The following comes from a Mar. 5 story in National Review Online.
Millions of dollars from the fortune of legendary investor Warren Buffett are going to pay for abortions, according to documents from Buffett’s charitable organization and abortion-providing groups.
Buffet, whose preternatural investing success has made him the fourth richest person in the world, is often described as folksy. But the Sage of Omaha is also a longtime population-control buff, and his foundation pours tens of millions of dollars into abortion-funding work every year. In 2011, his foundation gave more than $115 million to pro-choice groups, with a large portion of that going to groups that fund abortions rather than merely doing education or advocacy.
National Review Online previously reported on the growing presence of charities that help women pay for abortions. Groups like the Lilith Fund have drawn increasing national attention, thanks in part to the efforts of pro-choice celebrities like Zach Galifianakis and Sarah Silverman. Buffett is not widely known as an abortion advocate, but his contributions dwarf those of better-known members of the pro-choice movement.
Here’s how: The Buffett Foundation — renamed the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (STBF) in 2004 after Buffett’s wife’s death — exists as a medium for the investor’s charitable giving.
The foundation is remarkably opaque — “a case study in non-transparency,” writes David Callahan for Inside Philanthropy. The foundation’s most recent IRS Form 990 is from 2011. Writes Callahan:
[I]t’s super hard to even figure out who’s doing the grantmaking. Which is crazy, because putting aside medical foundations that assist patients, STBF ranked number five in total giving in 2012, shelling out $367.1 million in 2012. That total put it well ahead of such brand name biggies as Robert Wood Johnson, Kellogg, OSF, Mellon, and Packard.
For most grantseekers, trying to penetrate this place is like being a tourist asking around for the Mafia in Little Italy. The website is a laughable dead end, focusing only [on] STBF’s education giving while omitting huge key funding areas, and STBF’s 990s lag maddeningly behind by a few years. If you try calling the foundation, you get a message saying that nobody is there and that they don’t accept proposals, have funding guidelines, or publish an annual report (but at least you can leave a message!).
Nevertheless, it’s clear the foundation pours millions into pro-choice organizations, with a special focus on funding for abortions. In addition to funding general women’s health organizations and some political groups, Buffett gives generously to organizations that use their funds specifically to help women pay for abortions.
For instance, STBF gave more than $21 million in 2010 to the National Abortion Federation Hotline Fund. That organization’s 990 says its mission is “to ensure that women have the information and resources they need to access quality abortion care.” It also “provides case management services to women with special needs and limited financial assistance to subsidize care for low-income women,” per its 990 from 2012 (the latest year accessible).
In 2012, the NAF Hotline’s annual revenue was a little more than $26 million, per GuideStar. In other words, Buffett’s foundation made a donation almost the size of an entire year’s revenue to one of the country’s more prominent national abortion funds.
The Buffett Foundation’s 990 for 2012 wasn’t available. But in 2011, it gave or pledged more than $40 million to Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions as part of its range of services. It gave more than $1 million to the Abortion Access Project and many other pro-abortion groups.
Buffett’s foundation has also helped organizations seeking to increase abortion access overseas. STBF gave $16 million DKT International, which works to expand abortion access in India, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and other countries. DKT’s website says it “provided 1.2 million safe abortion doses” in 2013.
Gynuity Health Projects, which received more than $9.4 million from the Buffett Foundation from 2009 to 2011, works to expand abortion access in developing countries. Its website discusses its efforts to lower the cost of medical abortions and “to help support introduction of this promising new technology [mifepristone, an abortifacient].”
To read the original story, click here.
Is ownership of Berkeshire Hathaway stock a mortal sin?
Add Bill and Melinda Gates to those who financially support contraception and abortion.
No one who is not at least a millionaire is good enough for these billionaires. This is today’s EUGENICS, to finance and educate the unfit to kill their offspring so they can not procreate.
” The methods of implementing eugenics varied by country; however, some of the early 20th century methods involved identifying and classifying individuals and their families, including the poor, mentally ill, blind, deaf, developmentally disabled, promiscuous women, homosexuals, and racial groups (such as the Roma and Jews in Nazi Germany) as “degenerate” or “unfit”,
the segregation or institutionalization of such individuals and groups, their sterilization, euthanasia, and their mass murder. The practice of euthanasia was carried out on hospital patients in the Aktion T4 centers such as Hartheim Castle.”
Abortion is the murder of innocents for the convenience of others. It is the biggest civil rights violation in history.
Question for Fr. Karl, and any other priest in attendance: Is it sinful to own Berkshire Hathaway stock, given this awful news of Buffett’s use of his money?
And, has the Church ever formally addressed what “owners” of a business are to do when a business founder embraces evil as Buffett has done? Does it matter if the ownership is of common stock of an enormous enterprise, versus a small entity?
Much thanks.
I am not a Priest, but based upon “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion – General Principles” – https://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/bishops/04-07ratzingerommunion.htm
It would seem that once someone knows his or her money is funding immoral purposes that it would become at least remote material cooperation in the evil, if they continued with the investments.
