Why the US is burning $10m worth of birth control | Moira Donegan
THere are some better metaphors for the status of decline in American women than that offered by the Trump administration in a medical waste elimination establishment outside Paris this week: rather than distributing nearly $ 10 million contraceptive, which had been bought by the USAID and was intended to give it to women in low -income countries, mainly in Africa, the Americans decided to burn it.
Incinerated contraceptives included 900,000 contraceptive implants, 2 million doses of long -lasting injectable contraception, 2m packets of contraceptive pills and 50,000 IUD. The drug is only the last of the large-scale spinoffs of the cuts made by the so-called “Department of Government Effectiveness”, or DOGE, a project in which Elon Musk and a group of its very young male acolytes have unilaterally elongated the financing of congression to government programs. The cuts have been devastating for non -profit organizations working to improve the health and safety of women worldwide. Sarah Shaw, associate director of the Global Family Planning Group Choices MSI Reproductive Choices, says that the cuts will endanger women in danger their health with unplanned pregnancies and seek illegal abortions; Other women who are denied access to birth control will lose the possibilities of education, professional development or remuneration work that can help them escape mistreatment, to get out of poverty, to pursue their talents and their ambitions and better provide the children they already have.
When MSI tried to buy the contraceptives, the administration would only accept the full price, which the organization could not afford, she said. Several non -profit organizations, of which MSI, had proposed to pay to send and recondition the supplies, according to another representative. But the Trump administration refused, in part due to federal rules, the United States prohibits providing such goods to groups that carry out, provide references or offer an education on abortions. In addition to the cost of buying contraceptives, American taxpayers will now be up to the hook for around $ 167,000 for the cost of their burn.
It is only the last of a series of signs that the Trump administration turns against the supply of birth control, in particular the safe, effective and controlled hormonal methods which have been the cornerstone of health policy for decades and which have been a prerequisite for the progress of women in work and education during the last 60 years.
In April, the Trump administration suddenly announced that it suspended a wide strip of domestic service subsidies distributed under title X, the program intended to help Americans at low income access to birth control, MST treatment and other sexual and reproductive health care. Of the 86 subsidies of the title X awarded for the year 2024, almost 25% were “temporarily hidden”, mainly on the basis of very suspicious allegations according to which the institutions of reception of subsidies – including 13 affiliates of Planned Parenthood – had not respected the executive orders of Trump prohibiting things like the Dei programs. Eight states now do not receive any title of title X: California, Hawaii, Maine, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee and Utah. Alaska, Minnesota and Pennsylvania have also lost most of their contraception funding.
Domestic cuts – as well as the exclusion of Planned Parenthood clinics from Medicaid reimbursements – mean that American women are also confronted with considerably greater obstacles to access to contraceptives. Clinics that were based on title X funding should be closed: 11 Planned Parenthood clinics have already done, including in democratically controlled states such as California. Planned Parenthood says that cumulatively, the cuts could lead the organization to close around 200 of its 600 clinics nationwide – a devastating cut to the suppliers of abortion in particular which will make a wide range of reproductive services inaccessible to women, regardless of where they live.
But the Trump administration is not just forcing these programs for the health and dignity of women in flames. They redirect them to better adapt their favorite cultural result: that in which the life, the ambitions and talents of women are all subject to the task of procreation. The New York Times reported last month that the White House was redirecting title X funds, which once went to the control of births to finance a “infertility training center” and programs in something called “repairing reproductive medicine”. If the original goal of title X was to help American women control their fertility in order to build healthier families and allow them to pursue other objectives – such as learning or work – in the new administration version, the program mainly exists to encourage women to have more children. But change should not be considered a real investment in infertility, an often devastating condition with which many Americans fight. Because the new priorities of Title X do not direct, on the whole, do not direct more money towards IVF. Trump promised, on the campaign track, to make IVF free. But the procedure, which has adversaries on the Christian right, is not included in the new priority of “restorative” reproductive medicine of the administration, a practice which avoids controversial fertility treatments; Instead, doctors are looking for the “deep cause” of a woman’s infertility, which may involve telling them that they can conceive with an appropriate diet and exercise.
In government, money allowance is a statement of values. With its dramatic reductions in contraceptive funding in the country and abroad, the Trump administration clearly indicates its values. He does not appreciate the health of women; This does not appreciate their dignity, their control over their own life, their aspirations, their gain in gain, their desire to be released from ignorance, poverty, or the abuses they undergo under the hands of husbands and fathers. He does not appreciate their ability to control their own body and, by extension, he does not appreciate their ability to enter the public sphere. This does not appreciate their dreams, their gifts, their hard work or their invention or its aspiration of something other than to make babies. American women, like women everywhere, depend on birth control to live the life of freedom and continue their dreams. But because of the Trump administration, these dreams are increasing in smoke.
