Follow the Money
“In the fight against AIDS,
condoms save lives,” she said at last month’s International AIDS Conference in
Catholic teaching — and AIDS statistics — beg to differ. Not only do condom promotion programs fail where abstinence succeeds against AIDS — but souls as well lives are at stake.
Gates’ comments spotlighted concerns that many Catholics and pro-life and pro-family activists have about the operations of the Seattle-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the couple’s huge charitable foundation.
The critics point out that the foundation, which concentrates on education and global health initiatives, has directed tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood and other groups that operate anti-life and anti-family programs.
And as Melinda Gates’
The concerns were heightened earlier this summer when fellow billionaire Warren Buffett announced in late June that he was giving $31 billion of his own fortune to the Gates Foundation.
Buffett’s charitable foundation, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, has made support of abortion-related services a centerpiece of its spending.
Since its inception in 1994, the Gates Foundation has disbursed more than $10.8 billion. Its endowment prior to Buffett’s gift was more than $29 billion, making it the world’s largest “transparent” private foundation. (“Transparent” foundations make their operations and assets publicly known).
To retain their charitable status, U.S.-based private foundations must give away at least 5% of their assets each year. That level of spending gives the foundation lots of clout in establishing global policies in its key areas of interest.
And according to the Gates Foundation’s website, the foundation seeks to gain even more influence by funding “projects that leverage additional support and serve as catalysts for long-term, systemic change.”
‘Reproductive Health’
Many of the Gates Foundation’s
grants are non-contentious, including funding it gives to Catholic-sponsored
initiatives such as disaster relief programs administered by Catholic Relief
Services and funding Cristo Rey Catholic schools in the
However, the foundation’s activities are more controversial with respect to two of its “Priority Diseases and Conditions” — “reproductive health” issues and AIDS prevention through the distribution of condoms.
As defined by pro-abortion activists and by the World Health Organization, “reproductive health” services include the provision of abortion.
As of June 2006, the Gates Foundation had disbursed $1.9 billion to HIV, tuberculosis and reproductive health services, according to the foundation’s website.
Included in this total is more than $60 million to the United Nations Population Fund.
The
In a September 2005 statement, the
State Department said, “Since [2002], we have continuously called on
Planned Parenthood
Another major beneficiary of the Gates Foundation has been International Planned Parenthood Federation, the world’s largest private abortion business.
Responding to the Register via e-mail, Gates Foundation spokesman Andrew Shih said that the foundation has granted a total of $33,412,120 to Planned Parenthood affiliates.
But the Gates Foundation insists it is not promoting abortion through its grants to the U.N. Population Fund and Planned Parenthood.
“These grants are used to further reproductive health efforts around the world — people can learn more about the foundation’s programs on our website,” Shih said. “The foundation does not fund abortion services.”
Jim Sedlak is executive director of STOPP International, an arm of the American Life League that monitors Planned Parenthood. He said that by giving more than $30 million to Planned Parenthood, the Gates Foundation has definitely supported abortion.
Sedlak said that it means little if a grant to Planned Parenthood is given to a non-abortion program. Such grants free up other dollars within the organization, Sedlak said, that Planned Parenthood spends directly on abortion services.
“Once the money gets inside
Planned Parenthood, it’s all bookkeeping,” Sedlak said. “What they’re doing is
they give money to the largest abortion chain in the
Sedlak noted the foundation also supports distribution of abortifacient contraceptives, such as the contraceptive pill.
Sedlak said that several years ago, when the Gates Foundation first began to support Planned Parenthood, STOPP International and the American Life League attempted to contact Bill and Melinda Gates and foundation officials to express their concerns.
“We tried everything we could to try to change that, including running newspaper ads out where the foundation is headquartered,” Sedlak said. “But it was all to no avail. They still give millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood.”
Condoms
In her remarks at the
International AIDS Conference in
“In some countries with widespread AIDS epidemics, leaders have declared the distribution of condoms immoral, ineffective or both. Some have argued that condoms do not protect against HIV, but in fact help spread it,” she said. “This is a serious obstacle to ending AIDS.”
The Catholic Church teaches that the use of artificial contraceptives, including condoms, is immoral. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “every action, which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible is intrinsically evil” (No. 2370).
Gates Foundation spokesman Shih declined to answer when asked by the Register if the foundation believed that the Church’s opposition to condoms was undermining efforts to combat the spread of the disease.
Along with stressing the intrinsic immorality of condom use, Church leaders also cite empirical evidence that chastity, expressed through sexual abstinence before marriage and fidelity for married persons, is a superior means of preventing AIDS (see sidebar).
“As a public health initiative, condoms have not only not worked, they have arguably made the situation worse,” said Edward Green, a professor at Harvard’s School of Public Health and a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS.
Buffett’s Billions
Both STOPP’s Sedlak and Harvard’s Green worry that Warren Buffett’s $30-billion gift to the Gates Foundation will result in an even stronger emphasis on flawed programs.
“Now that they have Warren Buffett’s money on top of Gates’ billions, they are going to be the trailblazers,” Sedlak said. “They are blazing the trail in the pro-abortion world to bring the Planned Parenthood philosophy to every country in the world.”
Green said that when he first learned about Buffett’s gift, he made an informal effort to get in touch with the billionaire to explain that the Gates Foundation was committed to the wrong AIDS-prevention approach.
Said Green, “I want to sit down with Warren Buffett and say, ‘Listen, you mean well and you want to do good in the world and you think that the Gates Foundation already has mechanisms set up. But I’m here to tell you that Gates is doing the same-old, same-old that has failed.’”
Added Green, “I would hope to get Warren Buffett to say, ‘Okay, Bill … I’m giving you this money. But when it comes to AIDS, you have to do it this way. You have to follow a successful model, rather than an unsuccessful model.’”
Tom McFeely is based in
From 1991 to 2001,
Behavioral Change
Research shows that
Failed Strategy
When nations promote condoms, promiscuity increases — and so does AIDS.
Morals Count
Religious organizations have taken the lead in every country that has reduced AIDS.
In Africa, Condoms Don’t Work
According to
Edward Green, author of Rethinking AIDS Prevention:
Learning From Successes in Developing Countries, the
abstinence-based and fidelity-based “ABC” program pioneered by the
ABC stands for Abstinence, Be faithful or use Condoms if A and B aren’t practiced. The third element of condom use is recommended only to those who refuse to practice the far safer A and B elements of the program.
Overall, the
Many condom advocates have attempted to dismiss the positive results from ABC programs by arguing that it’s the C element of condom distribution that is primarily responsible.
But Green, a
professor at Harvard’s
Green cited two key reasons for the ineffectiveness of condoms. First, even if used consistently and properly every time an individual engages in sex, condoms are only about 80% effective in reducing the risk of transmitting the AIDS virus. And in practice, individuals who use them generally don’t use them consistently and properly all the time, meaning the effectiveness rate drops sharply.
The second factor is the “behavioral disinhibition effect” that results from condom-use campaigns. Individuals gain a false sense of security from the pro-condom advertising and become more inclined to engage in risky sexual behavior.
Green said that the ABC message
has been delivered in
And while both approaches appear to be effective, Green noted that the two African countries that have recorded the most success in reducing HIV infection rates — Uganda and Senegal — are the ones that have drawn most upon religious and moral perspectives.
Said Green, “It turns out that the Catholic Church’s approach is an asset.”
— Tom McFeely
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- September 3-9, 2006