Catholic Melinda Gates defies the Vatican over birth control funds - Health News - Health & Families - The Independent:
Melinda Gates, billionaire philanthropist and practising Catholic, yesterday laid down the gauntlet to the Vatican by vowing to dedicate her life to improving access to contraception for women in the developing world.
At an extraordinary summit in London, Mrs Gates announced that the charitable foundation she set up with her Microsoft founder husband Bill was donating $560m to family planning services.
The size of the donation is intended to emphasise the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s commitment to reducing unwanted pregnancies in poorer countries, which experts say lead to more than 100,000 women dying prematurely every year.
A life-long Catholic, Mrs Gates said she had grappled with her faith before deciding to speak out against the Vatican’s opposition to contraception.
“Of course I wrestled with this. As a Catholic I believe in this religion, there are amazing things about this religion, amazing moral teachings that I do believe in, but I also have to think about how we keep women alive,” she said in an interview in advance of the summit.
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