by EuroNews with AP
It’s published
The Trump administration says it is considering supplying family planning stockpiled in Europe, where campaigners and two U.S. senators fight to save them from destruction.
Concerns that the Trump administration plans to burn stockpile have angered family planning advocates on both sides of the Atlantic.
Actors say supplies stored in US-funded warehouses in Ziel, Belgium, have birth control pills, and IUDs that don’t spare women in war zones and elsewhere could help escape unnecessary pregnancy difficulties.
US State Department spokesman Tommy Piggott said Thursday in response to a question about birth control pills that “we’re still in the process of deciding on how to go on.”
“When there’s an update, we’ll provide it,” he said.
Belgium says he is talking to our diplomats about trying to save supply from destruction, perhaps moving out of warehouses. Foreign Ministry spokesman Florinda Barresi told The Associated Press that he could not comment further “to avoid affecting the outcome of the discussion.”
The dismantling of the Trump administration Of the US Organization for International Development (USAID), which administered the foreign aid program, the fate of supplies was uncertain.
Pigott did not elaborate on the types of birth control pills that make up the stockpile. He said some of the supplies acquired by the previous administration could “potentially” enable drugs designed to induce abortion.
Piggott did not detail how it would affect the Trump administration’s thinking about how to deal with drugs and stockpiles in general.
The supply of family planning, which costs more than $9 million (7.9 million euros) and funded by US taxpayers, was aimed at women in war zones, refugee camps and other protests, according to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
They said they would destroy the stockpile. “A waste of US taxpayer dollars and abandoning US global leadership in preventing unintended pregnancy, unsafe abortion and mother deaths — a key goal of US foreign aid.”
They urged Rubio to allow other countries or partners to distribute birth control pills.
Audio concerns of European lawmakers and aid groups
Concerns expressed by European campaigners and lawmakers that could be transported to France for incineration led to pressure government officials to intervene and save them.
“We continue to monitor the situation closely and explore the most effective solution,” the European Commission said on Friday through spokesman Guillaume Mercier.
MSI Reproductive Choices, the US branch of the Family Planning Aid Group, offered to buy, repackage and distribute the shares at its own expense, but said “these efforts were repeatedly denied.”
The group said the supply includes long-acting IUDs, contraceptive implants and pills, with a long reservoir extended until 2031.
Doctors from a borderless aid group said incineration would be “deliberately reckless and harmful conduct against women and girls everywhere.”
Charles Dalala, the grandson of a former French lawmaker who was a pioneer in French birth control, urged President Emmanuel Macron to not become an accomplice in this scandal.
“Please do not allow France to participate in the destruction of essential health tools for millions of women,” Darara wrote in an appeal to French leaders.
“We have moral and historical responsibility.”