On September 11, the rump United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced that millions’ of dollars worth of contraceptives intended to be sent to people in poor countries was destroyed.
The $10 million worth of birth control included “pills, intrauterine devices, and hormonal implants…” They were stuck in a Belgian warehouse for house. The State Department, which USAID was illegally made a subsidiary of by the Trump administration, stated that contraception was not “lifesaving” and that it would no longer be distributed to poverty-stricken countries.
The decision goes back to sometime in June, when the State Department’s senior leading official on foreign assistance, humanitarian affairs, and religious freedom, Jeremy Lewin, ordered the destruction of the contraceptives as “the cheapest option that best reflects the administration’s significant concerns with funding these activities.” The process to destroy the contraceptives was anything but cheap.
Despite the Trump administration’s calls for financial responsibility and to cease waste, fraud, and abuse, they went about the process in the most expensive manner possible. The destruction of the contraceptives cost taxpayers $167,000; the Gates Foundation and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation offered to buy the contraceptives and take them off the federal government’s hands, an offer which the Trump administration refused. Belgian authorities also wished to sell the contraceptives, but did not receive a reply from the Trump administration. Furthermore, seven organizations offered to take over the stockpile and handle all funding for the maintenance, shipping, and distribution. If the administration had accepted any one of those schemes, it likely would have recovered some of the money lost from refusing to execute USAID’s Congressionally mandated mission.
As a justification, a spokeswoman for USAID falsely stated that contraceptives cause abortion. In fact, USAID is not allowed to send abortion medicine by law. In a statement that contradicts all available information, political appointees at USAID presented a memo to destroy the contraceptives “due to the absence of eligible buyers.”
The New York Times found out on September 12 that the USAID spokeswoman lied; by the time she stated that the contraceptives were destroyed, Belgian authorities reported that they had not yet been incinerated.
Another way in which $10 million was wasted is that foreign aid translates to influence in the form of soft power (i.e., public opinion, economic relationships, etc.). In other words, the administration lit $10 million on fire, and American influence abroad with it.
