Mixed blessing

By Tony Staley
Compass Editor

Much attention was focused last month on billionaire Warren Buffet's announcement that he planned to leave most of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

That means the foundation, run by the world's richest couple, will someday double in size with this massive $30 billion bequest from the world's second richest person.

Most informed observers expected Buffet to start his own foundation or give his fortune to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for his late wife. Instead, that foundation will receive a $3 billion (rather than $30+ billion) bequest (it has $2.1 billion in assets). Any money it gets is bad news for pro-life because, Fortune magazine reported, her foundation funds "reproductive health, family planning, and pro-choice causes, and on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons." So $3 billion is bad news, but Buffet's original plan was worse.

Contrast that to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has strived to build a squeaky clean reputation. Its best known for supporting the vaccination of Third World children against infectious disease, seeking a cure for AIDS and microlending - the granting of small loans to people living in poor countries so they can buy a water buffalo or a goat.

But it's not all good news. Less publicized is the Gates Foundation's annual donations to Planned Parenthood, the nation's leading abortion provider. Over the years, the Gates Foundation has given $34 million - less than 1% of the grants it has awarded - to Planned Parenthood, which received $10.5 billion in grants worldwide. Jacquelline Fuller, a Gates Foundation spokesperson, told David Crary of the Associated Press, that Gates' grants do not fund abortions and are earmarked for other Planned Parenthood programs.

But, as Joseph D'Agostino of the anti-abortion Population Research Institute, said, "Abortion services are the primary mission of Planned Parenthood. If you fund one side of an organization, that frees them up to transfer funds to the other things they do."

Plus, the Gates Foundation finances reproductive-health programs, including new contraceptive technologies and initiatives to improve access to birth control.

While Warren Buffet's decision to give more than 80% of his estate to the Gates Foundation is better news then his original plan to give it all to his late wife's strongly pro-abortion foundation, it's obviously not completely benign. The fight for life and to educate people on the various aspects of what being pro-life means remains a real battle.