Microsoft first lady partners pro-abortion leaders London, : Melinda Gates, the "first lady of Microsoft", who is giving US$4 billion to reduce births in poorer countries, is due to attend a summit with world abortion leaders on 11 July.
Mrs Gates has said she does not want to fund and support abortion.
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) www.spuc.org.uk challenges the suggestion that the money will not help promote abortions.
Mrs Gates wants to focus on contraceptives. In a recent interview she said: 'From the very beginning, we said that as a foundation [the Bill&Melinda Gates Foundation] we will not support abortion, because we don’t believe in funding it'.
She is expected to reiterate this at the family planning summit in London this week.
Fiorella Nash, a SPUC researcher, responds in this video and asks whether Mrs Gates’ intervention will save lives or cost lives. SPUC believes that efforts to elevate abortion as a human right will be a key policy aim of the summit, which is expected to be dominated by pro-abortion organisations such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), certain UN agencies, Marie Stopes International (MSI), and Ipas, the hand-operated abortion-device company.
* Key stakeholders such as the British and US governments, IPPF, MSI, and Ipas are committed to pro-abortion policies and practices.
These governments and groups include contraception and abortion in the same healthcare packages that they export to the developing world.
Abortion and contraception are seen as part and parcel of family planning and so-called reproductive rights. * Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has said that you cannot have maternal health without reproductive health.
‘Reproductive health’ includes abortion. Pro-abortion governments such as the UK refuse to differentiate between money spent on abortion and contraception overseas.
* Melinda Gates will be funding all types of hormonal contraception - pills, injections, implants, patches, IUDs, rings etc.
Each of these has the potential to cause an abortion by preventing the human embryo implanting in the womb of his or her mother.
Women are rarely told this when being given such drugs.
* When 'contraceptive failure' occurs, and a baby is conceived, family planning NGOs will promote chemical or surgical abortion as a back-up. Far from avoiding abortions, the Gates family planning summit may increase the number. Increasing contraceptive prevalence may often increase abortion rates, contrary to expectations.
* In a letter to The Financial Times, IPPF and Marie Stopes International say: "This initiative is invigorating the international sexual and reproductive health and rights community."
It is naive of Mrs Gates to think she can ring-fence the funding of contraception with these partners.
* In June 2011 Mark Pritchard MP asked the Secretary of State for International Development to look into how much the DFID spent on abortion.
Andrew Mitchell replied that: "the Government have no such plans. It is not possible to disaggregate UK aid spending for safe abortion from wider expenditure on areas such as reproductive health care, maternal and neonatal health and health personnel development."
* IPPF and allied groups refused to accept US government funds under the Bush administration when the funds were restricted to non-abortion family planning projects. * In 2008, the Gates Foundation gave over US$2.4 million dollars to IPPF Europe Network, and over US$6 million dollars in 2009.
* The Marie Stopes International Global Impact Report for 2010 estimated that MSI had performed 1.3 million abortion and post-abortion procedures.
* The latest project launched by DFID is called Preventing Maternal Deaths from Unwanted Pregnancy (PMDUP).
DFID will give £67 million pounds over 5 years from July 2011 to June 2016 via MSI and Ipas, to carry out and promote abortion and contraception in 14 countries.
SPUC will be issuing further commentaries in relation to the summit in coming days.
Further information, or to interview a SPUC representative, please contact Anthony Ozimic, SPUC's communications manager, on: * mobile: 07939 177683 * direct dial landline: 020 7820 3129 * email: news@spuc.org.uk * Twitter: @spucprolife