The British government will today make plain its disapproval of the US administration's anti-abortion stance by announcing new money for an international family planning agency, which had its budget slashed on the day George Bush came to power.
The Department for International Development is increasing its funding for the International Planned Parenthood Federation from £4.5m to £6m a year.
Gareth Thomas, parliamentary under secretary of state, said the money was in recognition of "the difficulties that our friends in America have caused for those who operate in this area".
He added: "The IPPF has been badly affected. We are keen to step up and help. We are clear that we need to do more on providing access to safe abortion services and to chronicle the level of unsafe abortions."
The IPPF has undertaken to provide DFID with a report on access to services and the scale of unsafe abortion around the world.
The need for safe, legal services to cut the numbers of women dying and suffering harm through backstreet abortions is an issue on which there is a rare divergence of views between the UK and the US.
Steven Sinding, director general of the IPPF, said yesterday he was profoundly grateful for British support. "It helps enormously. It is a great morale booster, in addition to the value of the money."
The IPPF supports national family planning services in 150 countries, including abortion services where those are legal. It was the Reagan administration which introduced what has been alternatively called the Mexico City policy and the Global Gag rule - that no US funds would go to any organisation which supports abortion.
Bill Clinton's first act as president was to revoke it, and George W Bush's first act was to reimpose it. John Kerry, the Democrat hopeful, has said he will revoke it on his first day in office if he is elected.
The IPPF has lost $15m a year as a result, some of which has since been made up by the EU, Sweden and Switzerland. It has meant that some basic family planning clinics in poor countries have had to close. Women are denied contraceptive help and advice, which the IPPF believes will lead to an increase in women risking their lives at the hands of back street abortionists.
"We believe unsafe abortions will have gone up," said Mr Sinding. "These cuts are reducing the access particularly of poor women to family planning services and will result in increased unsafe abortions."
DFID is also today announcing a £3m donation to the World Health Organisation's campaign to get three million people in the developing world on Aids drugs by 2005, in an attempt to stop the escalation of the epidemic and save lives.
It makes the UK one of the world's first donors to the ambitious campaign which the UN secretary general's special envoy on HIV/Aids, Stephen Lewis, this week called "a herculean effort ... to introduce hope where there was only despair".
He called for more governments to put in money towards the $200m it is estimated will be needed.
Mr Thomas said: "The DFID money will not be spent directly on drugs but will support the hard-pressed healthcare staff of poor countries. It will help to provide a whole series of training packages."
The WHO is aiming to train 100,000 health providers - sometimes referred to as barefoot doctors although the level of expertise will be far lower than that - to assess those with HIV and determine whether they need to go on the drugs immediately, and then to monitor their progress.
