Melinda French Gates Explains How She Reconciles Her Faith with Being Pro-Choice

• Melinda French Gates detailed how she’s reconciled her Catholic faith with being pro-choice during a candid conversation on the April 17 episode of The Jamie Kern Lima Show
• The philanthropist — who co-founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with her ex-husband Bill Gates — shared how her travels and conversations with people living in villages with no access to contraceptives opened her eyes to a new perspective and made her want to “give voice to what these families and these women were telling me”
• She described grappling with the issue as “almost a crisis of faith”

Melinda French Gates is opening up about what she describes as “almost a crisis of faith” that ultimately led her to reconcile her Catholic beliefs with her pro-choice stance.

During a candid conversation on the April 17 episode of The Jamie Kern Lima Show, the philanthropist, 60, shared how her travels around the world as part of her work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — which she co-founded with ex-husband Bill Gates in 2000 — opened her eyes to new perspectives on the issue.

“I was out in low-income countries, three, sometimes four times a year all over the world. And I was learning from these men and women in villages about their lives. And they would talk about children. And both the men and the women knew that when they could space the births of those children, they were better off,” she told host Jamie Kern Lima.

“Or if they could limit, let’s say, they could limit and decide they were only gonna have three or four instead of six or seven, they knew they could then feed their kids, their kids could go to school,” she continued. “They had a chance, those kids, of maybe growing up and, you know, living their dreams.”

Melinda then recalled having conversations with residents in these villages and learning that, due to a lack of access to contraceptives, many women had pregnancies “too close together” and “lost that baby prematurely because the birth was too quick and her body wasn’t ready.”

She also heard stories of women dying during childbirth. She said these dismaying insights shifted her perspective in a profound way.

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“I started to realize, I believe in life. I believe in these children’s lives. The worthiness of them, the inherent beauty on the day they’re born,” she explained. “But because of a man-made rule in the church that I am in — the Catholic church — we’re not allowing women to have access to contraceptives. And so talk about an incongruency, right? And I had to really then reckon with my faith.”

As she grappled with the issue, she consulted “some Notre Dame scholars” to learn the history of “how the Catholic church had gotten there, why they’d gotten there.” Once she spent time digging into the lectures, books and teachings of Richard Rohr — whom Melinda described as “a very liberal Jesuit priest” — she “realized, ‘Wow, I need to actually unlearn some of these things because I can’t square the circle.’ ”

She told Kern Lima that she ultimately concluded that she believes “in the dignity of life.”

“And yet we’re losing more children because of this,” Melinda noted. “We won’t allow this tool to be given to women.”

Melinda said the experience was “almost a crisis of faith” for her. “But I was able to eventually reconcile them and say, ‘No, no, no. This is what I believe and I know to be true. And I am going to speak the truth in the world,’ ” she explained.

While she acknowledged that the process took “a lot of of courage and a lot of leaning forward,” she said it’s also been empowering. “Boy, did it feel right to give voice to what these families and these women were telling me,” she told Kern Lima.

She added: “I felt, given my position at the foundation, I had a responsibility to go voice that and do something about it on the world stage. And it animated my life.”