The UK Government has announced that £12million pounds of taxpayers’ money is to go to a programme run by an organisation that aims to “expand access” to abortion in Tanzania over the next two years.
It comes against a backdrop in which funding for overseas abortions has been a continued theme of the UK Government in recent years, reports Right to Life UK. Last year, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) launched an initiative “to tackle gender inequality around the world” with the use of over £200million of taxpayers’ money for programmes that include the provision of abortions and fund pro-choice campaigns in Africa.
Earlier this month, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office said that the Scaling Up Family Programme (SUFP) – a family planning and sexual and reproductive health programme in Tanzania – would be receiving the £12million of taxpayers’ money, on top of almost £50million of UK taxpayers’ money that the program has received since 2017. And in spite of the fact that abortion is currently illegal in Tanzania.
“As abortion is illegal in Tanzania, abortion providers will not directly admit that they are performing abortion in the country,” Catherine Robinson, spokesperson for Right To Life UK, tells the Catholic Herald.
“Abortion providers [will] say they are doing ‘post-abortion care’ in countries like Tanzania, claiming they are only providing care to women who have had illegal abortions.”
She explains that abortion providers regularly flout the law in a number of countries where abortion is illegal, providing abortions and then listing these abortions as ‘post-abortion care’ in their accounts.
“This practice was confirmed in the documentary ‘Strings Attached’ by Marie Stopes employee Jacqueline Gandi, who worked at one of their clinics’ in Kenya,” Robinson says. “She revealed that illegal abortions were being performed in the country and being recorded as ‘post-abortion care’.”
The SUFP has been implemented by a number of organisations including the contraception and abortion provider MSI Reproductive Choices (previously Marie Stopes International) and an organisation called EngenderHealth, which, Right to Life UK highlights, aims to “expand access” to “comprehensive abortion care”, which it defines as including “information and counseling, induced abortion, and postabortion care”.
EngenderHealth is explicit, Right to Life UK notes, that expanding access to comprehensive abortion care, which includes expanding access to induced abortion, is part of their work in Tanzania, as well as a number of other countries including Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, India, Niger, Senegal and Togo.
The UK Minister for Development and Africa, Andrew Mitchell, has claimed “UK funding announced today will help reduce maternal deaths in Tanzania, creating a safer environment for women and their children”.
Right to Life UK has questioned the prioritisation of a family planning and sexual and reproductive health program over “genuine aid” such as clean water or food.
“Without a hint of irony, the Minister for Development and Africa says this money, some of which will go to organisations actively seeking to expand access to abortion in the country, will create a ‘safer environment for women and their children’,” Robinson says.
Polling shows that there is little public support for taxpayers’ money being spent overseas in relation to abortion, with 65 per cent of the British population opposed it.
Similarly, only three MPs and the government minister – who has to be present – took part in a debate in support of increased funding for overseas abortion last year, indicating that this issue is either not a priority among MPs or not one that they want to be involved in.
The £200million of taxpayer money is being provided by the government’s Women and Girls Strategy, which was launched in 2023 on International Woman’s Day, and will be spent on the Women’s Integrated Sexual Health program.
A Government paper called International Women and Girls Strategy 2023–2030 that accompanied the launch of the strategy explains that one of its goals is to “prioritise the often-neglected issue of safe abortion”.
In 2019 the Secretary of State for International Development, Alok Sharma MP, announced to the UN that the Department for International Development (DFID) would be providing an additional £600million of taxpayer money for “family planning”, which included funding abortions.
This pledge was the UK Government’s largest ever stand-alone spend of taxpayer money in this area and comes on top of the £1.1billion already pledged to “family planning” over a five-year period beginning in 2017.
“The UK Government seems intent on funding organisations that promote abortion in countries like Tanzania,” Robinson says. “As others have pointed out, this is a form of neo-colonialism, which cannot end soon enough.”
Photo: Screenshot from www.righttolife.org.uk.
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