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Indian Express
3 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
As Trump administration plans to burn contraceptives, Europeans are alarmed
The Trump administration's plans to incinerate $9.7 million in birth control pills and other contraceptives stored in a Belgian warehouse have left European governments struggling as they try to prevent the destruction. With the contraceptives in limbo, the contractor managing the supply explored selling it to outside organizations, including the United Nations' main sexual and reproductive health agency, the U.N. Population Fund. The nonprofit MSI Reproductive Choices offered to take over the warehousing and redistribute the contraceptives at no cost to the United States. But last month it emerged that the U.S. government had instead decided to burn the supplies, at a cost to the government of more than $160,000 in transport and incineration fees. 'USAID was allegedly dismantled to prevent future wastage and to deliver value for money for the American people,' said Sarah Shaw, the associate director of advocacy at MSI Reproductive Choices. 'It's just egregious that they're willing to waste $9 million worth of contraceptives that are so desperately needed.' The decision to destroy the contraceptives has created alarm in Brussels and France as politicians scramble to figure out if the supplies have physically left the warehouse and how they can prevent their destruction. The State Department confirmed in a statement that 'a preliminary decision was made to destroy certain' birth control products. The department said the contraceptives that had been flagged for destruction were 'abortifacient,' meaning that they work by inducing abortion. None of the supplies registered for storage in the Belgian warehouse fit that description, and USAID was forbidden by law to purchase such products. While earlier reports suggested that the supplies would be destroyed by the end of July in France, European governments, advocacy groups and an American congressional office all said they did not know whether the burning had actually begun. European governments are still hoping to stop the incineration. The Belgian government's foreign office has been in talks with its American counterparts about an alternative plan.
Time of India
4 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
As US plans to burn contraceptives meant for poor, Europeans are alarmed
The Trump administration's plans to incinerate $9.7 million in birth control pills and other contraceptives stored in a Belgian warehouse have left European govts struggling as they try to prevent the destruction. When the Trump administration abruptly de-funded and dismantled the USAID earlier this year, millions of contraceptives it had purchased were stuck in Geel, Belgium. The pills, intrauterine devices and hormonal implants were destined for clinics in the poorest countries in Africa. With the contraceptives in limbo, the contractor managing the supply explored selling it to outside organizations, including the UN's main sexual and reproductive health agency, the UN Population Fund. The non-profit MSI Reproductive Choices offered to take over the warehousing and redistribute the contraceptives at no cost to the US. But last month it emerged that the US govt had instead decided to burn the supplies, at a cost to govt of more than $160,000 in transport and incineration fees. "USAID was allegedly dismantled to prevent future wastage and to deliver value for money for the American people," said Sarah Shaw, the associate director of advocacy at MSI Reproductive Choices. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Europe's 30 Most Beautiful Hidden Coastal Towns – Ranked by Travel Lovers Learn More Undo "It's just egregious that they're willing to waste $9 million worth of contraceptives that are so desperately needed. " The decision to destroy the contraceptives has created alarm in Brussels and France as politicians scramble to figure out if the supplies have physically left the warehouse and how they can prevent their destruction. The state department confirmed that "a preliminary decision was made to destroy certain" birth control products. It declined to explain the decision or to specify the current location or status of the products. The department referred to policies preventing the US govt from providing aid to overseas nongovernmental organizations that provide or help with access to abortions, based on a rule that the Trump administration reinstated. Siobhan Perkins, who was an adviser for USAID, said the products slated for destruction were enough to prevent 3,62,000 unintended pregnancies, 11,10,000 unsafe abortions and 718 maternal deaths.
Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Health
- Boston Globe
Trump administration plans to burn contraceptives
Advertisement However, last month it emerged that the US government had instead decided to burn the supplies, incurring a cost of more than $160,000 in transportation and incineration fees. 'USAID was allegedly dismantled to prevent future wastage and to deliver value for money for the American people,' said Sarah Shaw, the associate director of advocacy at MSI Reproductive Choices. 'It's just egregious that they're willing to waste $9 million worth of contraceptives that are so desperately needed.' She added, 'Women are going to die because they've not had access to those contraceptives.' The decision to destroy the contraceptives has created alarm in Brussels and France as politicians scramble to figure out if the supplies have physically left the warehouse and how they can prevent their destruction. The State Department confirmed in a statement that 'a preliminary decision was made to destroy certain' birth control products. It declined to say exactly why the decision was made or to specify the current location or status of the products. Advertisement The department said the contraceptives that had been flagged for destruction were 'abortifacient,' meaning that they work by inducing abortion. None of the supplies registered for storage in the Belgian warehouse met that description, and USAID was prohibited by law from purchasing such products. The department did not reply to repeated requests for clarification. While earlier reports suggested that the supplies would be destroyed by the end of July in France, European governments, advocacy groups, and an American congressional office all said they did not know whether the burning had begun. It is not clear why the government would not sell or donate the contraceptives. The department, in its statement, referred to policies preventing the US government from providing aid to overseas nongovernmental organizations that provide or help with access to abortions, based on a rule that the Trump administration reinstated. The United States has recently refused to work with the UN Population Fund, citing other government policies. The dissolution of USAID has created a huge gap in the supply chain of contraceptives for the world's poorest countries, because the United States was a major donor. Siobhan Perkins, who was the procurement adviser for the USAID contraception supply chain, said the products slated for destruction were enough to prevent approximately 362,000 unintended pregnancies, 110,000 unsafe abortions, and 718 maternal deaths. The contraceptive supplies in the Belgian warehouse would have been enough to supply Senegal for three years, Shaw, of the reproductive health group, said. Most of the products have a remaining shelf life of several years. Advertisement European governments are still hoping to stop the incineration. The Belgian government's foreign office has been in talks with its American counterparts about an alternative plan. 'Foreign Affairs is exploring all possible avenues to prevent the destruction of these stocks, including their temporary relocation,' Florinda Baleci, a spokesperson for the department, said in an email on Tuesday. She said that she could not confirm or deny whether the stock was still in Geel and that Belgium had 'not officially received any information to the contrary.' Attempts at negotiating a solution have, so far, been unsuccessful. The UN population agency spent weeks in April trying to buy the contraceptives from the United States' contractor, said Udara Bandara, the UN official handling those negotiations. He said the American side missed an April 25 deadline to discuss the terms of the deal and then missed another deadline on April 30. On May 8, the contractor wrote to ask if the UN group was still interested in the purchase. It was. Bandara said he never heard back. If the Belgian talks fall through, it is not clear what else European officials can do. Politicians on the left in France have urged the government to seize the stockpile. 'We cannot allow an anti-choice ideology to be imposed on us within our own borders,' Marine Tondelier, the head of France's Green party, wrote last month in an open letter to President Emmanuel Macron. But France's government has suggested that it cannot legally seize the drugs. And while Mélissa Camara, a French member of the European Parliament for the Greens, wrote that the European Commission was asking it to intervene diplomatically, the commission has merely said it is monitoring the situation and exploring solutions. Advertisement This article originally appeared in
New York Times
4 days ago
- Health
- New York Times
As Trump Administration Plans to Burn Contraceptives, Europeans Are Alarmed
The Trump administration's plans to incinerate $9.7 million in birth control pills and other contraceptives stored in a Belgian warehouse have left European governments struggling as they try to prevent the destruction. When the Trump administration abruptly defunded and dismantled the United States Agency for International Development, or U.S.A.I.D, earlier this year, millions of contraceptives it had purchased were stuck in Geel, Belgium. The pills, intrauterine devices and hormonal implants were destined for clinics in the poorest countries in Africa. With the contraceptives in limbo, the contractor managing the supply explored selling it to outside organizations, including the United Nations' main sexual and reproductive health agency, the U.N. Population Fund. The nonprofit MSI Reproductive Choices offered to take over the warehousing and redistribute the contraceptives at no cost to the United States. But last month it emerged that the U.S. government had instead decided to burn the supplies, at a cost to the government of more than $160,000 in transport and incineration fees. 'U.S.A.I.D. was allegedly dismantled to prevent future wastage and to deliver value for money for the American people,' said Sarah Shaw, the associate director of advocacy at MSI Reproductive Choices. 'It's just egregious that they're willing to waste $9 million worth of contraceptives that are so desperately needed.' She added, 'Women are going to die because they've not had access to those contraceptives.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Guardian
