The New War on Birth Control - Pacific Standard
Although it wasn’t clear at the time, the attack on Phillips marked the beginning of a new anti-contraception movement—conceived in the U.S., but unfolding in Africa, where women’s frustrations with the dearth of safe, effective family planning options are being co-opted and repurposed by a corner of the Christian right.
Much of this new resistance can be traced to the London Summit on Family Planning, held in July of 2012, which gathered leaders of the international women’s health movement. Before a triptych of screens displaying photographs of African and South Asian women as well as a disembodied hand holding a small injectable contraceptive device, Melinda Gates, co-chair of the $40.6 billion Gates Foundation, announced that the foundation was doubling its investment in family planning to a total of more than $1 billion by 2020.