Why is the Trump Administration Destroying Almost $10 Million of Contraceptives?

They're also burning 500 tons of food aid meant for hungry children.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

It’s hard to think of a decision that better encompasses this administration’s cruelty and wastefulness than this: After the richest man in the world shuttered the US agency that provides aid for the world’s poorest, the government is now going to spend money destroying the contraceptives, medications, and food items it chose not to distribute.

This includes $9.7 million in contraceptives that were bound for crisis areas — places like refugee camps and war zones. It includes $800,000 worth of high-energy biscuits, a kind of emergency food aid for people in the direst of circumstances — and enough of it to feed 1.5 million children for a week. To be clear, all of these items have already been paid for by US tax dollars. The Trump administration is about to spend more money to destroy them.

The cruelty and recklessness of dismantling USAID remains difficult for me to fathom. Researchers project that 14 million people will die who would have otherwise lived, including 4.5 million children. A study published in the Lancet found that in just 20 years, USAID saved some 90 million lives. As of the writing of this newsletter, one group estimates that axing PEPFAR alone — PEPFAR is the program that used to fund HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment worldwide — has already resulted in the deaths of 8,016 children and 75,305 adults.

Where is the “pro-life” movement? Where are the “compassionate conservatives” who helped to start PEPFAR in the first place?

There are a million reasons why this is foolish. USAID is important because any decent and moral person should understand that when one has much, one should give at least a little. America is the richest country to ever exist in the history of the world. We can save expectant mothers and hungry babies at negligible cost to the American taxpayer. That Elon Musk and Donald Trump, both men of extreme wealth (one to the point of obscenity), would see this as “waste” or America somehow being taken advantage of is a stunning admission of a soullessness and inhumanity that I think can only be explained by sociopathy.

But even if you don’t care about hungry children or people trying to survive wars or women who need care after being raped, you should still want to see USAID remain functional and ideally generous. USAID is one of the best tools we have to maintain America’s good standing in the world, and to make America a liked and respected country. That was already waning before Trump’s second round in the White House. I spent a few years living in Kenya and go back annually, and it’s very clear that China has made significant inroads in the country (quite literally by building roads). From the ground in East Africa, America seems to be receding, while China seems to be getting bigger and more important.

That matters for America’s future security, and so does the health and stability of developing countries. It is hard to be a stable nation while also being a sick and hungry nation. And unstable nations don’t typically leave that instability at their own borders.

Family planning tools are also key for national stability and wellbeing. Women who are able to access modern contraceptive methods are less likely to die in pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after; their children are less likely to die as infants; their families wind up wealthier. The children of women who were able to plan are more likely to complete their educations. On a much larger scale, higher levels of contraception use and the healthier women, children, and men that comes from better family planning results in greater national wealth. And that makes sense: A healthier, better-educated population generally means improvements in a country’s financial (and overall) wellbeing. Policy-makers know this. The DOGE boys probably could have googled it, or asked Grok:

According to MSI Reproductive Choices, a group that provides reproductive health care around the world, when they surveyed their own clinics, “nine out of 19 countries we surveyed reported they were already facing stockouts of at least one contraceptive method.” And now, the US government is about to destroy millions of dollars in contraceptives.

“MSI and partners have offered to pay for the shipment and distribution of the supplies, so they can reach the people who desperately need them,” the group said in a statement, “but our offer was rejected.”

xx Jill