Women’s rights activists rally in Belgium fearing US plans for birth control supplies

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BRUSSELS (AP) — Dozens of women’s rights activists rallied Thursday near the U.S. Embassy in Brussels to protest what many say are plans by President Donald Trump’s administration to destroy millions of dollars in family planning supplies meant for women living in hardship in Africa.

The concerns rose after the Trump administration earlier this summer said it was considering the way forward on the stockpile, stranded in a U.S.-funded warehouse in Geel, Belgium. The administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which managed foreign aid programs, left the stockpile’s fate uncertain.

Activists say that incinerating the stockpile could result in 362,000 unwanted pregnancies and the deaths of more than 700 women linked to childbirth or pregnancy.

A crowd of around 50 people joined the rally in Brussels, chanting “Shame, shame, shame, Trump is to blame.” Some held wooden crosses with “700+ women dead” and “people will die” written on them.

The stocks — costing more than $9 million and funded by U.S taxpayers — were intended for women in war zones or refugee camps, according to senators Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, and Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski.

The possibility that the stockpile — which includes contraceptive pills, implants and IUDs — could be destroyed has angered family planning advocates on both sides of the Atlantic.

U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Tommy Pigott said last month that no final decision on the contraceptives had been taken and that the administration is still “determining the way forward.”

The head of the Europe branch of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Micah Grzywnowicz, said that the supplies should have gone to five African countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Mali, Tanzania and Zambia.

“In Tanzania, those supplies that were supposed to be sent, it’s one-third of the whole needs of the health system. And in human numbers, it is one and a half million women and girls who are supposed to get life-saving supplies,” Grzywnowicz said.

“It’s very clear that this is a tactic. It’s a long-term game to dismantle the global health system that we have,” Grzywnowicz told The Associated Press. “It’s about control — our bodies, our decision-making, and we are not the ones who have control right now.”

Belgium has been talking with U.S. diplomats about trying to spare the supplies from destruction, including moving them out of the warehouse. The regional government in Flanders, where they are stored, has a ban on incinerating reusable goods.

They can only be burned “if an exemption from the incineration ban is granted by the Minister for the Environment and a double levy on waste incineration is paid,” said the ministry’s communications chief, Tom Demeyer.

“No such exemption has been requested or granted to date,” he told the AP on Wednesday.

Demeyer said the Flemish environment department authorities inspected the warehouse last week to ensure that the birth control supplies were still there. Incineration facilities in the area have been warned to notify authorities should an attempt be made to destroy them.