Unexpired Contraceptives at Risk: $9.7M Waste Looms

For months, $9.7 million worth of birth control meant for women in low-income countries has sat stranded in a Belgian warehouse — apparently destined for destruction — as a result of the Trump administration's freeze on foreign aid.

The State Department said in July that it would spend $167,000 in taxpayer money to incinerate the contraceptives at the end of the month, despite the fact that they are paid for and unexpired. That drew outrage from humanitarian organizations around the world, who offered to buy and distribute the productives themselves.

"Nobody benefits by this product being burned," Sarah Shaw, associate director of advocacy at MSI, told NPR. "It's an environmental disaster, it's a human rights disaster, it's just a catastrophe on every single level. So it's like, why not just hand it over quietly, hand it over to a third party and let them deal with it?"

But the administration's July deadline came and went, without official confirmation of the stockpile's destruction — creating confusion about the status of the contraceptives and cautious optimism about their survival.

Humanitarians' hopes were seemingly dashed last week, when the New York Times, citing a statement from USAID, reported that the contraceptives had been destroyed. But the next day, it later reported, Belgian authorities entered the warehouse and confirmed the contraceptives were still there.

Belgium's foreign ministry referred NPR's questions to the Flemish Minister of Environment and Agriculture, which has not yet responded to questions about the status of the contraceptives. In another sign of the products' survival, the Flemish sexual health organization Sensoa is holding a protest "against the planned incineration of contraceptives stored in Geel and the refusal to sell them to Belgium" outside the American Embassy in Brussels on Thursday.

One nonprofit, PAI, said in a Friday statement that "we hear one thing from one source and another from a different source," blaming the U.S. government for creating "confusion among civil society and the general public."

But aid groups have welcomed the ambiguity, hoping there is still a chance the birth control pills, implants and injectables — with expiration dates ranging from 2027 to 2031 — can make it to their intended recipients.

According to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), 77% of the products were earmarked for five African nations — the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Mali — many of which are already facing contraceptive shortages in light of the Trump administration's dismantling of USAID.

The destruction of this single stockpile could lead to 362,000 unintended pregnancies, 161,000 unplanned births, 110,000 unsafe abortions and 718 preventable maternal deaths, according to the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC).

Over 70 U.S.-based and international organizations sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday, urging him to scrap the destruction plans and "do everything you can to ensure lifesaving commodities, including contraception, reach people in need."

"Right now, women and girls around the world are desperately seeking out contraception and facing empty shelves," they wrote. "Meanwhile, this administration is choosing to spend taxpayer dollars to destroy effective health and medical supplies that are wanted and needed and that could save and transform lives."

They added that despite the administration's claims otherwise, the fact that the products have not yet been destroyed means "it is not too late to do the right thing."

NPR sent two emails to the State Department asking for comment, on Monday and again on Tuesday morning, but did not hear back in time for publication.

The contraceptives can still save lives

In their letter to Rubio, the humanitarian groups criticized the U.S. government for rejecting "numerous offers to buy or ship the supplies all while spreading deliberate misinformation about contraception."

They are particularly concerned about the State Department's characterization of the birth control products — which prevent pregnancy from happening in the first place — as "abortifacients," which cause the termination of a pregnancy. There are no methods of abortion included in the stockpile, according to humanitarian groups and an inventory list obtained by NPR.

"If this contraception is destroyed under the blatantly false pretense that they are abortifacients, it would be an outrageous act of cruelty," said Beth Schlachter, MSI Reproductive Choices' director of U.S. External Relations. "It would 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."

The U.S. government has "many responsible options available to them" to prevent the supplies from being destroyed, says Rachel Milkovitch, a global health policy specialist with the humanitarian medical aid group Médecins Sans Frontières USA, or Doctors Without Borders. They could sell them to one or more of the NGOs offering to distribute the products, potentially with help from another European government, or even donate them to African countries' ministries of health directly.

"There is $10 million worth of product that has already been paid for that could just be moved out to countries," says MSI's Shaw. "And local health systems will use this product, it will go to good use."