The warehouse in Geel, Belgium, where millions of contraceptives bought by USAid were stored when the US Government defunded the agency. Millions of dollars’ worth of contraceptives destined for people in low-income countries have been destroyed. Photo / Hilary Swift, The New York Times
Millions of dollars’ worth of birth control pills and other contraceptives destined for people in low-income countries have been destroyed at the direction of the Trump Administration, the United States Agency for International Development said today.
The pills, intrauterine devices, and hormonal implants, valued at about US$9.7 million ($16.2m), had been purchased by the agency before it was largely dismantled this year.
They had been stuck in a warehouse in Belgium for months, since the State Department said that contraception was not “lifesaving” and that the US would no longer fund the purchase of birth control products for low-income nations.
Internal State Department and USAid documents and correspondence obtained by the New York Times show that several international organisations, including the Gates Foundation and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, had offered to buy or accept a donation of the contraceptives.
The US Government would have incurred no costs or might have even been able to recoup taxpayer funds under those scenarios.
Instead, the Administration decided to proceed with destroying the products, an operation that was estimated to cost US$167,000 ($280,000).
Today, a spokesperson for USAid — which is now being wound down by Russell Vought, the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget — said in a statement to the Times that the contraceptives had been destroyed and falsely suggested that they induced abortion.
“President Trump is committed to protecting the lives of unborn children all around the world,” the statement said. “The Administration will no longer supply abortifacient birth control under the guise of foreign aid.”
USAid is prohibited by law from procuring abortifacients.
None of the products held in the warehouse in Belgium were abortifacients, according to inventory lists obtained by the Times.
The listed products, such as hormonal implants, stop pregnancy by preventing ovulation or fertilisation.
This fact had repeatedly been made clear to State Department officials by veteran global health programme staff, the documents show.
It is not clear exactly when or where the destruction took place, and Administration officials did not respond to requests for further comment.
“The deliberate destruction of nearly US$10m worth of contraceptives, under the blatantly false pretence that they are abortifacients, is an outrageous act of cruelty,” said Beth Schlachter, director of US external relations for MSI Reproductive Choices, an organisation that had repeatedly offered to take over the distribution of the supplies rather than see them destroyed.
“This decision will cost lives, derail progress in global health and strip millions of people of the basic tools they need to plan their families and protect their health,” she said.
In early February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio took over USAid, which was established in the 1960s as a separate agency under Congressional mandate, and began overseeing its closure, a goal sought by several top Trump aides.
The few foreign aid contracts that officials kept were moved into the State Department.
Employees of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the group formed by Elon Musk, were sent to lead the process.
The destruction of the contraceptives was ordered in June by Jeremy Lewin, the State Department’s senior official in charge of foreign assistance, humanitarian affairs, and religious freedom.
In an email, he directed department employees to arrange destruction of the contraceptives as “the cheapest option that best reflects the Administration’s significant concerns with funding these activities”.
For a time, it seemed as if the US Government was not following through on the plan.
The Belgian Government staged a wide-ranging diplomatic effort to prevent the contraceptives from being incinerated at a medical waste facility.
The Foreign Minister, Maxime Prevot, wrote to Rubio to try to prevent it, according to a Belgian Foreign Ministry official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
More recently, authorities in Flanders, the region where the warehouse is, had been trying to invoke a legal ban on incinerating still-useable medical products to prevent the destruction.
Those overtures seemed at least to delay the planned incineration. The stockpile did not appear to have been burned by the end of July, as earlier reports had suggested that it would be.
On July 31, Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesperson, said at a news conference that the agency was in the process “of determining the way forward”.
As recently as this week, Flemish authorities had not learned of the destruction and remained hopeful that they might reach a solution.
“We did not receive a formal derogation request to allow incineration,” Tom Demeyer, a spokesperson for the Flemish Environment and Agriculture Minister, said in an email today. “We are waiting for the outcome of the legal and technical analysis to see which channels for reuse are viable.”
Belgian authorities had hoped that they might be able to help facilitate a sale of the products, given ample interest from potential buyers.
Belgian and Flemish authorities did not immediately comment on the news that the Trump Administration had proceeded with the incineration of the birth control supplies.
USAid employees had informed the Administration that seven different organisations were willing to take charge of some or all of the products and cover the costs of storing, shipping, and distributing them.
A draft memo prepared by veteran USAid staff members who had worked on family planning programmes through multiple administrations recommended that Lewin sell the products to the United Nations Population Fund because it would recoup at least US$7m and incur no further cost to taxpayers.
The other options presented including selling to other organisations or donating the products.
Using the acronym USG for US Government, that memo noted that the cost of destruction “is estimated to be a loss of $9.9 M in USG funding” and said that was “coupled with an estimated $167,000 in destruction costs”.
“Additional funding will likely have to be obligated to cover the destruction costs,” the memo said.
However, political appointees at USAid instead presented a different memo recommending that the materials be destroyed “due to the absence of eligible buyers” and to avoid contravening an Administration directive “halting support to organisations involved in coercive reproductive practices”.
Fourteen minutes after receiving that memo, Lewin ordered the destruction.
Former USAid staff members who had moved to a new global health division at the State Department swiftly set about organising the destruction.
Clint Branam, USAid’s deputy chief of staff for programmes, wrote to his colleagues, “I understand this likely wasn’t the outcome you’d hoped for and it’s contentious, but Jeremy said it best reflects the Administration’s significant concerns with funding these activities.”
In the list of potential arguments against a sale, officials invoked policies preventing the US Government from providing aid to overseas non-governmental organisations that provide or help with access to abortions, based on a rule that the Trump Administration reinstated.
USAid staff members offered solutions to donate the supply that they argued did not conflict with this policy.
At other points, the documents show that government staff members were worried that a sale “could appear to be in conflict with Administration priorities and attract external scrutiny.”
Rubio transferred the remnants of USAid from the State Department to Vought in August so Vought could oversee the final shutdown of the aid agency.
The State Department referred questions to USAid today.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Stephanie Nolen, Jeanna Smialek and Ed Wong
Photograph by: Hilary Swift
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