The Trump administration is allowing a stockpile of nearly $10 million worth of contraceptives to expire in a Belgian warehouse — despite pleas from nonprofit organizations to allow them to deliver the life-saving aid intended for low-income women primarily in sub-Saharan Africa.
Earlier this year, the State Department announced plans to incinerate the contraceptives, which were originally intended for distribution by the U.S. Agency for International Development before Trump dismantled it.
The medication includes $9.7 million worth of IUDs, implants, and birth control pills, some of which will get too old to deliver starting in December.
An estimate from the Guttmacher Institute found that the contraceptives could provide pregnancy prevention to roughly 1.6 million women.
The Trump administration isn’t just wasting money, said Jennifer Driver, senior director of reproductive rights at the State Innovation Exchange, “it’s wasting lives.”
Because of high rates of maternal mortality, she said the undelivered aid could result in “millions of unintended pregnancies, thousands of preventable deaths.”
The Belgian government initially foiled the Trump administration’s plans to destroy the contraceptives by intervening to block the incineration.
Now, the U.S. is using another weapon to destroy the medical aid: time.
Tanzania, which was supposed to receive the largest bulk of the contraceptive haul, requires that these medical products have 60 percent of their remaining shelf life when they enter customs, said Marcel van Valen, head of supply chain for the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
“That threshold is actually being reached for some of the products by the end of December,” he said, “and for most products towards mid-2026.”
Experts in reproductive health and supply chains told The Intercept that the Trump administration is attempting to “run out the clock” on the contraceptives’ shelf life, wasting millions of taxpayer dollars and putting countless lives at risk.
“The U.S. government is waiting to run out the clock on this, which is basically the same thing as lighting them on fire,” said Beth Schlachter, senior director of U.S. external relations for MSI Reproductive Choices, one of the organizations offering to distribute the contraceptives.
