International Development Minister Priti Patel confirmed the money would be used for "safe abortions".
The Department for International Development (DFID) has announced that the UK will spend over a billion pounds on family planning in the next five years, including access to "safe abortions".
International Development Secretary Priti Patel said at a Family Planning Summit being held today in London that the UK Government’s spending on family planning will be an average of £225 million per year until 2022 - an additional £45 million a year? for 5 years. Ms Patel later confirmed this sum would include the provision of 'safe abortion' in developing countries.
Exporting abortion overseas
Britain is already the second biggest funder of family planning programmes in the world - in the last five years it has given Marie Stopes International alone £163.01 million. This is despite a recent ComRes poll showing that 65% of the public oppose UK taxpayer money being spent on abortions overseas.
The London Summit is co-hosted by Ms Patel, Melinda Gates (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) and Natalia Kanem (UN Population Fund - UNFPA).The summit is focusing on providing contraception, but last week bpas insisted that "the answer to unsafe abortion is not contraception, it is safe abortion...Family planning is contraception and abortion."
Who's asking for family planning?
The summit has been using the figure of 214 million women who are in need of contraception. However, as Obianuju Ekeocha of Culture of Life Africa told BBC World News, there is a difference between unmet need and unmet demand. She also talks about how Western countries funding abortion and contraception as a means of alleviating poverty is a form of "ideological colonisation".
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