Dem
47
GOP
53
One of the many problems plaguing Africa is overpopulation. The population of the continent is growing faster than the food supply, water supply, land supply, and everything else, so one of the (very low-cost) things the U.S. has been doing to help is to provide free contraceptives, in an attempt to slow the population growth. When Donald Trump killed off USAID, a warehouse full of hormonal birth control pills, shots, implants and IUDs were stuck in a warehouse in Belgium. Trump ordered them destroyed because some of his believers think that using contraceptives is like having an abortion.
Sarah Shaw, of MSI Reproductive Choices, said: "It's a lie. It's a blatant attempt to misrepresent a couple of contraceptive methods and to stigmatize the women who use them."
Activists and lawmakers in the U.S. and Europe are fighting to prevent the U.S. from destroying the $10 million worth of contraceptives as medical waste. Most of the stockpile was destined for over 1 million women in Congo, Kenya, Mali, Tanzania, Zambia and other poor African countries. An agency of the U.N. has offered to buy the lot of it and handle distribution, but Trump refused. A London-based reproductive health group also offered to buy it and was also rejected. The government of Belgium has offered to relocate the stockpile somewhere else, so far without success. It isn't about the money. It is about the meanness.
Democrats in the House and Senate have introduced bills requiring that food and contraceptives that the government has already bought, paid for, and shipped, are allowed to be distributed to their intended beneficiaries before they expire. Good luck with that. Lawmakers in France are urging President Emmanuel Macron to intervene to save the supplies. They have argued that since the material is scheduled to be shipped to France for destruction, France has a right to seize it upon arrival. The French government has said that it has no such right.
When a spokesperson at the U.S. State Department was asked why they believe there are abortifacients in the stockpile, there was no reply. (V)