Brussels (AP) – President Donald Trump’s The administration says it is weighing Europe’s stockpile family planning supplies, weighing the campaigners and two US senators fighting 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. According to campaigners, supplies stored in US funding warehouses in Ziel, Belgium include birth control pills, contraceptives, and IUDs that can help women escape unwanted pregnancy difficulties in women’s zones and elsewhere.
“We’re still in the process of deciding on ways to go ahead,” U.S. State Department assistant spokesman Tommy Piggott said in response to questions about birth control pills on Thursday.
“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 US International Development Organizationadministering foreign aid programs, the fate of supplies became 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 on how it would deal with drugs and stockpiles in general.
The supply of family planning, which costs more than $9 million and funded by US taxpayers, was aimed at women in war zones, refugee camps and other areas. A bipartisan letter Protest against the Secretary of State Marco Rubio From the US Senator Jeanne ShaheenNew Hampshire Democrat, Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski.
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.
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.
Executive Division of european unionvia spokesman Guillaume Mercier, said Friday that “we will continue to monitor the situation closely to explore the most effective solutions.”
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, contraceptives and tablets, and includes a long reservoir that has been 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, grandson of a former French lawmaker who was a pioneer in French birth control, urged the president. Emmanuel Macron Don’t “become an accomplice in this scandal” to France.
“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.”
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Leicester reported from Paris. Matthew Lee contributed from Washington, DC
