“Shame, shame, Trump is to blame”, protestors cried on Thursday in front of the US embassy in Brussels, fighting Trump administration plans to destroy around $10 million worth of contraceptives destined for low-income countries.

Some 863,000 contraceptive implants, 2.4 million oral contraceptives, over 1.75 million contraceptive injectables, and 23,700 intrauterine devices are today sitting in a warehouse in Geel, near Antwerp in northern Belgium. The United States Agency for International Development purchased them before it largely folded earlier this year.

According to the New York Times, in June, the Trump administration ordered the stock to be destroyed – at a cost of $167,000 – on the grounds that the US would no longer fund the purchase of birth control products for low-income nations. Last week, the Times quoted a USAID spokesperson saying the stockpile had been destroyed, but Belgian authorities later found the supplies untouched.

Hence, the presence of NGOs, local associations and ordinary citizens at the US embassy on Thursday in the EU’s de facto capital, to try and keep the stock from being destroyed.

“We are here today because we want to live in a world where care, dignity, and freedom are the foundation of our shared humanity,” said Micah Grzywnowicz, regional director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. “But today, that world is under attack.”

‘Purely ideological’

The case has come to represent more than the goods themselves, which advocates say could prevent 360,000 unintended pregnancies.

Health, and especially reproductive rights, have become a political lightning rod. Standing up for the stockpile also means fighting against Trump.

“The U.S. administration’s decision is purely ideological,” said Heleen Heysse of Sensoa, Flanders’ expertise center for sexual health. “It is clear that [Trump] is trying to do here the same thing he is doing in his own country.”

The Flemish regional government maintains that the supplies are still stored in Geel and that it has the legal power to block the products from being moved or destroyed, whether on Belgian territory or elsewhere.

“The US administration is trying to stall in the hope that everyone forgets and that they can destroy the stock without an international outcry,” Heysee said. “That’s really why we’re here. We want to keep the international outcry going, we want to show that we do not agree, we want to show that this can’t happen in Belgium … or in the EU.”

Diplomatic impasse

Grzywnowicz, from the International Planned Parenthood Federation, called on the EU to show leadership by “rallying the member states, mediate with the US and explore all legal and diplomatic avenues to stop essential supplies from being wasted”.

So far, diplomacy has borne no fruit. In Brussels, the European Commission has already said it would not intervene directly. And NGO proposals to buy the stockpile have been refused by the Trump administration.

“It wouldn’t cost anything, it wouldn’t change anything,” said one protestor closely following the case.  “Just one signature from Trump to release the stock, and then he doesn’t have to deal with it anymore.”

(bms, vc)