Women's rights activists rally in Belgium fearing US plans for birth control supplies

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.

“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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is taking up one of the term’s most consequential cases, President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens, and he arrived at the court Wednesday to attend the arguments.

The justices will hear Trump’s appeal of a lower-court ruling from New Hampshire that struck down the citizenship restrictions, one of several courts that have blocked them. They have not taken effect anywhere in the country.

A definitive ruling is expected by early summer.

Trump will be the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the nation’s highest court.

Crowds watched from the sidewalks as Trump’s motorcade drove along Constitution and Independence Avenues, passing the Washington Monument and the National Mall on the way to the court building.

The case frames another test of Trump's assertions of executive power that defy long-standing precedent for a court that has largely ruled in the president's favor — but with some notable exceptions that Trump has responded to with starkly personal criticisms of the justices.

The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed the first day of his second term, is part of his Republican administration’s broad immigration crackdown.

Birthright citizenship is the first Trump immigration-related policy to reach the court for a final ruling. The justices previously struck down global tariffs Trump had imposed under an emergency powers law that had never been used that way.

Trump reacted furiously to the late February tariffs decision, saying he was ashamed of the justices who ruled against him and calling them unpatriotic.

He issued a preemptive broadside against the court on Sunday on his Truth Social platform. “Birthright Citizenship is not about rich people from China, and the rest of the World, who want their children, and hundreds of thousands more, FOR PAY, to ridiculously become citizens of the United States of America. It is about the BABIES OF SLAVES!,” the president wrote. “Dumb Judges and Justices will not a great Country make!”

Trump's order would upend the long-standing view that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, and federal law since 1940 confer citizenship on everyone born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.

The 14th Amendment was intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship, though the Citizenship Clause is written more broadly. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” it reads.

In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down the executive order as illegal, or likely so, under the Constitution and federal law. The decisions have invoked the high court's 1898 ruling in Wong Kim Ark, which held that the U.S.-born child of Chinese nationals was a citizen.

The Trump administration argues that the common view of citizenship is wrong, asserting that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore are not entitled to citizenship.

The court should use the case to set straight “long-enduring misconceptions about the Constitution’s meaning,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote.

No court has accepted that argument, and lawyers for pregnant women whose children would be affected by the order said the Supreme Court should not be the first to do so.

“We have the president of the United States trying to radically reinterpret the definition of American citizenship,” said Cecillia Wang, the American Civil Liberties Union legal director who is facing off against Sauer at the Supreme Court.

More than one-quarter of a million babies born in the U.S. each year would be affected by the executive order, according to research by the Migration Policy Institute and Pennsylvania State University’s Population Research Institute.

While Trump has largely focused on illegal immigration in his rhetoric and actions, the birthright restrictions also would apply to people who are legally in the United States, including students and applicants for green cards, or permanent resident status.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

Demonstrators holding opposing views verbally engage ahead of President Donald Trump's arrival at the U.S. Supreme Court, Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner)

President Donald Trump's limo exits the White House en route to the Supreme Court, Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

President Donald Trump's motorcade arrives at the U.S. Supreme Court, Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner)

Pro and anti-Trump demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court, before justices hear oral arguments on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

People arrive to walk inside the U.S. Supreme Court, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. The Supreme Court justices will hear oral arguments today on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

People arrive to walk inside the U.S. Supreme Court, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. The Supreme Court justices will hear oral arguments today on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

President Donald Trump answers questions from reporters after signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House Tuesday, March 31, 2026, in Washington, as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick listens. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The U.S. Supreme Court is seen as the moon rises Tuesday, March 31, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)