begin at conception. It began billions of years ago and is a continuous process. What makes us value our humanity is our sentience. Fetuses are not sentient. They are a piece of flesh until they gain sentience, at which time our laws consider them to be made of magic meat (sentient matter).
Science will soon allow humans to be created artificially by synthesizing DNA and proteins, cloning processes, etc. There will be no conception, and only a surrogate mother. Effectively, they will be humans made by a machine. But they will gain sentience, and thus they will be human. But until they gain sentience they are just flesh.
This argument is important because people use laws against abortion to oppress women. The rise of women in the workforce and the freedom to live their lives as they feel is due to the accessibility of abortion. Pro-choice is supporting women's rights. Pro-life is considering a woman's breeding capability to be more important than any other aspect of her life.
There are Jews in the world.
There are Buddhists.
There are Hindus and Mormons, and then
There are those that follow Mohammed, but
I've never been one of them.
I'm a Roman Catholic,
And have been since before I was born,
And the one thing they say about Catholics is:
They'll take you as soon as you're warm.
You don't have to be a six-footer.
You don't have to have a great brain.
You don't have to have any clothes on. You're
A Catholic the moment Dad came,
Because
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
... very clearly ordered mankind in the Genesis to multiply and populate all the lands.
We've done that. He didn't say "multiply and over-populate all the lands". Can we please put the "contraception is evil" one to rest?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
The pill doesn't stop STDs, does it? Why are the MEN not wearing condoms, then? Why are women sleeping with men who don't care about them enough to even wear a condom?
Why are MOST women attracted to violent, uncaring men?
If MOST women were attracted to caring, kind men, then that's exactly what most men would become, overnight...
I'd always wondered why women are attracted to men who treat them badly, too. I learned it's subconcious. When seeking out a mate, it's the male that most reminds them of their father that determines who she chooses. It's learned in those formulative childhood years, when girls see how their male role-model behaves and act. Simply put, they're all looking for a guy who reminds them of their "Daddy". Bad, abusive type"Dad"=bad, abusive mate. Good, loving caring "Dad"= good, loving mate. You could be the nicest guy in the world, if the girl you're trying for wasn't raised in a normal, nuturing envirnment, then the deck is stacked against you from the start. You have to keep be extra caring and set an example of a consistentcy for her, and hope she realizes that there is a big difference between the guys who are abusive and the real "MEN" who show kindness and compassion. Control is not love, though some women are conditioned to think it is.
While many say that there are great famines in Africa, they still have the fastest growing population among the continents. The biggest problem of Africa is overpopulation.
The Catholic Church is strictly organized as Lord Jesus modeled it on the roman imperial military.
Jesus didn't model it on the Roman imperial military. Neither did Peter. Paul might have, since he's the one who actually created the Catholic Church. But if so, it's not a useful structure in today's world.
Please note the absence of Bill Gates' name from this project.
That doesn't equate to Bill Gates not being supportive of his wife's efforts. This is her thing she's doing, and he's probably purposely staying in the background, helping his wife as needed. Maybe he feels having his name involved would bring unwanted detractors to her cause, perfectly understandable.
Bill: "But, Honey, we already have three kids and we can afford as many more as we'd like."
Melinda: "It's the masses. They're clogging up the roads."
Bill: "But, we have helicopters."
Melinda: "They're breeding like locusts. Soon, there will be nothing left of the planet."
Bill: "Then, we'll have it all to ourselves."
Melinda: "No one will be left to by Microsoft products."
Bill: "Here's 590 Million."
*** Don't be dull.***
The Roman Catholic Church (as distinct from the early Church) came into being because of the process of incorporation by which the Roman Empire "adopted" foreign religions when it seemed expedient. In essence, the old Pagan system of the Flamen Dialis and the Vestals and all the rest of it re-emerged as Imperial Christianity, with the Vestals as nuns and the Flamen Dialis as the Pope. Celibacy was a takeover of the priesthood of Cybele. In many places the process was far from complete, as anyone who has ever visited a few Dark Ages sites knows. Although it is a very old book now, it is all darkly alluded to in The Golden Bough, a 19th century work of religious anthropology by James Frazer.
Anyone who remembers Vatican II will remember it as the high water of the Church facing up to its past and trying to identify a role for the future. Unfortunately the *homo erectus wing of the Vatican got control again.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Not all beauty is so immediately apparent, and in fact I've come to believe that superficial beauty tends to actively interfere with the more durable kinds (not always, but often). Even on the purely physical level models tend to be more sexually titillating than beautiful.
Plus the criteria for "cohort" and "mother of my children" are both quite a bit more demanding than for "playmate", especially when you're filthy rich and "won't off me in my sleep and run off with my fortune and the pool boy" is a real consideration.
Besides, what sort of insecure third-rate asshole marries a model attracted to his money? Even a second-rate asshole knows you take them as a mistress, after all those looks won't last and trading up is much more expensive when you've married them.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Building schools so the worlds poor can learn to spell better than your average Anonymous Coward on slashdot is certainly a good example of charity. Giving food less so, except in exceptional circumstances like immediately after a natural (or man-made) disaster, as it is extremely difficult for local farmers to compete with free, so that type of charity just makes poverty worse in the long term. Distributing contraception is better overall for an impoverished community than distributing food.
Yes, and Planned Parenthood and other such organizations do in fact have to deal with some justifiable hard feelings over some of the early excesses - involuntary, uninformed sterilization and the like. There is a very real problem though - we have the poorest of the poor breeding like rabbits and being unable to provide adequate care for all their children. Sure, we could theoretically send all the world's excess food to them, but that wouldn't actually solve the problem - remove the environmental constraints on an organism and it's population will explode until new constraints are encountered.
The basic fact though is that the problem is pretty easy to get under control - just give women access to and education about the same reproductive choices as their developed-world counterparts, and the the problem solves itself. Believe it or not most people in the world don't want to have more children than they can afford to raise well, but without contraceptives there's not really any other option. And no, abstinence isn't a realistic option - no normal person is going to refrain from sleeping with their spouse for years at a time, and other strategies fail to drive the pregnancy rate below about 50% per year.
And once people have been given reproductive control then everything else starts falling into place - the income which was barely feeding four or five children at near-starvation levels can easily feed two children well, with enough left over to keep their parents healthy and strong, further improving their productivity and wealth-generating potential. And with even a tiny a surplus of wealth they can then begin to invest in further improvements, beginning an upward spiral. And with the next generation things look even rosier, as better nutrition as a child equals less disease and greater intelligence in adulthood, so they will be better-able to help themselves than their parents were.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The Catholic Church teaches that the Pope is infallible
The Doctrine of Papal Infallibility was only introduced in the First Vatican Council, a.k.a. Vatican I, just before the start of the 20th Century. Prior to that the pope was only a man, although a very powerful one. Prior to that there frequently were slime like the Borgia popes in charge, and most sane people would resist the notion that they were infallible mouthpieces of god.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The Catholic Church is strictly organized as Lord Jesus modeled it on the roman imperial military.
Jesus didn't model it on the Roman imperial military. Neither did Peter. Paul might have, since he's the one who actually created the Catholic Church. But if so, it's not a useful structure in today's world.
More like Constantine the Great. Before then, individual "bishops" (claiming lineage from the apostles) acted like mini-popes, interpreting religious texts and and exerting control over a town, municipality, or region. It's a very muddy period of Christian history that we don't know a whole lot about, but it wasn't centrally planned and orchestrated like a military.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
They also support contraception.