Inside the fight to stop US from destroying $10M of contraceptives
Source: The Hill
08/16/25 6:00 AM ET
Lawmakers and activists in Europe and the United States are scrambling to stop the State Department from destroying nearly $10 million worth of contraceptives funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contraceptives have been sitting in a warehouse in Belgium for months after President Trump froze all U.S foreign aid and shuttered USAID earlier this year.
“They are not even close to being expired,” said Nabeeha Kazi Hutchins, president and CEO of reproductive health rights group PAI, adding the government “could redistribute them or could let an entity or a set of entities acquire them, but the administration has opposed that.”
Lawmakers, activists and reproductive health nonprofits alike have decried the move as a waste of taxpayer money that will hurt millions of women and girls in the developing world. “It’s a death sentence that’s written in policy,” Kazi Hutchins said.
More than 75 percent of the stockpile was earmarked for five countries in Africa: Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Mali and Congo, according to a report from the International Planned Parenthood Federation. The nonprofit estimates that if the supplies are incinerated, 1.4 million women and girls across those countries will go without access to life-saving reproductive care.
Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5455267-contraceptives-destruction-lawmakers-activists/
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