The U.S. Agency for International Development has spent more than $360,000 to transport and store mostly unusable contraceptives at a warehouse in Belgium after the Trump administration decided not to distribute the products to women in poor countries, a new oversight report estimates.
The agency will continue to spend more than $24,000 a month to store those products — which include hormonal implants and injectable contraceptives — until it provides instructions to Chemonics International, the contractor responsible for the contraceptives, on what to do with them, according to the report, prepared by the Office of the Inspector General.
The fate of the contraceptives, worth $9.7 million, has been uncertain since USAID terminated its contract with Chemonics in March 2025, following an executive order President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office instituting a pause on foreign aid to ensure programs were “aligned with American interests.”
A State Department spokesperson previously told CNN that the contraceptives in question included “certain abortifacient birth control commodities from terminated Biden-era USAID contracts.” The spokesperson pointed to the Mexico City policy, which prevents the U.S. government from giving funds to global organizations that provide or refer for abortions. But reproductive health experts have thrown cold water on that assertion, pointing out that contraceptives do not induce abortions.
The findings contained in the IG report come as the latest evidence that the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which dismantled most of USAID under the leadership of Elon Musk, incurred large costs and disrupted lifesaving programs in its stated bid to “cut waste, fraud, and abuse.” (The State Department has continued administering some USAID programs.)
Spokespeople for Chemonics and USAID did not respond to requests for comment from MS NOW on Tuesday.
The IG report was prepared after a December request from Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., to investigate the state of the contraceptives and what options were available to save or distribute them.
In a statement to MS NOW on Tuesday, Murkowski said the IG report “makes clear that months of indecision and mismanagement have turned a preventable problem into a costly and wasteful one.”
A spokesperson for Shaheen did not immediately respond to a request for comment from MS NOW on Tuesday.
The IG report states that Chemonics submitted multiple options to USAID in April 2025 for how to handle the supply of contraceptives, including destroying them or reselling them. After USAID issued a written order in June to destroy the products, Chemonics took initial steps toward doing so, moving 20 truckloads of the products to an overflow facility, according to the report.