Melinda’s Message to Dying Mothers: “Sorry, You Should Have Used a Condom”
Posted on | July 16, 2012 by Stefano Gennarini, J.D. |
The Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health is telling mothers that die because they choose to have children that using condoms could have prevented their complications in pregnancy.
In an article published in Lancet, “Maternal deaths averted by contraceptive use: an analysis of 172 countries”, the Gates funded institute concludes that contraception is a “primary prevention strategy” that is essential to reduce maternal mortality. It attempts to calculate the number of maternal deaths that could have been avoided through universal access to contraception, using WHO data on maternal mortality (repeatedly challenged as unsound) and UN data about unmet need for contraception (a notion entirely debunked by an acclaimed Harvard professor).
Needles to say, this is just another unsuccessful attempt to turn controversial elective health services into a moral imperative by way of shoddy science. It follows the poor example of other advocacy groups who dabble in science to try and impose their ideology on everyone else.
Unsurprisingly, the study itself does not delve into the causal link between contraception and maternal mortality. What link could there be? Indeed, there can be no causal link between contraception and maternal mortality, in the sense advocated by Bill and Melinda Gates’ phony scientists. Contraception is used to prevent pregnancy, and it could only affect things maternal where it fails to contracept or where it is the direct cause of other medical conditions that can lead to complications in pregnancy.
The recommendation of the study is that contraception be made into a prevention strategy for maternal death. That is women should use contraception in order to avoid the complications that result from being pregnant and carrying a pregnancy to term. In other words, it is telling women who are dying because they have chosen to have children that they should have used a condom.
If a smoker is told when he is dying of cancer that he should have stopped smoking, it would appear to be a touch insensitive. But at least it would be based on science. Here there is no correlation, scientific or otherwise between contraception and maternal mortality! That is not only a touch insensitive, it is scandalously absurd.
Tags: Contraception > Family Planning > maternal mortality > Melinda Gates