Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Breastfeeding, the “ultimate in empowerment”
To teach a mother the how and why of breastfeeding is to give her the tools to save her child’s life – the ultimate in empowerment.
~ “Breastfeeding: The Most Effective Way to Save a Baby’s Life,” Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation blog, June 24
While the Gateses say they do not fund abortion, their foundation donates millions of dollars annually to U.S. and International Planned Parenthood organizations.
Also, in 2010 they received the Population Award from the United Nations Population Fund, bestowed for “outstanding contributions to increasing the awareness of population questions and to their solution.”
[Photo via Celebrity Parenting]
Jun.25, 2011 8:15 am |
Breast Cancer/Abortion link, Population |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Yes, nurturing our children is the ultimate empowerment – not hiring abortion doctors to mutilate these children to death.
Breastfeeding also acts naturally to space babies and keep mom and baby healthier.
I never understand pro-aborts who find a need to hide their agenda. If they believe in the overpopulation myth, shouldn’t they be proud to support those efforts instead of concealing them?
I love the quote and could not agree more as a lactation counselor! Too bad it had to come from the Gates! Teaching women about the amazing abilities of their bodies could be the turn of the cultural tide away from contraception and abortion. This may be our point of agreement with the other side with which to begin the conversation and following tidal wave of cultural change. New Feminism = truly empowered women and healthy views of our bodies and families
Yay for lactation counselors and breastfeeding!
In general, breast milk is probably better than formula. But don’t forget that HIV can be transmitted through breast milk. Drugs that harm babies can also be transmitted through breast milk.
Breastfeeding isn’t for every mother of a newborn.
Denise: Breastfeeding is best for 10 times the number of babies that get it some places. Breastfeeding saves lives.
“Yes, nurturing our children is the ultimate empowerment – not hiring abortion doctors to mutilate these children to death.”
Correction: Intentional reproduction & the subsequent acceptance of responsibility for that decision (i.e., being a nurturing parent) is empowering.
Re: Breastfeeding & HIV:
YCW’s right…in places where clean water is scarce yet women can access ARVs, breastfeeding is recommended. Using formula can actually be worse.
Intentional reproduction & the subsequent acceptance of responsibility for that decision (i.e., being a nurturing parent) is empowering.
Yeah, because accepting the responsibility of being a parent (because that’s what you are if you’re pregnant, like it or lump it, you can either kill the child, put him/her up for adoption, or maintain custody of the child yourself) even if you didn’t choose to be means you’re nothing more than a dumb broodmare, barefoot and pregnant, and a slave to your children and the patriarchy. Give it a rest, Megan.
Just because you killed your child out of fear of some false and imagined dichotomy of EITHER you abort your child OR you burn all your school books along with your shoes and forget how to read doesn’t mean that’s how it actually is. Sorry the justification you’ve built up in your own mind as a defense mechanism to shelter you from reality exists to you alone and that those of us here who would never kill our children just to get ahead in life aren’t up to our eyeballs in dirty children wearing a tattered apron and standing barefooted in their kitchens sweeping a dirt floor.
I have had it up to ?” <===here with pro-abortionists getting away with underhanded, passive-aggressive, absolutely sexist and demeaning remarks that insinuate that unless your child is “planned” and “wanted”, he or she is worthless, you allowing that child to live and not aborting him or her lessens YOUR value as a woman and a human being, and you are not a “real feminist” or you are not “empowered”.
Stuff it already. You know what’s REALLY not empowering? Being torn out of your mother while gestating and disposed of as medical waste. That’s really gonna put a damper on your women’s rights rallying.
Great wealth comes with great responsibility (or is it “great responsibility comes with great wealth”?). The Gates’ ignoring the “A” word does not help this generation or the next for that matter. They are intelligent business people and should be concerned that their monetary contributions go to abortion entities. Money is fungible, contraception fails, what do you know, the abortion industry saves the day. If the Gates are going to promote breast-feeding (good for them), it is critical that they work with the local people in making sure sufficient nutritious food gets to these women so their own health doesn’t suffer. Religious organizations working in poor countries often have a network in place that can facilitate this. Something to consider when we “little people” make donations.
This doesn’t seem like rocket science, just common sense. Off of my soap box now.
I used to carry my babies in a sling. Going back to the future on baby-carrying thanks to Mother Africa.
That was some diatribe, X. You’re offended, seriously? Ms. “I’m so alternative I’ve got orange hair yet I’d like to put a padlock on every gestating womb in this country” is offended, booo. First of all, I don’t give a rat’s behind what decision you made with your life. Cool, you had a baby, go you. Your decision. Second, clearly your feelings of empowerment come from trampling over other women, which is sad. And fascist. Dear X, there is no “right to be born.” A person can’t have their physical resources harnessed without their consent. In this day and age–ya know, not medieval Spain–we respect the human individual’s physical integrity/sovereignty. Uteri-owners can’t be placed in a special class, even though you think it’s tragic that honoring the right to autonomy means that unborn life will die.
@DeniseNoe -in much of Africa it doesn’t matter that there is small but real chance of transmitting HIV via breastfeeding. The benefits outweigh the risks – in large part because there is no alternative in many places – and the babies need the maternal antibodies against the variety of other diseases to which he or she will be exposed. Very different from the US or other industrialized countries where formula is abundant and it would never be worth the risk of breastfeeding.
