\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>here are few better metaphors for the receding status of American women than one offered up by the Trump administration at a medical waste disposal facility outside Paris this week: rather than distribute nearly $10m worth of birth control, which had been purchased by USAID and was destined to be given to women in low-income countries, primarily in Africa, the Americans decided to burn it.<\/p>\n The incinerated contraceptives included 900,000 birth control implants, 2m doses of injectable long-acting birth control, 2m packs of contraceptive pills, and 50,000 IUDs. The medicine is just the latest in the far-reaching fallout from cuts made by the so-called \u201cdepartment of government efficiency,\u201d or Doge, a project in which Elon Musk and a group of his very young, overwhelmingly male acolytes unilaterally slashed congressionally appropriated funding to government programs they did not like. The cuts have been devastating for non-profits that work to improve women\u2019s health and safety worldwide. Sarah Shaw, an associate director at the global family planning group MSI Reproductive Choices, says that the cuts will put women at risk as they strain their health with unplanned pregnancies and seek out illegal abortions; other women who are denied access to birth control will lose out on the opportunities for education, professional development or remunerative work that can help them escape abuse, rise out of poverty, pursue their talents and ambitions and better provide for the children they already have.<\/p>\n When MSI attempted to buy the contraceptives, the administration would only accept full price, which the organization couldn\u2019t afford, she said. Several non-profits, including MSI, had offered to pay to ship and repackage the supplies, according to another representative. But the Trump administration refused, partially due to federal rules the prohibit the US from providing such goods to groups that perform, provide referrals for or offer education about abortions. In addition to the cost of purchasing the contraceptives, American taxpayers will now be on the hook for about $167,000 for the cost of burning them.<\/p>\n It\u2019s just the latest in a series of signs that the Trump administration is turning against the provision of birth control, particularly the safe, effective and woman-controlled hormonal methods that have been a cornerstone of healthcare policy for decades and which were a precondition of women\u2019s advancement in work and education over the past 60 years.<\/p>\n In April, the Trump administration abruptly announced that it was suspending a large swath of the domestic service grants distributed under Title X, the program meant to help low income Americans access birth control, STD treatment and other sexual and reproductive healthcare. Of the 86 Title X grants awarded for fiscal year 2024, nearly 25% were \u201ctemporarily withheld\u201d, mostly based on highly suspect allegations that the grant-receiving institutions \u2013 including 13 Planned Parenthood affiliates \u2013 had failed to comply with Trump executive orders banning things like DEI programs. Eight states now receive zero Title X dollars: California, Hawaii, Maine, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee and Utah. Alaska, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania have also lost most of their contraception funding.<\/p>\n The domestic cuts \u2013 along with the exclusion of Planned Parenthood clinics from Medicaid reimbursements \u2013 mean that American women, too, are now facing dramatically greater obstacles to accessing birth control. Clinics that relied on Title X funding are now set to close: 11 Planned Parenthood clinics already have, including in Democratically controlled states like California. Planned Parenthood says that cumulatively, the cuts could lead the organization to close about 200 of its 600 clinics nationwide \u2013 a devastating cut to abortion providers in particular that will make a wide range of reproductive services inaccessible to women regardless of where they live.<\/p>\n But the Trump administration is not merely forcing these programs for women\u2019s health and dignity go up in flames. They are redirecting them to better suit their preferred cultural outcome: one in which women\u2019s lives, ambitions and talents are all subordinated to the task of childbearing. The New York Times reported last month that the White House is redirecting Title X funds that once went to birth control to instead fund an \u201cinfertility training center\u201d and programs in something called \u201crestorative reproductive medicine\u201d. If Title X\u2019s original aim was to help American women control their fertility so as to build healthier families and to enable them to pursue other aims \u2013 like learning or work \u2013 in the new administration\u2019s version, the program exists mainly to encourage women to have more children. But the switch should not be seen as a genuine investment in infertility, an often devastating condition with which many Americans struggle. Because the new Title X priorities do not, by and large, direct more money to IVF. Trump promised, on the campaign trail, to make IVF free. But the procedure, which has opponents on the Christian right, is not included in the administration\u2019s new priority of \u201crestorative\u201d reproductive medicine, a practice that avoids controversial fertility treatments; instead, doctors seek the \u201croot cause\u201d of a woman\u2019s infertility, which may involve telling them they can conceive with proper diet and exercise.<\/p>\n In government, money allocation is a statement of values. With its dramatic cuts to contraceptive funding at home and abroad, the Trump administration is making its values clear. It does not value women\u2019s health; it does not value their dignity, their control over their own lives, their aspirations, their earning potential, their desire to be freed from ignorance, or poverty, or the abuse they suffer under the hands of husbands and fathers. It does not value their ability to control their own bodies, and by extension, it does not value their ability to enter the public sphere. It does not value their dreams, their gifts, their hard work or invention or aspiration to anything other than making babies. American women, like women everywhere, depend on birth control to live lives of freedom and to pursue their dreams. But because of the Trump administration, those dreams are going up in smoke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are few better metaphors for the receding status of American women than one offered up by the Trump administration at a medical waste disposal facility outside Paris this week: rather than distribute nearly $10m worth of birth control, which had been purchased by USAID and was destined to be given to women in low-income<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[4716,5189,670,97,7161,7160,4714],"class_list":{"0":"post-13482","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-10m","9":"tag-birth","10":"tag-burning","11":"tag-control","12":"tag-donegan","13":"tag-moira","14":"tag-worth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}