Women's rights activists rally in Belgium fearing US plans for birth
control supplies
[September 19, 2025]
By SYLVAIN PLAZY and LORNE COOK
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.

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Participants from various women's rights organizations hold signs as
they demonstrate regarding the destruction of family planning
supplies stockpiled in Belgium, near the U.S. embassy in Brussels,
Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Havana)
 “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.
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