If mothers in Africa and other countries were encouraged to Breastfeed their babies as God intended them to, they would have larger age differences in their children, and therefore less pregnancies. This would decrease the poverty in Africa as well as decrease the abortion rate. Millions of babies could be saved each year if only the greedy formula companies didn’t offer free samples of artificial milk to unsuspecting mothers, who then have to fork out a large percentage of their family’s budget to carry on feeding their infant with artificial milk. God gave them milk for free to give to their baby, which will nourish baby for at least a year with no other food, and longer combined with other forms of nutrition. It has also been proved that even if the mother does not have an adequate diet, her milk still contains far more nutrients than any artificial milk could. Breastmilk is made for each baby by his/her mother’s body, and contains antibodies to diseases which the mother and baby are being exposed to. As for the Aids virus or transmission of HIV passing through the breastmilk from a mother who is HIV positive or who has Aids, this is rare, and the baby has a greater chance of life if breastfed from a mother with aids, than being fed artificial milk in a bottle when the mother has no means of providing sterile water, teats etc. There are even discussions about whether or not breastmilk could be extra beneficial to an infant who’s mother is HIV positive because of the antibodies it contains. Breastfeeding will leave the mother with more money to buy food for her other children, so whichever way you look at it Breastfeeding save lives.
we respect the human individual’s physical integrity/sovereignty.
No, you obviously don’t if you see fit to destroy the physical bodies of some humans. Also, thanks for proving my point with the references to medieval Spain (didn’t abort, still not living in medieval Spain. Sorry Megs!)
My hair color doesn’t kill another human being. Abortion does. What I want to do with MY body doesn’t kill another human being. Abortion does. You do the math.
And no, my feelings of empowerment come from me being empowered. I know from personal experience that getting rid of abortion isn’t going to “trampling over other women”, unless you’re insinuating that I’ve trampled over myself, somehow? Which is bunk. I know that women are strong enough to make it through life without killing their children. THAT is empowering, honey, and I’m sorry you’re missing out on it.
First of all, I don’t give a rat’s behind what decision you made with your life. Cool, you had a baby, go you.
And I don’t give a flying flip how you react to me having a baby, either, Celestial Queen Megan. I’m sure concerned about what the baby’s going to think about this whole mess (legal abortion) when it comes time to tell her the details of how she came about and how some people thought she’d be a good candidate for being killed in a “safe, legal procedure”. But I’m really not surprised you can’t see past your own uterus to the other human beings who deserve to have their lives protected by law just like yours and mine. It wouldn’t be the first time for you.
Welcome to why pro-lifers are winning this fight-your child was a life destroyed and wasted, and mine is alive, well, and happy, and is one day going to be told the truth about this. How do you think SHE will react?
I stand by my original comment ” abortion is NOT empowering”.
While it is nice when parents intended to conceive their children, how we treat the child afterwards shouldn’t depend upon the child’s wantedness. A person mature enough to have sex should be adult enough to care for the child or offer it to other adults who are able to provide the care. We should never punish children for our immaturity.
Defending one’s actions because one has a uterus does not promote the common good or community because it pits one group of people against another.
It’d be nice of pro-choice folk would claim the need for legal abortion while personally finding insanely objectionable a mother’s choice to abort (things can be legal choices and still be moral wrongs). Instead, they flee to demonizing fetuses as parasites even when their legal argument doesn’t require that.
In short, pro-choice folk prove themselves capable of being more heartless by far than they need to be to make their case — calling the immoral moral even when for their purposes they don’t need to.
That’s really interesting, Megan.
…those of us here who would never kill our children just to get ahead in life aren’t up to our eyeballs in dirty children wearing a tattered apron and standing barefooted in their kitchens sweeping a dirt floor.
My children are dirty from joyfully playing outside, I am barefoot in my kitchen wearing an apron as I type, and although I’m not sweeping I am making dinner (while checking this site), and…I love it. Sometimes, what we fantasize as a worst possible outcome in our future life can be a great blessing in disguise. We can never know or presume. We can presume upon other women that they, too, will never make it and in their darkest hour assist them in succumbing to the disempowering self-talk, or we can encourage, and show them the strength they actually have and of what they are truly capable.
Kris, God bless you.
Ok, Kris, I’m a married man so stop with the sexy talk. :-)
I love basic family life. :-)
There’s nothing wrong with caring for your family. I, like Xalisae, am pretty sick of domestic life being referred to as the worst possible thing that can happen to you and you aren’t truly alive unless you’re grinding away at your life under fluorescent lights bowing to a desk and worshiping the dollar.
Shoulder pads and pantsuits strutting through cubicles is not necessarily “empowerment”. Being a household CEO and raising children to inherit the world is pretty empowering IMO. I make THOUSANDS of split second decisions everyday, NOTHING happens around here without my approval, and I teach, guide, train, support, encourage, and LOVE constantly and that is no chore. I get paid more than any “company” can afford! Gates could never buy me off! It is not a punishment and I can’t imagine doing all that for “co workers” I don’t know for the sake of a “company” that could pinkslip me tomorrow and not blink. I certainly don’t need to rip any of my children to shreds to feel empowered and climbing over their corpses to get what I think I want is not only not worth it, but infantile, and beyond selfishly evil. That’s not the “empowerment” I want. No way. Keep it Megan, and God help you.