You could look into “Ave Maria Mutual Funds” –
https://avemariafunds.com/advisoryBoard.php
Is this an important question for you? Berkshire Hathaway (stock symbol BRK) is currently trading around $180,000 per share. But maybe you own the Class B at $125 per share. Of course you’re aware that Buffett only owns about 30% of the outstanding shares in any event. The remaining shares are largely held by mutual funds and institutions. Perhaps a far more relevant inquiry are products. When consumers buy from GEICO, Dairy Queen, See’s Candies and Fruit of the Loom (among others), the all the profit inures to the benefit of BRK which owns 100% of the stock of these companies. Half the profit from every bottle of Heinz ketchup goes to the benefit of BRK which owns 50% of Heinz. Also, how should Catholic employees of these companies view their roles? What about employees of American Express, Costco, UPS, Wells Fargo and dozens of other ubiquitous names, all of which are held in significant percentage by BRK. What about the employees of the institutional holders of BRK? What about employees of BRK itself, who number over 300,000? The answer to all of this might be that nobody is ever going to control what Buffett, Gates or Soros does with their pocket change. On the other hand, maybe we should all move out of the US which funds Planned Parenthood with our tax dollars to the tune of $500 million per year. Absent these considerations (and perhaps many more), your question to Fr Karl is ridiculously uninformed.
AND our tax dollars fund unjust wars in Iraq, which have been proven to be based upon falsified information. I am happy to pay taxes for just things, but for unjust wars, for which I have a moral complicity, not so much.
So retrospective, you are pushing for Catholics to do nothing and continue to support the mortal sins of others ?
Or are you merely a shareholder who wants to everyone else to continue to support these mortal sins?
If enough people dump their stock, the shareholders will eventually get the message.
Did you really read my post? The percentage of Berkshire shares owned by private individuals other than Buffett himself, is so small that even if they all simultaneously dumped their stock on the open market, it wouldn’t dent the share price for a minute. So when you refer to “enough people,” who exactly are you referring to? The stock is owned by institutions. And BRK is a holding company, an investment vehicle, which does nothing except own the stock of other companies. “Shareholders will get the message”? What “Shareholders”? Shareholders of BRK have nothing to do with what Buffett does with his money after he extracts his small percentage from every bottle of Heinz ketchup. (One needs to understand the nature of corporate organization and shareholder rights here.) The point is that there is no cooperation, let alone remote cooperation, even if somebody has the wherewithall to invest in a stock at $180,000 per share. And as for the shareholders in other companies in which BKR owns less than 100%, it’s nonsensical to say, “I’m going to sell my shares because some of the other shares are owned by BKR, and Buffett owns 30% of BKR, and Buffett uses a smidgen of his wealth to fund abortion”? If we stop buying stock because we don’t like some other shareholder, we may as well stop walking down the street because we don’t like somebody else in the crosswalk. There is no connection between the two.
Abortion has always been the cause of the super rich and the prominent rich families. The Bush family were at its forefront decades ago.
Spoken like a true wealthy man, Ed.
In 2011 Warren Buffet gave almost $9 million to UC San Francisco for increasing abortion access. .
In 2012 Buffet gave $7,661,584 to UC San Francisco in 2012 for “Project Support,” which promotes the access to abortion and its increase to primarily women of color. Presumably, Dr. Philip Darney and Tracy Weitz of the UCSF Global Reproductive Center get all the money and share it in shovel fulls with Planned Parenthood.
Almost all of Buffet’s “charitable giving” now is to population control projects managed by Planned Parenthood.
As of 2014 Tracy Weitz of UCSF is now a Board member of the Buffet foundation and she is in charge of domestic operations for populations control. Count on more money going to UCSF.
A year or more ago I heard, on Bob Brinker’s Money Line, an interview with a biographer of Buffet’s. She said that he is “agnostic’ and “terrified of death.”
Sounds like he should be….
If he is terrified now as an old man, just think how terrified he will be when he is being judged by Jesus for purposely helping to murder all those innocents.
Both Presidents Bush were anti-abortion.
Warren Buffett is unlike most of the uber rich, in that 99% of his fortune will go to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, involved in some good works round the world. You can bet the ranch the rest of the uber wealthy won’t do that. I reject the support for abortion, but those invoilved in international charity frequently come away with a “we need to control the birth rate” point of view. Not hard to see why: the undereducated and poor are bigger breeders than the educated and affluent. Child mortality is high in poor countries, so more children offset the death rate. Even so, efforts in India to lower the population rate have had some modesty success, except in the poorest portion of that country, where it has had no effect.
Population control by private means and individual decisions is a noble goal, but much of the “hey, you guys need to have fewer babies” attitude is ignored in poor countries. The same economic and sociological wisdom remains true to this day: if you want to control the birth rate, develop the economy. The educated classes produce the fewest children, the poorest classes produce the most children.