1 October 2008
LONDON – The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) instructed governments in several African countries to discontinue the provision of US-funded contraceptive commodities to Marie Stopes International (MSI), one the world’s leading family planning organizations.
The instruction was issued by Assistant Administrator for Global Health, Kent Hill, who said the action is necessary because MSI works with the Chinese Government. According to USAID, this work violates the Kemp-Kasten Amendment which prohibits US foreign aid to any organization that supports a program of “coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”
MSI chief executive Dana Hovig emphatically refutes this accusation and says that the USAID decision will seriously disrupt its family planning programs in at least six African countries including, Ghana, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Hovig goes further to warn that abortion rates may rise in these countries if women don’t have access to effective family planning—and those abortions may be unsafe and increase the incidence of death or disability.
MSI has worked in China since 1998, in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the National Population and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC), and the Ministry of Health, to increase availability of quality reproductive health and family planning information and services.
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