British aid cash ‘spent on illegal abortions’
CLAIMS that British aid money is being used to fund illegal abortions in Kenya must be investigated, a cross-bench peer has demanded.
Lord Alton of Liverpool has called on the Government to carry out an urgent review of UK-funded abortion services in the impoverished East African country.
Marie Stopes International (MSI) was last week banned by the Kenyan government amid claims it was offering abortion services outside the country’s current laws.
The charity, which claims the move will drive thousands of women and girls to risk their lives in backstreet clinics, receives millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money.
Lord Alton, a prominent pro-life campaigner, said: ‘I am calling on the Government to undertake an urgent inquiry into allegations that Marie Stopes International is performing illegal abortions in Kenya.
‘They need to determine as a matter of urgency whether Marie Stopes International is in fact promoting and performing abortions contrary to the law in Kenya. Investment in quality maternal health services in Africa should be prioritised rather than an intense imposition of abortion and population control. As Africans themselves have said, millions of pounds of UK funding going to abortion providers in Africa equates to a kind of continuation of Western colonisation of the African people.’
Authorities in Nairobi ordered Marie Stopes
‘A continuation of Western colonisation’
International to suspend offering abortions and post-abortion care after complaints that one of its media campaigns was promoting the termination of unwanted pregnancies – a charge the charity vehemently refutes.
Kenyan law states that abortions are permitted only when a trained health profes- sional judges the life or health of the mother is in danger or in cases of emergency.
The Department for International Development (DfID) was last night forced to deny it was helping to pay for unlawful terminations of unwanted pregnancies in Kenya.
It insisted British money was only ever used for legal emergency abortions.
The situation will raise fresh concerns about how DfID’s budget of around £14billion a year is spent – and prompt new calls for it to be trimmed. The Government has committed to spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on development funding.
A Marie Stopes Kenya spokesman said it ‘works hard to ensure that no woman or girl should needlessly lose her life due to an unsafe abortion’. They added: ‘We are proud of the life-changing, life-saving services our teams provide every single day.’