Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what methods they use to measure how many unsafe abortions have been averted through the programmes that they fund internationally.

DFID uses modelling to estimate the number of unsafe abortions prevented by some programming. It is possible to model, for illustrative purposes, the number of abortions prevented by improved access to family planning specifically. Between April 2017 and March 2018, we estimate UK aid reached at least 14 million women and girls with family planning services, preventing an estimated 1.2 million unsafe abortions.

Our methodology is explained in the first footnote to the Family Planning page at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dfid-results-sector-pages-2017-to-2018-single-department-plan