THIS image of Melinda Gates in a village in India comes from the Gates Foundation’s 2014 Annual Letter. It shows one of the richest philanthropists the world has ever known in face-to-face contact with the people she intends to help. The scene seems entirely benign. It appears filled with good will until one reflects on the hard, cold fact that Melinda Gates wishes there were fewer children in the Third World, like the child at left. She believes children — and human beings in general — are a hindrance to development. Gates is the world’s foremost promoter of anti-maternalism and Malthusian economics.

According to Human Life international:

At the UN’s 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Western elites’ language of population control was officially changed to the language of “equality,” “sustainability” and “reproductive health.” The population control tactics, however, did not change.

From the Rockefeller Foundation to the Gates Foundation, Western billionaires have been pushing population control on foreign nations for many years now. One must sincerely question how much of this program is not philanthropy so much as cultural warfare. It is not easy to bring the developing world into conformity with modern economics, and its control by central banks and usury, with the traditional family structure of these countries. Gates’ partners, Marie Stopes International and International Planned Parenthood Foundation, were leaders in the early eugenics and population control movements.

Gates’s preferred contraceptive is the injectable drug Depo Provera. The long-term health effects are still under study, given that it has not been in use for very long, but there is no known chemical contraceptive that does not have significant negative health effects.

More important are the economic fallacies of this program. Prosperity is created by people and moral order, not by contraception, sexual freedom and the resulting family breakdown. A farmer flourishes by his submission to the natural order: the weather, the life of plants, the changes of the seasons. Human societies flourish by their submission to the natural order of the family. Much of the instability in the West today is the result of demographic decline. In Thailand, a country where the birthrate was once robust, widespread dissemination of contraception has caused demographic collapse and the inability to support an aging population. “Family planning” is inherently destabilizing.

A 2012 letter by the Nigerian woman Obianuju Ekeocha is a sober counterpoint to the Gates Foundation’s publicity material. Ekeocha talks affectionately of the importance of children, but also describes how contraception undermines marriage and family life:

Growing up in a remote town in Africa, I have always known that a new life is welcomed with much mirth and joy. In fact we have a special “clarion” call (or song) in our village reserved for births and another special one for marriages.

The first day of every baby’s life is celebrated by the entire village with dancing (real dancing!) and clapping and singing – a sort of “Gloria in excelsis Deo.”

All I can say with certainty is that we, as a society, LOVE and welcome babies.

With all the challenges and difficulties of Africa, people complain and lament their problems openly. I have grown up in this environment and I have heard women (just as much as men) complain about all sorts of things. But I have NEVER heard a woman complain about her baby (born or unborn).

Even with substandard medical care in most places, women are valiant in pregnancy. And once the baby arrives, they gracefully and heroically rise into the maternal mode.

I trained and worked for almost five years in a medical setting in Africa, yet I never heard of the clinical term “postpartum depression” until I came to live in Europe. I never heard it because I never experienced or witnessed it, even with the relatively high birth rate around me. (I would estimate that I had at least one family member or close friend give birth every single month. So I saw at least 12 babies born in my life every year.)

Amidst all our African afflictions and difficulties, amidst all the socioeconomic and political instabilities, our babies are always a firm symbol of hope, a promise of life, a reason to strive for the legacy of a bright future.

In an addendum to her letter, Ekeocha argued that widespread contraception would lead to even more tyranny in Africa:

Anyone who follows closely the news from the African continent would immediately be struck by the ease with which dictators, military commanders and criminal warlords pop-up across our continent. This is so hard for most Americans or Europeans to relate to, but we must bear in mind that most Africans have been and are still living under dictatorial governments that span decades. In our African reality, whoever is in charge wields a god-like power which cannot easily be challenged. And in my experience, most of these men who manage to climb into positions of power want wealth for themselves. They spend only a portion of the national wealth on the people, and then ‘keep the change’ for themselves.

One factor that gets in their way is the increased populations in the different countries. They have more people to feed and fund thanks to our relatively high birth rates, so in this way the natural female fertility becomes a stumbling block to them. I would take the liberty to bring China into this conversation (only as an example) so please pardon me. The Chinese leaders have always had both unspeakable power and unfathomable wealth, so the moment they perceived the women’s fertility as problematic, they used what they had to achieve what they wanted. They launched a rather expensive but effective war against fertility, via state-sponsored forced abortions, forced sterilisations, and mandatory contraception — all done with little to no consideration for human rights .

Now in Africa, the desire to cap national population is there among our governments, the power (to trample human rights) is there, but the money is not — so women remain safe from this sort of violence at the moment. But this could very easily change by the time Melinda pulls into our territories, considering the incredible amounts of artificial contraceptives that she is campaigning for. (Her target is to supply enough for 120 million women! Most of whom are in Africa.). I can sadly imagine this in the hands of the African dictators who will be quick to ‘weaponise’ every single one of these contraceptives (pill, patch, implants or injectables). I understand that many people think it is a ‘nice’ thing to do to get this ‘choice’ of birth control to the African women, and I understand that they mean well. But are we willing to allow this extra edge of power to fall into the wrong hands ?

So from this point I speak for all African women who are only as safe as the authorities are disabled by limited supplies of artificial contraceptives.

— Comments —

Pan Dora writes:

As Melinda Gates has three children herself (putting herself above acceptable replacement level) it would seem she views other people’s children to be the hindrance to development.

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