American taxpayers are footing the bill for something pretty wild: nearly $10 million worth of birth control is being destroyed instead of given away to people who actually need it.
And not only is that stockpile getting torched, but it’s costing another $167,000 just to get rid of it.
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Trump officials decided to dump it all
The Trump team signed off on getting rid of tons of birth control items — pills, IUDs, implants — even though multiple charities offered to take them and hand them out for free.
They said nope. Burn it.
These were already paid for using tax dollars
Here’s the kicker. These products are already paid for.
We’re talking $9.7 million in supplies that are just sitting there, fully funded by Americans, about to go up in smoke.
This ties into the bigger plan to shut down foreign aid
It’s part of Trump’s push to scale down USAID, the United States Agency for International Development.
USAID’s the biggest global aid group out there, and this move lines up with the goal of dialing back their work.
Just a small slice of the federal budget goes to global aid
In 2023, the US spent $68 billion on international aid.
That might sound like a lot, but it’s only about 0.6% of the whole $6.75 trillion federal budget.
Cutting costs… but adding more debt?
Trump, who’s now 79, said all this is about saving money and reducing government spending overseas.
He’s talked about needing to lower the national debt, which is around $36.7 trillion. But oddly enough, his new “big, beautiful bill” could end up adding $3.3 trillion more to that debt.
Charities literally offered to take care of everything
And here’s where it really doesn’t add up. Several charities stepped in and offered to handle everything. No cost to the US government.
IPPF, for example, said they’d manage it all: storage, packaging, distribution, everything.
They just wanted to make sure the birth control got to people who need it.
Experts say the government’s excuse doesn’t hold water
Marcel Van Valen, who runs IPPF’s supply chain, wasn’t buying the explanation that destroying the products was somehow cheaper.
He called that claim “utter nonsense.”
“[IPPF has offered to] go and collect the products, to repack them [at] our cost and to do the distribution throughout the globe with our partners and even competitors in this space,” he said, according to The Independent.
This isn’t about saving money, groups say
Another group, MSI Reproductive Choices, made a similar offer.
Sarah Shaw, who works there, didn’t mince words. “This isn’t about government efficiencies. This is about exporting an ideology that’s harmful to women,” she told The Independent.
What could have been done with those supplies
Shaw pointed out something pretty staggering.
She said, “The annual contraceptive bill for Senegal for the entire country is $3m a year. So the contents of that warehouse could have met all of Senegal’s contraceptive needs for three years. And instead, we’re going to see massive shortages.
“We’re going to see Senegalese women dying of unsafe abortion, girls having to drop out of school.”
The products are already on the way to be destroyed
Those birth control supplies were stored in France and Belgium.
Now, they’re being shipped off to a special facility where they’ll be incinerated.
