The UK taxpayer was the single largest contributor to Marie Stopes International (MSI) last year, official accounts have revealed.
The £46,716,000 handed over to the abortion giant from the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) accounted for over 15% of MSI’s record income of £308,265,000 income in 2019. The total financial contributions from DfID do not include any money the British Government provides for Marie Stope abortion provision in the UK.
This is by far the largest amount attributed by one entity, with the next largest total being the £9,141,000 given from the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
The figure also represents a dramatic increase from 2009, where DfID provided just 1% of MSI’s income for the year. Since then, the total financial contributions from DfID – which does not include money given to MSI from the Government for abortion provision in the UK – have risen drastically.
It means that over the past ten years an eye-watering £342,459,000 has been taken from the UK taxpayer to fund Marie Stopes International. Over that same decade, MSI has had an income of £2 billion and has been responsible for at least 32,400,000 abortions.
Safety abuses and scandals
The huge amount of taxpayer money being handed to MSI comes off the back of a series of safety abuses and other scandals.
Just this week, a Marie Stopes International franchise ‘Medical Centre’ in Kenya was forced to close after the bodies of ten illegally aborted babies were discovered, discarded and decomposing, in a bin.
It isn’t the first time MSI has found itself in trouble in Kenya.
In November 2018, Kenya ordered Marie Stopes to cease all abortions in the country after complaints arose about the abortion giant promoting illegal abortion ‘services’. Just weeks later, Marie Stopes was allowed to resume abortions.
Closer to home, a nurse in the UK has said she was left fearing for her life and needing emergency surgery after Marie Stopes denied the woman proper counselling and pressured her to take abortion pills at home, rather than under the supervision of a doctor in a clinic.
An undercover investigation into the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and MSI found that both abortion organisations were abusing various medical abortion pill safeguards, potentially allowing them to be used in a coercive manner.
A damning report from the UK’s Care Quality Commission (CQC) has previously accused Marie Stopes International of paying staff bonuses for persuading women to have abortions.
In addition, the CQC found the abortion group was not following proper sterilization and infection control protocols and was improperly disposing of the bodies of the babies they aborted.
In 2016, Marie Stopes International was forced to suspend abortion services for a month after an unannounced inspection by the CQC “found dead foetuses lying in an open bin and staff trying to give a vulnerable, visibly distressed woman an abortion without her consent”.
Abortion is core of MSI’s mission
MSI says providing abortion is “at the core of our mission” and boasts of “shaping abortion policy” in several countries.
Polling shows 65% of the British population are opposed to taxpayer’s money being used to fund abortions overseas.
A spokesperson for Right to Life UK, Catherine Robinson said:
“It is appalling that ‘international development’ now consists of funding overseas abortions at an ever-increasing rate, along with funding lobbying teams to introduce extreme abortion laws in developing countries.
“This is especially concerning given the series of scandals at Marie Stopes International, where there seems to be a blatant disregard for both the law and safety in the UK and overseas.
“Combine this with polling, that indicates an overwhelming majority of the public do not want taxpayer funding spent on ending the lives of unborn babies overseas, the UK should cut all funding going towards international abortions.
“Instead, international development money should be used to better empower women and the communities they live in so they can keep their babies.”
