Scrap Plans To Give Up To £1.1 Billion of Taxpayer Money For Overseas Abortions

Priti Patel, the Secretary of State for International Development, has announced extra public expenditure on ‘family planning’, including ‘‘safe abortions’’, as part of the international aid budget.

Speaking at the Family Planning Summit 2017, co-sponsored by the Gates Foundation, which currently promotes contraceptives but not abortions, Patel announced that her Department would increase its aid for ‘family planning’ by 25%. In practical terms, this means an extra £225 million per year, over the next 5 years.

Patel confirmed that the enormous sum of extra public expenditure she has pledged would include the provision of so-called ‘safe abortion’ in developing countries, and International Development Questions in the days thereafter saw Patel re-affirm her support for Government support for overseas ‘family planning’.

This means that UK taxpayers will now be spending millions more on overseas abortions, amounting up to a total now of £1.1 billion in foreign aid in that area alone, despite the Government cap on UK public sector pay that has frozen salaries for British doctors, nurses, and others below inflation for 7 years. It also comes after NHS trusts reported a £886 million deficit for the first 9 months of the financial year forcing them to cut beds across UK national hospitals.

This is despite recent polling showing that 65% of the British public (including 65% of women) oppose any spending on abortion overseas, with 79% (including 84% of women) wanting increased support for UK women under financial pressure to have an abortion.

Statements from the UK Government indicate that this funding will be targeted at developing countries in Africa and this is likely to include not only providing abortions in countries where it is legal but funding large abortion lobby groups to attempt to change the laws in African nations where the country has chosen to keep abortion illegal.

The use of UK taxpayer money to undermine the sovereignty of these African nations by funding abortions and trying to change laws in this area has recently been described by Nigerian activist Obianuju Ekeocha on the BBC as “a form of ideological colonisation”.

Polling across African nations show that abortion is not wanted with people overwhelmingly seeing abortion as morally unacceptable with for example 92% of people in Ghana, 88% in Uganda and 82% in Kenya stating that abortion is morally unacceptable.

Please sign this petition asking Patel and the UK Government to scrap these plans, and redirect the money to support women in unplanned pregnancy in the UK, or at least to support women and children abroad.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-save-a-womans-life-every-90-min…

https://www.facebook.com/liveaction/videos/10155484976988728/

https://lifecharity.org.uk/news-and-views/uk-govt-pledge-1-1-billion-fam…

http://www.comresglobal.com/polls/where-do-they-stand-abortion-survey/