A Peer has called on the Government to target developing countries with more spending on abortion to help reduce the numbers of people being born in these countries.
Following a Government statement about the climate change summit, COP27, Baroness Rosel Marie Boycott has voiced her concerns about population growth claiming that it is one of the “great drivers of carbon emissions”. The Baroness referenced the recent Government decision to cut the UK’s foreign aid budget, which meant, among other things, a reduction in the amount of taxpayers money spent on abortions overseas.
In 2021, the Government initially pledged £154 million ($211 million) to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), an agency that oversees a range of operations, including abortion provision. The Government has since reduced this pledge to £23m ($32 million) for the upcoming financial year.
The Baroness lamented this loss of aid which, she argued, helped “towards changing attitudes and behaviours and reducing population”.
During COP26 last year, 60 NGOs have urged Alok Sharma, then president of the climate conference, to amend funding eligibility rules to permit projects concerned with reproductive healthcare, including abortion, to access the Government’s £11 billion pot of climate funding.
Neo-colonialism
A number of commentators have expressed concern about population control, particularly, in the context of wealthier nations interfering in the social fabric of less well of nations. Filmmaker, author, and social activist Obianuju Ekeocha accused Western nations of ‘neo-colonialism’ due to their efforts to impose abortion on Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic, in a 2020 report from Culture of Life Africa.
In the report titled “Africa’s Pandemic: A Gateway to Neo-Colonialism”, Ekeocha accused the UN and a number of Western nations, including Canada, the US and the UK, of “humanitarian blackmail” as they seek to capitalise on the global crisis by imposing abortion on the continent.
While many African nations needed medical aid during covid, the UK Government gave an extra £10 million to the UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) targeted at developing nations, including a number of African countries, which includes spending on abortion.
The UN has provided additional funding to a number of African nations in the form of ‘Covid Relief Funds’. However, Ekeocha has claimed that this funding is coming “with conditions and clauses that either directly or indirectly open the door to the international abortion organisations, as Western donors are demanding… more access to sexual and reproductive health and rights [abortion]”.
Abortion is not a solution to a changing climate
Writing on concerns about population, journalist and climate activist, George Monbiot, said: “Malthusianism slides easily into racism. Most of the world’s population growth is happening in the poorest countries, where most people are black or brown. The colonial powers justified their atrocities by fomenting a moral panic about ‘barbaric’, ‘degenerate’ people ‘outbreeding’ the ‘superior races’… When affluent white people wrongly transfer the blame for their environmental impacts on to the birthrate of much poorer brown and black people, their finger-pointing reinforces these narratives. It is inherently racist”.
Right To Life UK spokesperson, Catherine Robinson, said “Baroness Boycott is drawing attention to the disturbing side of attempts to tackle changes in the climate. The Baroness clearly sees people as the problem, and part of her ‘solution’ to climate change is to eliminate people in developing countries through their not being born and abortion. This is a ghastly suggestion that ought to be rejected outright.”
“Furthermore, 65% of the British public are opposed to their taxes being used to fund overseas abortions, and radical pro-choice NGOs do not have the right to dictate how their taxation ought to be spent.”
