Public well being consultants are blasting a U.S. State Division plan to burn practically $10 million price of contraceptives supposed for girls in poor nations relatively than dole them out or promote to somebody who will.
Outrage peaked this week because the Trump administration’s self-imposed end-of-July deadline loomed for incinerating a stockpile of IUDs, implants, injectable contraceptives and contraception capsules. The provides — meant for girls in low-income nations, battle zones, refugee camps and different fragile areas — have been sitting in a warehouse in Geel, Belgium, for the reason that Trump administration started dismantling the U.S. Company for Worldwide Growth.
Regardless of urging from humanitarian teams, the United Nations’ UNFPA, legislators and diplomats, a State Division spokesperson confirmed to The Washington Publish that “a preliminary decision was made to destroy certain abortifacient birth control commodities from terminated Biden-era USAID contracts,” although HIV drugs and condoms might be spared.
Belgium “explored all possible options to prevent the destruction,” a overseas ministry spokesperson informed Reuters, however “no viable alternative could be secured,” although the Belgian authorities “continues to actively seek solutions to avoid this regrettable outcome.”
UNFPA’s supply to purchase the provides went nowhere. They are going to be destroyed at a personal medical-waste facility in France, prompting French lawmakers to talk out in opposition to complicity, in keeping with CNN. Earlier this month U.S. lawmakers launched the “Saving Lives and Taxpayer Dollars Act” to forbid the destruction of that and different kinds of imperiled assist.
“These supplies do not include support for abortion services and are in full compliance with all U.S. foreign assistance laws,” U.S. Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) wrote in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose company has absorbed USAID.
Burning the provides will price $167,000, which a congressional aide informed CNN, means “the Trump administration is quite literally burning taxpayer money.”
Initially Printed: July 29, 2025 at 9:55 PM EDT
