Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, with reference to her Department's paper entitled, Single Departmental Plan - Results Achieved by Sector in 2012-2018, Family Planning, what steps her Department has taken to verify the numbers of illegal backstreet abortions provided by the Guttmacher Institute; and whether her Department has conducted a separate estimate of those abortions.

DFID’s single departmental plan reports on the increase in family planning use from our programmes. From this, estimates are made, based on the best international expertise, on wider impact. The Guttmacher Institute’s reputation for producing high quality scientific research and data for evidence-based policy making on Sexual & Reproductive Health and Rights means we have confidence in these independent estimates.

Other studies support the key Guttmacher Institute finding that unsafe abortion is a significant killer of women and restricting safe abortion does not make abortion less common, it just makes it less safe.