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A stockpile of $9.7 million worth of contraceptives that was stuck in limbo at a Belgium warehouse for months following the dismantling of the the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year was said to have been destroyed on orders from the Trump administration. However, Belgian authorities told The New York Times that the stockpile was still there.
Responding to The Times‘ initial report that the product was destroyed, authorities in Belgium found on Friday that the stockpile was still there, an official told the outlet.
Local authorities “carried out on-site inspections this morning and found that no cargoes had been diverted for incineration,” said Tom Demeyer, a spokesman for the Flemish minister told The Times.
The conflicting communication comes as the U.S. government continues to work at closing USAID.
The New York Times originally confirmed the news that the product was destroyed on Thursday, citing a spokeswoman for USAID, which is now being closed down by White House budget directorRussell Vought. “President Trump is committed to protecting the lives of unborn children all around the world,” the statement said, before falsely implying that the contraceptives induced abortion. “The administration will no longer supply abortifacient birth control under the guise of foreign aid.”
On Thursday, Rachel Cauley, a spokeswoman for USAID, told The Times that the contraceptives had been destroyed.
“Yes. I can confirm they were destroyed,” she wrote.
As the Times pointed out in its initial report, USAID is prohibited by law from obtaining abortifacients, and none of the productsthat were being stored at the warehouse in Belgium were abortifacients, per inventory lists obtained by the newspaper. State Department officials had been made aware of this fact by global health program staff, per the documents.
The taxpayer-funded contraceptives had been designated to help peoplein low-income countries, and their expiration dates ranged from 2027 to 2031, according toDoctors Without Borders(Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF) and the reproductive health care nonprofitMSI United States, NPR previously reported.
The pills, IUDs, and hormonal implants cost an estimated $167,000, per reports. According to the Times, several international organizations, including the Gates Foundation and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, had offered to save the products by buying them or accepting them as a donation. Per the publication, this would have been at no cost to the government and possibly would have helped recoup the taxpayer funds.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H) released a statement on Thursday following the Trump administration saying it had ordered the destruction of the contraceptives. “Incinerating these life-saving supplies is inhumane, wasteful, and out of step with American values,” said Shaheen. “Family planning programs are bipartisan and prevent millions of unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions and thousands of maternal deaths, especially among women in war zones and refugee camps who have nowhere else to turn.”
The senator said that her staff had witnessed firsthand how the supplies “would have remained viable for years,” and that the administration not only “burned critical resources at additional expense to the taxpayer, but also exposed a broader, deeply troubling campaign to roll back women’s rights and access to basic health.”
This article was updated on Sept. 13 at 11:51 a.m. ET to clarify that the stockpile has not been destroyed as of press time.
