NEW YORK, New York, October 16, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – French President Emmanuel Macron has condemned African women who have large families, saying that if they were “properly educated” by the West they would have fewer children.
He is being called out by one group for “racism.”
Macron made his comments at a Goalkeepers event in the shadow of the United Nations in New York. That's an event hosted by tech giant Bill Gates and his wife Melinda's pro-abortion and pro-contraception Gates Foundation, in late September.
“One of the critical issues we have regarding the African demography is the fact that this is not a chosen fertility,” said Macron. “I always say, 'Please, present me the lady who decided, being perfectly educated, to have seven, eight, nine children.”
Macron said that African girls need to be “properly educated.”
In a videotaped speech, the politician claimed education is needed in Africa to empower women to make their own reproductive choices – buzzwords usually associated with making contraception and abortion available – and suggested these girls and women would not have such large families if given the choice.
He rejected as “pure bulls**t” any notion that he was trying to school Blacks in the United States on what to do with their lives.
Macron is being called out for “racism” by Campaign Life Coalition, Canada’s political arm of the pro-life movement. Even though he portrayed himself as other than a racist while suggesting African women need to use contraceptives and abortion to keep their families small, his ideas betrayed a colonial mindset, said a spokeswoman.
“Emmanuel Macron is right to value girl's education but his emphasis on a 'chosen' fertility rate and the so-called essential role of family planning betrays a very colonial sort of motivation,” said Emily Price.
“Educated women and big families are not incompatible with a productive, developing society, as Macron has suggested,” she said. “Quite the contrary. People are the means by which the future is built.”
She dubbed the Macron's ideological bent as “philanthropic racism.”
“The French president and his wealthy friends’ push for population control in Africa reveals an ideological supremacy that is extremely dangerous,” said Price.
“On one hand, they promote just causes like education, improved infrastructure and humanitarian aid, but at the same time, they aggressively promote this idea that in order to bring girls and families out of poverty, the poor must abort their children and sterilize their women, killing future generations of Africans,” she said.
African women themselves have indicated they do not share in either French politician or the United Nation's love affair with contraceptives or abortion.
In March, a group of African women denounced Western donors at a United Nations conference on women for pushing contraception and abortion on African women who don’t want it.
“Africa has been picked on,” said Nigerian-born Obianuju Ekeocha, founder of Culture of Life Africa, during a panel at the 62nd annual Conference on the Status of Women.
She was not the only African woman there to join forces with the Holy See and pro-life groups.
Three Kenyan women joined her in a discussion on Promoting the Integral Development of Rural Women and Girls in Africa in the Era of Ideological Colonization.
The roughly $50 billion in official development assistance from donor nations, organizations and private foundations creates an undeniable, incontrovertible, power imbalance between those donors and the African nations at the receiving end, said Ekeocha.
Africans overwhelmingly believe that abortion is the direct destruction of human life but many of those aid dollars are tied to so-called reproductive health services for women, meaning they come with strings attached to force contraception and abortion on Africa.
Kenyan post-abortion counselor Akech Aimba has gone so far as to accuse Western organizations of “ideological bullying” when they set up “illegal abortion clinics” in rural areas in Kenya and train young doctors from Nairobi to do abortions “to get easy money.”
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