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The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced Tuesday that it has committed $375 million in funding over the next three years to expand access to contraceptives for some of the world’s poorest communities.
It’s part of the foundation’s ongoing work with Family Planning 2020, an international collaboration that’s aiming to expand contraceptive access to 120 million women across the world by the year 2020. The Gates Foundation has previously donated over $1 billion to the collaboration.
The new donation comes as the Trump administration is proposing cuts that would impact family planning services across the globe.
In a blog post announcing the new funds, Melinda Gates wrote that family planning services weren’t initially a focus for her or the Foundation. But that changed as she began looking into how to help communities around the world stay healthy.
Everywhere I went, the conversation turned to contraceptives. I met women who were getting pregnant too young, too old, and too often for their bodies to handle,” she wrote. “When I started studying the data, I learned that contraceptives are an essential part of the healthier, more prosperous world we’re all working toward.”