Melinda Gates Takes The Lead Worldwide In Delivering Birth Control To Poor Women

Melinda and Bill Gates on first trip to Africa in 1993.

The commitment of the Gates Foundation to gender equity globally will surely take another uptick with the upcoming probability that the Trump administration will shut down all funding for Planned Parenthood internationally and in the US. The first order of the incoming Obama administration was to reverse the Bush administration's commitment that no taxpayer dollars fund contraception projects around the world. And Hillary Clinton as Secy of State created a new position, the Office of Global Women's Issues, to prioritize the drive for gender equality worldwide.

The strategic thinking, fact-based female half of the world's largest foundation knows: "“You empower a woman and you change the world. We know that if a woman is economically empowered inside her family, all kinds of magical things happen.”

In 2012, when the Gates Foundation announced its support of a $4.3 billion public-private partnership designed to give 120 million women in the world’s poorest countries voluntary access to contraceptives by 2020, Melinda chose multiple international public stages, ranging from a TED talk to the London Summit on Family Planning, with the goal of underlining her unyielding commitment to the issue of birth control. Her decision put the devoted Catholic at odds with her church, and she has never looked back.  “We have 220 million women asking us for contraceptives, and we’re not delivering them,” Gates says. “Because of the political controversy, we backed away from the issue as a world. And yet women are dying in childbirth because they have child after child after child, and their children are dying because they’re coming too quickly.”

Amal & George Clooney Host April 16 Hillary Clinton Fundraiser In LA, April 15 In San Francisco

Superstars George and Amal Clooney will be co-hosting cocktails and dinner with Hillary Clinton in April fundraisers in Los Angeles on April 16 and San Francisco a day earlier. Proceeds will go to the Hillary Victory Fund.

The Clinton campaign is running a contest that gives supporters across America the chance to meet Clinton, George and Amal at their home. Would-be guests can text CLOONEY to 47246 and donate $10 to enter the lottery.

George Clooney has nothing but praise for Hillary Clinton, while agreeing that candidate Bernie Sanders has offered much critical conversation to the public dialogue. Without mentioning Donald Trump by name, George Clooney refers to the GOP frontrunner's slogan and rhetoric in his letter to friends and potential donors.

“If you listen to the loudest voices out there today, you’d think we’re a country that hates Mexicans, hates Muslims, and thinks that committing war crimes is the best way to make America great again,” Clooney writes.

“The truth is that the only thing that would prevent America from being great would be to empower these voices.”

It's important to note that Clooney has not hesitated to criticize Clinton in the past. Today Clooney sent out a letter about theClinton April 16 LA fundraiser, praising her as the only candidate ready to lead America. 

“In all of this clutter, there’s been one consistent voice — a voice of tolerance and experience from a candidate who’s spent a lifetime fighting for the rights of the less fortunate,” Clooney says of Clinton, the “only grown-up in the room” and the leading Democratic contender for the presidential nomination. “A candidate who knows firsthand the complexity of our international relationships. That candidate is Hillary Clinton.”

Co-sponsors for the Clooney LA event are Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg, Steven Speilberg and Kate Capshaw, and Haim and Cheryl Saban. HIllary will be in Los Angeles on Thursday, March 24 for a series of fundraisers, including an event at the nightclub Avalon Hollywood and a reception at the home of ICM Partners’ Chris Silbermann and Julia Franz.

About Victory Funds

In late February 2016, the Washington Post reported that a record 32 state parties signed onto the Democratic National Committee's victory fundraising committee. Thanks to a much disputed 2014 US Supreme Court decision that eliminated a cap on how much donors can contribute to federal campaigns in a single year.

Victory funds allow candidates to pool large amounts of money from a single donor. They work like this, explains US News: An individual can give $2,700 for a candidate's primary campaign, another $2,700 for the general election, $33,400 every year to the party and $10,000 per year to each state party.

That means a victory fund like Clinton's, which is aligned with 33 state parties, can — and does — take checks of more than $350,000.

Obama and 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney both used those fundraising devices in the last election, but they became even more powerful in 2014, when the Supreme Court struck down the cap on what any one donor can contribute each year.

The Democratic National Committee began 2015 $1 million in the red, a situational that Clinton remedied with fundraising efforts that had the DNC closing out the year with $17 for Democratic candidates. Bernie Sanders has raised nothing for other Democratic candidates at a moment when Democrats see the opportunity of regaining the Senate. A Trump candidacy could potentially even put the House of Representatives in play.