No Australian aid money has gone to family planning programs in countries that sell foetal tissue obtained from abortions, a key sexual and reproductive health organisation has confirmed, ahead of an expected Senate grilling on the issue this week.
The head of the Australian office of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Johanna Wicks, said Australia was the only country in the Asia-Pacific region that allowed for the donation of foetal tissue for medical research.
National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines state there should be no “trade” in foetal tissue but does not explicitly ban the exchange of money for remains.
This year anti-abortion groups in the US caused a storm by releasing a video showing American affiliates of Planned Parenthood discussing the sale of foetal remains. Several investigations were launched by Republicans in Congress, prompting the president of Planned Parenthood in the US, Cecile Richards, toban the sale of foetal tissue.
Wicks expects the issue to be on the agenda when the Australian Senate grills the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade over its aid program during estimates on Thursday.
Australia’s funding of reproductive health focused nearly entirely on the Asia-Pacific, Wicks said, and in the region only Australia donated foetal remains to medical research. “No other member association [of Planned Parenthood] in the region provides medical tissue,” she said.
Wicks has urged the federal government not to slash the budget for family planning programs in its aid budget in the leadup to an international conference next month in Bali.
Donor countries at the international family planning conference will work towards an aid goal for 2020. At the last conference, in 2012, countries pledged to spend $53m a year on family planning programs.
But in a tough budgetary environment, Australia has fallen short. Last financial year it spent $46m on family planning programs, Wicks said.
The $7m shortfall would have been enough to provide 570,000 people with contraception and sexual health services, including tests for sexually transmitted diseases and abortions, she said.
“Family planning programs are an incredibly cheap investment with a high impact,” she said. “For every dollar spent, you can save $125 in forward impacts.”
Those forward impacts include medicine for the treatment of STDs, abortions and pre- and post-natal healthcare costs.
The Asia-Pacific region was particularly vulnerable to aid cuts in this area, Wicks argued, pointing to the prevalence of unwanted pregnancies resulting from rape, the high HIV infection rate in Papua New Guinea and poor access to contraception in parts of south Asia.
Rates of maternal deaths in PNG remain substandard and new mothers and their babies have poor health outcomes by international comparisons.
More than $11bn has been cut from Australia’s foreign aid budget since the Coalition took power in 2011 but neighbouring countries including PNG, Indonesia and some Pacific nations have escaped the axe.
Australian aid money for family planning programs has saved 1,300 lives in south Asia in the past few years, Wicks said. Nearly 40 million people in Australia’s immediate region did not have access to contraception and family planning services, she added.
The issue is a particularly important one for vulnerable girls and women who, Wicks argued, could not take full control of their economic empowerment without first controlling if and when they have children.
She admitted that the association between family planning and abortions had created barriers to receiving aid money from countries with moral or religious objections to the procedure, but said abortions only accounted for 3% of the work that the International Planned Parenthood Federation did.
She said she did not want the controversy over foetal remains to tarnish Planned Parenthood’s brand and warned that the 2020 funding target for reproductive health could be lower than the 2012 target. “It has been flagged that there will be a reduced amount,” Wicks said.
The international conference that will determine the funding envelope runs from 9 to 12 November.
