Newsweek - The Trump administration may have destroyed almost $10 million worth of taxpayer-funded birth control and other contraceptives that were meant for women in low-income countries. The vast amount of products would have provided pregnancy protection for more than 1.5 million women for between 1 and ten years, Guttmacher Institute researcher Chelsea Polis said in an interview with CNN in July.
While The New York Times reported that the contraceptives had been destroyed last week, citing a statement from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the next day, it reported that Belgian authorities had found the contraceptives were still there.
Family planning assistance from the U.S. government usually helps more than 47 million women and couples every year, preventing 8.1 million unintended pregnancies, 5.2 million unsafe abortions and 34,000 maternal deaths, according to U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in July urging him to reverse the decision to burn the supplies.
Many of the women and couples supported by the U.S. government's support are those living in crisis, many of them in war zones and refugee camps.
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