US to destroy $10m of birth control for women overseas

A stock of $9.7m (£7.2m) worth of contraceptives, purchased by the US for use in low-income countries, is now in transit to France to be burned rather than distributed as aid.

- By RACHEL SCHRAER, GLOBAL HEALTH CORRESPONDENT

Governments and family planning providers in France and Belgium - where the items were held in a warehouse - have been scrambling to block the US from destroying the supplies.

The products, which include contraceptive pills, implants and IUDs (intrauterine devices or coils), and have already been paid for by US taxpayers, are being sent to a specialist facility to be incinerated, at an additional cost of $167,000.

That’s despite offers from charities including MSI Reproductive Choices and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) to take on the costs of donating the contraception.

The Belgian ministry of foreign affairs had also said it was “exploring all possible avenues to prevent the destruction of these stocks, including their temporary relocation”.

A ministry spokesperson said the department had acted as soon as the plans to destroy stocks of contraception, held in Geel in the north of the country, came to its attention, including sending formal diplomatic representations to the US embassy.

Soumya Bourouaha, a French member of parliament, asked in an official question on Monday for the prime minister to “do everything possible to save these contraceptive stocks and deliver them to the populations who need them”.

However, the negotiations faltered, The Independent understands. The supplies are understood to be in the process of being transferred between the two countries. Access to contraception can be lifesaving – unintended pregnancies in countries with high maternal mortality and no access to safe abortion can be a death sentence. Research by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research group, has found that the roughly $600m spent on family planning overseas by the US government in 2024 prevented 34,000 maternal deaths and more than 5 million unsafe abortions.