'The Moment Of Lift' Is More Of A Whisper Than A Call To Action

after a long exploration of Gates' determination to expand global access to contraception, which she calls "the greatest life-saving, poverty-ending, women-empowering innovation ever created." Her argument is a perfect example of what the social critic Anand Giridharadas calls "win-win" thinking. If women get to time and space their pregnancies, their children will have better lives, and both mothers and children will be more productive in the labor market. Everyone wins. Capitalism is at work here, not feminism — until Gates brings her focus home.

First, she offers a reasoned justification for her own identification as a Catholic who supports abortion rights and contraception access, a position that has earned her the Vatican's rage. Then, she turns to U.S. pregnancy statistics. We are "at a historic low for teen pregnancy and a thirty-year low for unintended pregnancy. Progress is due largely to expanded use of contraceptives, which accelerated thanks to two initiatives begun in the prior administration — first, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program...and second, the birth control benefit in the Affordable Care Act."

This is one of the first passages in The Moment of Lift containing specific U.S. government policy, and it's followed by the book's first true critique. Gates writes:

"Unfortunately, that progress is in jeopardy — both the drop in unwanted pregnancies and the policies that helped make it happen. The current administration is working to dismantle programs that provide family planning and reproductive health services."

She then explains the administration's agenda, which includes withholding funds from health care providers that offer abortions or referrals, a failed attempt to terminate the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, and shifting some federal funds to natural family planning and abstinence-only sex education.

Gates describes this agenda in stark terms, emphasizing the threats implied by these changes, proposed and enacted, rather than exploring the effects they have had thus far. Her rhetoric seems designed to worry readers, or to incite them to take action. It's notable, then, that she never uses President Trump's name. If Gates is trying to motivate voters who support abortion access, she would have benefited from doing so more bluntly. As is, The Moment of Lift seems designed to raise awareness, but not to make waves.

It's hard to fully respect this choice. It seems much too quiet to be effective, a problem exacerbated by Gates' reluctance to assign blame. The closest she comes to offering a structural explanation of the gender-based oppression the Gates Foundation combats is the following:

"Poverty is created by barriers. ... If the barrier is distance, money, knowledge, or stigma, we have to offer tools and information that are closer, cheaper, or less tainted by stigma. To fight poverty, we have to see and study the barriers and figure out if they're cultural, or social, or geographic, or political, and then go around them or through them so the poor aren't cut off from benefits others enjoy."