Christiane Amanpour: Pregnancy is a 'problem' and men don't just don't get it

Amanpour writes about philanthopist Melinda Gates’ efforts to educate women in third-world countries about “family planning”:

Gates is a practicing Catholic; and in spite of contraception being counter to Catholic doctrine, she says she wants to take this mission on as part of her life’s work partly because she is a practicing Catholic. She said that in her travels around the world she has seen women suffer because of a lack of family planning, so she believes that giving women the tools to space their births out and prevent high-risk pregnancies honors those parts of her religion which promote social justice and preventing suffering.

While some may disagree over whether it’s Gates’ place to speak to women about contraception, there’s no doubt that women in other parts of the world face serious issues because they are women.

But Amanpour chose to promote her story on Twitter with an out-of-nowhere jab at men. Those pesky, unfeeling men are responsible for punishing third-world women with babies, and not much else.

Look. It’s one thing to draw attention to issues facing women and mothers in third-world countries. But in busting out the tired and lazy men-just-don’t-understand trope, Amanpour has managed to callously label pregnancy as a problem while trivializing genuine women’s issues.