Melinda French Gates Is Now Funding Reproductive Rights Initiatives

Philanthropist Melinda French Gates announced Tuesday that over the next two years, her charity will dole out $1 billion to initiatives focused on women, including those working to protect reproductive rights in the United States.

The news, which French Gates revealed in a New York Times essay, comes a week before she’s scheduled to step away from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the philanthropy she started with her now-ex-husband, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, in 2000.

The contributions are a direct response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which wiped out abortion access for millions of Americans, she said.

“While I have long focused on improving contraceptive access overseas, in the post-Dobbs era, I now feel compelled to support reproductive rights here at home,” French Gates wrote. “For too long, a lack of money has forced organizations fighting for women’s rights into a defensive posture while the enemies of progress play offense. I want to help even the match.”

Funding will come through Pivotal Ventures, the philanthropy she launched in 2015.

“As shocking as it is to contemplate, my 1-year-old granddaughter may grow up with fewer rights than I had,” French Gates wrote in her essay.

The National Women’s Law Center and the Center for Reproductive Rights ― two groups fighting the GOP’s effort to wipe out abortion access ― are among the recipients of some of that $1 billion so far, French Gates said Tuesday.

The 19th, a news outlet focused on gender and politics, said Tuesday they’d also received a multimillion-dollar grant from French Gates’ charity.

“Sometimes dreams do come true,” Emily Ramshaw, the news outlet’s co-founder and CEO, said in her