The USAID Contraceptives Scandal: Millions Burned, Women’s Rights at Risk

Introduction: More Than Bureaucracy – A Political Signal

This isn’t about logistics. It’s politics. The planned destruction of usable contraceptives worth nearly ten million dollars, the USAID Contraceptives Scandal, fits into a culture where cruelty isn’t an accident, it’s the method. Or, as Adam Serwer put it in The Atlantic (2018): “The cruelty is the point.”

Background: Contraceptives Worth $9.7 Million Face Incineration

According to a coalition of 17 organizations, the U.S. government plans to destroy contraceptives valued at $9.7 million – even though part of the stock is valid until 2027, some even until 2031 (DSW, Aug. 2025).
The supplies are stored in Belgium, scheduled to be shipped to France for incineration. The open letter warns of the consequences: 362,000 unintended pregnancies, 161,000 unplanned births, 110,000 unsafe abortions, and 718 preventable maternal deaths.

Belgium has blocked the move: Flanders bans the destruction of usable medical products without a special permit (Reuters, Sept. 5, 2025). In France, pressure is mounting to stop the incineration (Guardian, July 31, 2025).

International criticism: Médecins Sans Frontières calls the plan “unconscionable” and stresses: “Contraceptives are essential and lifesaving health products” (MSF, 2025). MSF director Avril Benoît goes further, calling it an “intentionally reckless and harmful act.”

New Dimension: Cruelty as Strategy

Serwer’s analysis of MAGA politics wasn’t a moralist’s rant but a cold read: not chaos, but deliberate harm as signal. His essay notes: “The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim.” (The Atlantic, 2018). The point is visibility: making deprivation itself the message.

Applied here: The destruction doesn’t accidentally disrupt supply chains – it marks reproductive rights as negotiable. Humanitarian supply becomes symbolic politics. Not just products are destroyed – a lesson is being taught.

Political Embedding: Owning the Libs Through Suffering

The logic echoes “Owning the libs”: humiliating opponents by destroying what they care about. NGOs, UNFPA, IPPF, MSI and others offered to distribute the supplies for free – and the government said no. That’s not a clerical error. It’s a message. French feminists and MPs describe it as a “wasteful attack on women’s rights” and demand that Paris intervene (Guardian, July 2025).

Consequences: Numbers Versus Cynicism

Here hard numbers crash into cynical theater: measurable suffering versus symbolic capital. Stock-outs in clinics, preventable pregnancies, real deaths – set against the performance of toughness. Put plainly: burning instead of distributing, despite proven shelf life, despite documented need. That’s not incompetence. That’s intentional harm.

Belgium shows the counter-logic: incinerating usable medical stock isn’t just immoral, it’s illegal without a waiver (Reuters, Sept. 2025). Politics here is justiciable, not just theatrical.

Conclusion & Call to Action in the USAID Contraceptives Scandal

The alternatives are on the table: redirecting supplies to countries with urgent demand, diplomatic pressure, logistical fixes (DSW, 2025). The open letter states: “Swift intervention can prevent these urgently needed products from being lost.”

Failure to act means accepting a politics where cruelty itself becomes the message – and normality.