Catholic Melinda Gates Supports Contraception ... fanatics go ballistic

Billionairess Melinda Gates, you know Bill Gates's wife, is a practicing Catholic, but she, and her foundation want to make contraception and other family planning services available to 120 million women worldwide.  In TED talks and elsewhere, Melinda has argued that contraception is NOT CONTROVERSIAL.  Indeed, she is merely one of the 98% of Catholic women who reject as foolish and falsely-reasoned the Catholic teaching against contraception.  More to the point, Gates correctly notes that millions of women's lives could be saved every year through access to contraception.  It is estimated that 200 million women worldwide want to have access to contraception, but cannot afford or obtain it.  Additionally, there are 80 million unintended pregnancies annually and these are often in areas where medical care is lacking and female mortality risk is high.  Put another way, the Vatican has the blood of these women on their hands, due to their  fraudulent teaching banning the use of this life-saving technology.  It is no different than if they were to ban vaccinations or hearth transplants, and believe me, these were technologies that the Vatican was not crazy about either.  But they eventually allowed those and strangely hung onto contraception.  

The great irony, of course, is that many abortions could be avoided with access to contraception.  Any true Catholic who is interested in preventing abortions understands, as I have argued that "Prophylactics are Pro-life".  Indeed, the Gates Foundation does not give money to support abortion, but they do support family planning through other mechanisms, including the use of existing contraception technology, and the development of even better technologies in the future.  

Mrs. Gates should be doubly-commended, not only for her commitment to doing great good for the world through her foundation, but also for having the courage to stand up to the fanatic elements in her own church who still teach the error of anti-contraceptionism.  

Of course, this is still an organization that will not accept women in the priesthood.  As some have pointed out, if the church doesn't want to accept women into the priesthood, perhaps they should stop baptizing and confirming them. If they are too unclean for the priesthood, perhaps they should stop allowing them to receive communion.  

One day the Vatican will ordain women as priests, and one day they will accept contraception, and on that day they will deny that they ever taught any differently.  However, until then, Catholic women are playing their part exactly right by simply ignoring the ridiculous patriarchial nonsense.  They are showing, yet again, that the church membership itself, not the self-appointed "leaders", actually defines what it means to be Catholic and that definition now effectively is one that uses contraception, just like any other Protestant denomination.