01-08-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Why the US is burning $10m worth of birth control
There are few better metaphors for the receding status of American women than one offered up by the Trump administration at a medical waste disposal facility outside Paris this week: rather than distribute nearly $10m worth of birth control, which had been purchased by USAID and was destined to be given to women in low-income countries, primarily in Africa, the Americans decided to burn it. The incinerated contraceptives included 900,000 birth control implants, 2m doses of injectable long-acting birth control, 2m packs of contraceptive pills and 50,000 IUDs. The medicine is just the latest in the far-reaching fallout from cuts made by the so-called 'department of government efficiency,' or Doge, a project in which Elon Musk and a group of his very young, overwhelmingly male acolytes unilaterally slashed congressionally appropriated funding to government programs they did not like. The cuts have been devastating for non-profits that work to improve women's health and safety worldwide. Sarah Shaw, an associate director at the global family planning group MSI Reproductive Choices, says that the cuts will put women at risk as they strain their health with unplanned pregnancies and seek out illegal abortions; other women who are denied access to birth control will lose out on the opportunities for education, professional development or remunerative work that can help them escape abuse, rise out of poverty, pursue their talents and ambitions and better provide for the children they already have. When MSI attempted to buy the contraceptives, the administration would only accept full price, which the organization couldn't afford, she said. Several non-profits, including MSI, had offered to pay to ship and repackage the supplies, according to another representative. But the Trump administration refused, partially due to federal rules the prohibit the US from providing such goods to groups that perform, provide referrals for or offer education about abortions. In addition to the cost of purchasing the contraceptives, American taxpayers will now be on the hook for about $167,000 for the cost of burning them. It's just the latest in a series of signs that the Trump administration is turning against the provision of birth control, particularly the safe, effective and woman-controlled hormonal methods that have been a cornerstone of healthcare policy for decades and which were a precondition of women's advancement in work and education over the past 60 years. In April, the Trump administration abruptly announced that it was suspending a large swath of the domestic service grants distributed under Title X, the program meant to help low-income Americans access birth control, STD treatment and other sexual and reproductive healthcare. Of the 86 Title X grants awarded for fiscal year 2024, nearly 25% were 'temporarily withheld', mostly based on highly suspect allegations that the grant-receiving institutions – including 13 Planned Parenthood affiliates – had failed to comply with Trump executive orders banning things like DEI programs. Eight states now receive zero Title X dollars: California, Hawaii, Maine, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee and Utah. Alaska, Minnesota and Pennsylvania have also lost most of their contraception funding. The domestic cuts – along with the exclusion of Planned Parenthood clinics from Medicaid reimbursements – mean that American women, too, are now facing dramatically greater obstacles to accessing birth control. Clinics that relied on Title X funding are now set to close: 11 Planned Parenthood clinics already have, including in Democratically controlled states like California. Planned Parenthood says that cumulatively, the cuts could lead the organization to close about 200 of its 600 clinics nationwide – a devastating cut to abortion providers in particular that will make a wide range of reproductive services inaccessible to women regardless of where they live. But the Trump administration is not merely forcing these programs for women's health and dignity go up in flames. They are redirecting them to better suit their preferred cultural outcome: one in which women's lives, ambitions and talents are all subordinated to the task of childbearing. The New York Times reported last month that the White House is redirecting Title X funds that once went to birth control to instead fund an 'infertility training center' and programs in something called 'restorative reproductive medicine'. If Title X's original aim was to help American women control their fertility so as to build healthier families and to enable them to pursue other aims – like learning or work – in the new administration's version, the program exists mainly to encourage women to have more children. But the switch should not be seen as a genuine investment in infertility, an often devastating condition with which many Americans struggle. Because the new Title X priorities do not, by and large, direct more money to IVF. Trump promised, on the campaign trail, to make IVF free. But the procedure, which has opponents on the Christian right, is not included in the administration's new priority of 'restorative' reproductive medicine, a practice that avoids controversial fertility treatments; instead, doctors seek the 'root cause' of a woman's infertility, which may involve telling them they can conceive with proper diet and exercise. In government, money allocation is a statement of values. With its dramatic cuts to contraceptive funding at home and abroad, the Trump administration is making its values clear. It does not value women's health; it does not value their dignity, their control over their own lives, their aspirations, their earning potential, their desire to be freed from ignorance, or poverty, or the abuse they suffer under the hands of husbands and fathers. It does not value their ability to control their own bodies, and by extension, it does not value their ability to enter the public sphere. It does not value their dreams, their gifts, their hard work or invention or aspiration to anything other than making babies. American women, like women everywhere, depend on birth control to live lives of freedom and to pursue their dreams. But because of the Trump administration, those dreams are going up in smoke. Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
