<
https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/09/16/nx-s1-5511304/birth-control-foreign-aid-destruction-belgium-warehouse>
'For months, $9.7 million worth of birth control meant for women in low-income
countries has sat stranded in a Belgian warehouse — apparently destined for
destruction — as a result of the Trump administration's freeze on foreign aid.
The State Department said in July that it would spend $167,000 in taxpayer
money to incinerate the contraceptives at the end of the month, despite the
fact that they are paid for and unexpired. That drew outrage from humanitarian
organizations around the world, who offered to buy and distribute the
productives themselves.
"Nobody benefits by this product being burned," Sarah Shaw, associate director
of advocacy at MSI, told
NPR. "It's an environmental disaster, it's a human
rights disaster, it's just a catastrophe on every single level. So it's like,
why not just hand it over quietly, hand it over to a third party and let them
deal with it?"
But the administration's July deadline came and went, without official
confirmation of the stockpile's destruction — creating confusion about the
status of the contraceptives and cautious optimism about their survival.
Humanitarians' hopes were seemingly dashed last week, when the
New York
Times, citing a statement from USAID, reported that the contraceptives had
been destroyed. But the next day, it later reported, Belgian authorities
entered the warehouse and confirmed the contraceptives were still there.
Belgium's foreign ministry referred
NPR's questions to the Flemish Minister
of Environment and Agriculture, which has not yet responded to questions about
the status of the contraceptives. In another sign of the products' survival,
the Flemish sexual health organization Sensoa is holding a protest "against the
planned incineration of contraceptives stored in Geel and the refusal to sell
them to Belgium" outside the American Embassy in Brussels on Thursday.'
Via Kenny Chaffin.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
