Trump administration to destroy nearly $10m in contraceptives | Trump administration

The Trump administration has decided to destroy $ 9.7 million in contraceptives rather than sending them abroad to women in need.

A spokesperson for the State Department confirmed that the decision had been made – a decision that will cost taxpayers for $ 167,000. Contraceptives are mainly prolonged, such as IUDs and birth control The implants, and were almost certainly intended for women in Africa, according to two high collaborators in the congress, one of which visited a warehouse in Belgium which housed the contraceptives. It is not clear for assistants if the destruction had already been carried out, but said that it had been informed that it should occur by the end of July.

“It is unacceptable that the State Department is advancing with the destruction of more than $ 9 million in family planning products funded by taxpayers purchased to support women in crisis, including war areas and refugee camps,” said Jeanne Shaheen, a Democratic Senator of New Hampshire, in a statement. Shaheen and Brian Shatz, a Democratic Senator from Hawaii, presented legislation to stop destruction.

“It is a waste of US dollars of taxpayers and an abdication of American world leadership in the prevention of involuntary pregnancy, dangerous abortions and maternal deaths,” added Shaheen, who, in June, sent a letter to the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, on this subject.

The ministry has decided to destroy contraceptives because it could not sell them to “eligible buyers”, partly due to American laws and rules which prohibit us from helping us with organizations that provide abortion services, advise people in procedure or to defend the right to the foreigner, according to the spokesperson for the State Department.

Most contraceptives have less than 70% of their shelf life before expiring, the spokesman said, and the brand change and the sale of contraceptives could cost several million dollars. However, the assistant who visited the warehouse declared that the first expiration date they saw on the contraceptives was in 2027 and that two thirds of the contraceptives had no USAID labels which should be renowned.

The eradication of contraceptives is part of the demolition of months of the Trump Administration of the International Development Agency (USAID), the largest financing agency for humanitarian aid and development in the world. After the “Ministry of Effectiveness of the Government” unofficial (DOGE) has erased 83% of the USAID programs, Rubio announced in June that the entire international workforce of the USAID would be abolished and that its foreign assistance programs would be transferred to the State Department. The agency will be replaced by an organization called America First.

In total, funding cuts to USAID could lead to more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to a recent study published in The journal The Lancet. A third of these deaths could be children.

“If you have an involuntary pregnancy and you end up having to ask for a dangerous abortion, it is very likely that you will die,” said Sarah Shaw, associate director of advocacy at MSI Reproductive Choices, a global family planning organization that works in nearly 40 countries. “If you are not given the means of space or limit your births, you put your life in danger or the life of your child in danger.”

MSI tried to buy contraceptives from the US government, said Shaw. But the government would only accept the full price – that Shaw said that the agency could not afford, since MSI must assume the costs of Transport of contraceptives and the fact that they are approaching their expiration date, which could affect MSI’s ability to distribute them.

The spokesperson for the State Department did not specifically respond to a request for comments on the allegation of Shaw, but MSI provides abortions as part of his global work, which may have led the ministry to exclude it as an eligible buyer. “

In an internal survey, MSI programs in 10 countries indicated that, during the following month, they expect to be out of stock or to be on the verge of breaking of stock of at least one contraceptive method. Countries include Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Senegal, Kenya and Sierra Leone.

Shaw expects the stock to be cremated. “The fact that contraceptives will be burned when there is so much need-it’s just obvious,” she said. “It’s disgusting.” The spokesman for the State Ministry did not respond to a request for information on the planned destruction method.

The destruction of contraceptives is, in Shaw, emblematic of the global destruction of a system which has once provided global aid to women and families. The funding of the USAID is put on a large part of the global supply chain for family planning aid which, without its money, separated. In Mali, said Shaw, USAID has helped pay the gas used by vehicles that transport the contraceptives of a warehouse. Without gas money, vehicles were stuck – just like contraceptives.

“I have been working in this sector for over 20 years and I have never seen anything on this scale,” said Shaw. “The speed at which they managed to dismantle an excellent work and very good progress – I mean, it is just disappeared in weeks.”

Other types of assistance would also have been wasted. This week, the Atlantic reported that nearly 500 tonnes of emergency food expired and would be cremated, rather than being used to feed around 1.5 million children in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Meanwhile, nearly 800,000 MPox vaccines that were to be sent to Africa are now unusable because they are too close to their expiration date, according to Politico.

Foreign help cuts should deepen. Friday morning, the congress adopted a bill to recover around $ 8 billion which had been reserved for foreign aid.

“It’s not just an empty shelf,” said Shaw. “This is an unsatisfied potential. It is a girl who must abandon school. He is someone who has to look for a dangerous abortion and risk her life. This is really what it is.”