Twelve years ago Melinda Gates, along with her husband, Bill, started the Gates Foundation, the world's largest philanthropic organization.
Melinda has been "hands on" all over Africa with the foundation's vaccine programs. Now she has a new passion. It's contraception. Those of you who read this blog know that it's my passion as well.
Melinda was moved when the women she encountered told her that what they needed most was birth control. They would walk for hours, sometimes with children, often without their husbands knowing, to receive the four-times-a- year injection of Depo-Provera. But it's now in short supply.
Right now 100,000 women a year die in childbirth after unintended pregnancies. Six hundred thousand babies born to women who didn't want to be pregnant die in the first month of life.
The decision to make family planning her signature issue and primary public health a priority has come at some price to Melinda Gates. She is a practicing Catholic going against the doctrine of her church.
But sometimes we ordinary folks, like Mrs. Gates, feel compelled to override our domination's dictates and follow the heart of Jesus as we see it.
She was quoted in Newsweek saying, This is about empowering women to be educated and to make a choice that they want to make.
I'm grateful to God and to Mrs. Gates that she's made this commitment.
***
Melinda has been "hands on" all over Africa with the foundation's vaccine programs. Now she has a new passion. It's contraception. Those of you who read this blog know that it's my passion as well.
Melinda was moved when the women she encountered told her that what they needed most was birth control. They would walk for hours, sometimes with children, often without their husbands knowing, to receive the four-times-a- year injection of Depo-Provera. But it's now in short supply.
Right now 100,000 women a year die in childbirth after unintended pregnancies. Six hundred thousand babies born to women who didn't want to be pregnant die in the first month of life.
The decision to make family planning her signature issue and primary public health a priority has come at some price to Melinda Gates. She is a practicing Catholic going against the doctrine of her church.
But sometimes we ordinary folks, like Mrs. Gates, feel compelled to override our domination's dictates and follow the heart of Jesus as we see it.
She was quoted in Newsweek saying, This is about empowering women to be educated and to make a choice that they want to make.
I'm grateful to God and to Mrs. Gates that she's made this commitment.
***
