Amid the uproar over U.S. aid funding freezes, Republican Rep. Brian Mast defended the pause claiming it targets wasteful spending, such as, he alleged, a $15 million USAID program to send condoms to the Taliban.
But those on the front lines of fighting for women’s access to reproductive health services in Afghanistan, where almost every aspect of women’s rights have been decimated under Taliban rule, said there’s no ounce of truth to this claim.
“That’s not what [a] U.S. taxpayer is giving us. U.S. taxpayers [are] giving life to a mother and child, and that's taken away from them,” Seema Ghani, who’s with the Afghanistan Family Guidance Association, told Devex.