US Foreign Aid Money Reducing Abortion?

By Tyler Ament | January 6, 2011

The United States government launched a new website in an effort to make foreign aid more transparent. The site is called the Foreign Assistance Dashboard and includes information related to the budgets of the US Department of State and USAID, and will have further information on other USG agencies going forward. The data is divided into the following sectors:

  • Peace and Security
  • Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance
  • Health
  • Education and Social Services
  • Economic Development
  • Environment
  • Humanitarian Assistance

The description of the Health sector states that in addition to promoting contraceptive services and information, reducing abortion is a goal of US foreign assistance. Planned Parenthood in the US and International Planned Parenthood have made similar claims about abortion, but have reported increases in abortion “services” provided. The trick here is that the word “illegal” was left out of the sentence. IPPF and UN agencies that work in international development have proven that their idea of reducing abortion is merely to reduce unsafe abortions. It gets more interesting when you look at the fact that unsafe is defined as illegal. See our interactive PDF on Maternal Health Best Practices for more information on unsafe abortion defined as illegal abortion.

View the Foreign Assistance Dashboard here.

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