The French government has said it is closely monitoring a US plan to potentially destroy millions of dollars of contraceptives stocked in Europe after outrage from French feminists, rights groups and family planning organisations at what they called a wasteful attack on women’s rights.
The Guardian reported this month that Donald Trump’s administration planned to destroy $9.7m of contraceptives held in a Belgium warehouse which could be moved to France for incineration. They are mostly long-acting contraceptives such as IUDs and birth control implants which had been bought under public health programmes run by the US Agency for International Development and were probably intended for women in Africa.
A US state department spokesperson told Agence France-Presse this week that “a preliminary decision was made to destroy” certain birth control products from “terminated Biden-era USAID contracts”.
Trump’s administration dismantled USAID, the country’s foreign aid armbody, in January.
The spokesperson said the destruction would cost $167,000 and “no HIV medications or condoms are being destroyed”.
The contraceptives, stored in a warehouse in Geel in Belgium, were reportedly planned to be incinerated in France, although there has been no confirmation of this by France. France and Belgium are under pressure to prevent any destruction.
The French health ministry said in a statement: “We are following this situation closely and we support the will of the Belgian authorities to find a solution to avoid the destruction of contraceptives.
“The defence of sexual health and reproductive rights is a foreign policy priority for France.”
This week a collective of rights groups, feminists organisations and trade unions in France launched a petition to stop the destruction of the contraceptives. “We won’t allow this unfair and sexist decision to go ahead, it’s both an economic and human waste,” they said.
The French Green leader, Marine Tondelier, signed an open letter calling on the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to intervene to stop the contraceptives from being destroyed. “Our country cannot be complicit, even indirectly, in retrograde policies,” the letter said.
Céline Thiébault-Martinez, a Socialist lawmaker, told France Inter radio on Thursday that if France failed to speak out on the destruction of these contraceptives it would “lose credibility with women”.
Sarah Durocher, the head of a French family planning group, said: “France has a moral responsibility to act.”
Charles Dallara, whose politician grandfather Lucien Neuwirth backed the French law authorising oral contraceptives in 1967, wrote an open letter to Macron in which he urged the president not to “let France become complicit in this scandal”.
The Belgian government said it was in urgent contact with the US but it could not say yet whether the contraceptives had already been moved to France.
A spokesperson for the foreign affairs department said it contacted the US embassy in Brussels as soon as it became aware of the possible destruction of contraception stocks held in the Geel warehouse. “Foreign Affairs is exploring all possible avenues to prevent the destruction of these stocks, including their temporary relocation,” they added.
“We do not currently have additional details that would confirm whether a transfer of these products to France has taken place.”
The international organisation MSI Reproductive Choices said it had offered to “purchase, repackage, and manage logistics at our expense, ensuring the products reach those in need”, but the offer was rejected.
The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) made a similar offer at “no cost to the US government” that was also turned down, AFP reported.