July 31, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano newspaper has published an article attacking Melinda Gates’ recently-launched campaign
to distribute contraceptives to African women, saying that it is based
on “an unfounded and second-rate understanding” of the issue.
Click here for full translation of article.
The article, written by Italian journalist Giulia Galeotti, and
titled “Birth control and disinformation: The risks of philanthropy,”
notes that Melinda Gates has expressed “anguish” over her new
initiative, due to the conflict it creates with the Catholic hierarchy.
It adds that Gates is apparently unaware of the reliability of the
Billings Ovulation Method (BOM) - a moral and completely free family
planning method - for spacing births.
Unlike contraception, the Billings method allows women to avoid
conception by abstaining from sexual intercourse during the more fertile
part of the month, and has no adverse health effects. The method is
endorsed by the Catholic Church when used to avoid children for serious
reasons. Galeotti notes that the method is so reliable that the Chinese
government is encouraging its citizens to use it.
CLICK ‘LIKE’ IF YOU ARE PRO-LIFE!
“An example, little known but striking, of the success of BOM has
been its adoption in China,” writes Galeotti. “The communist government
of Peking was very interested in a method of regulation that cost
nothing and didn’t damage the health of the woman, a method considered
98% reliable.”
However, the “original and unpardonable sin,” of BOM is that ” it is
completely free, an aspect that, evidently, makes it very unpopular with
the pharmaceutical industry, which, through chemical contraceptives,
obtains enormous profits, as will others thanks to the philanthropy of
Mrs. Gates.”
Galeotti warns that if Gates persists in “disinformation, presenting
things in a false manner,” she “runs the risk” of falling into the kind
of corporate exploitation carried out by Nestlé, which distributes
powdered milk to pregnant women free, then charges them for it once they
cease to produce breast milk, and pressures them with advertising
portraying breastfeeding as “barbaric.”
