A cadre of family planning organizations has denounced the warehousing and uncertain fate of millions of dollars’ worth of contraceptive drugs and devices that had been slated for distribution overseas before the Trump administration halted spending by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in January 2025.
According to a recent report by CNN, $9.7 million in birth control “commodities” remain in warehouses in Belgium, as Trump administration opponents have worked to prevent the products’ incineration and expedite their distribution before many of the products expire over the next three to four years. CNN reports that the warehoused items include “copper IUDs, rod implants, birth control injections, and levonorgestrel and ethinyl estradiol tablets.”
According to CNN, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), and the former Marie Stopes International organization (now called MSI Reproductive Choices) have each offered to purchase the commodities, which were originally targeted for Tanzania, as well as Malawi, Bangladesh, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. These nations have rules that prohibit the importation of medicines with only a certain amount of remaining shelf life.
REACH PRO-LIFE PEOPLE WORLDWIDE! Advertise with LifeNews to reach hundreds of thousands of pro-life readers every week. Contact us today.
According to a 2021 global supply chain report by the USAID Inspector General, countries typically refuse to accept health products with less than 75% of their usable life left. Standards vary by country and product, as do waiver opportunities, and Tanzania, for example, appears somewhat less restrictive than other countries, as it is willing to import such products until less than 60% of the total shelf life remains. Mindful of such policies, groups such as IPPF argue that the Trump administration is deliberately “running down the clock” on the birth control drugs and devices.
Most Americans recognize product expiration dates as an important part of protecting consumers from the sale and use of stale, no longer effective, or even dangerously aged and degraded substances. The debate over the $9.7 million dollars’ worth of IUDs, injectables, and other birth control commodities being held in Belgium is not limited, however, to shelf-life concerns. CNN reported that a U.S. State Department spokesperson had previously referred to the warehoused items as “certain abortifacient birth control commodities” from terminated Biden-era USAID contracts. IPPF and other family planning organizations counter that the IUDs and other long-acting contraceptives are not abortifacients. As is frequently the case, the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG) is then cited for credibility: In the CNN report, an ACOG representative is quoted as stating there is “no such thing as an abortifacient contraceptive,” and “IUDs and other forms of birth control do not cause abortion.”
The ACOG claim is astonishing in its blatant contradiction to established fact. Even CNN hedges its bets, stating less adamantly — and somewhat more accurately — that “IUDs primarily work by suppressing the release of eggs, or by preventing sperm from reaching an egg.” Note that CNN does not say that IUDs work “solely” or “entirely” by suppressing ovulation or sperm motility. Unlike ACOG’s ideological stance, the CNN wording is more in keeping with scientific guidelines offered by Hardeman and Weiss (2014) in American Family Physician: “When discussing the mechanism of IUDs as part of the informed consent process, patients may be told that although prefertilization and postfertilization mechanisms may both contribute to the contraceptive effectiveness of IUDs [emphasis added], research suggests that the majority of effects occur prefertilization.” These authors thereby subtly concede that IUDs have been shown to exert postfertilization — that is, abortifacient — effects.
Indeed, at the time the ParaGard copper IUD was approved by the FDA for use in the United States in 1984, data submitted with The Population Council’s New Drug Application (NDA 18-680) revealed the device’s abortifacient potential — as does its current patient labelling. The approval package for NDA 18-680 explained, “The exact mechanism by which metallic copper enhances the contraceptive effect of an IUD has not been conclusively demonstrated. Various hypotheses have been advanced, the most common being that copper placed in the uterus interferes with enzymatic or other processes that regulate blastocyst implantation.”
In other words, both the device makers and the FDA were well aware from the outset that the IUD could act by making the maternal uterus hostile to the implantation of any newly conceived human being, thus acting as an abortifacient. Indeed, toxicity tests reported by The Population Council in NDA 18-680 included teratogenicity tests in rats, rabbits, and hamsters, which showed that, under certain conditions, the copper exposure exerted an “embryocidal function” and the “embryocidal effect of copper increased with duration of exposure.”
Patient labelling and prescribing information for the copper IUD at the time of its approval noted an “Increased incidence of septic abortion associated in some instances with septicemia, septic shock and death in patients becoming pregnant with one of several types of IUDs” and pregnancy that occurs with an IUD in situ is “more likely to be ectopic than a pregnancy occurring without an IUD.” To this day, the potentially abortifacient impact of the ParaGard copper T 380A IUD is documented: Per current patient labelling, “In females becoming pregnant with an intrauterine system (IUS), including Paragard in place, septic abortion, with septicemia, septic shock, and death, may occur. … If a female becomes pregnant with Paragard in place and if Paragard cannot be removed or the female chooses not to have it removed, warn her that failure to remove Paragard increases the risk of miscarriage [i.e., spontaneous abortion], sepsis, premature labor, and premature delivery.”
Likewise, patient labelling for the Miudella Copper Intrauterine System notes that “An intrauterine pregnancy with Miudella in place may result in septic abortion, with septicemia, septic shock, and possible death. Septic abortion typically requires hospitalization and treatment with intravenous antibiotics. Septic abortion may result in spontaneous abortion or a medical indication for pregnancy termination. A hysterectomy may be required if severe infection of the uterus occurs, which will result in permanent infertility.”
Most of the U.S. taxpayer-funded birth control drugs and devices being warehoused in Belgium and battled over for distribution to women in Tanzania and other lower-income countries may be classified as long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs). Which makes all the more interesting a February 2021 letter from the FDA Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) to Holly Sheffield, president of Cooper Surgical, regarding a false and misleading televised promotion for the ParaGard T 380A. In the letter, OPDP officials complain that the company “appears to be promoting Paragard without presenting the serious risks of the drug in a truthful and non-misleading manner, despite concerns previously expressed by OPDP.”
Indeed, in that earlier, 2019 letter from OPDP officials Lynn Panholzer and Matthew Falter to Cooper Surgical Regulatory Affairs Associate Kyle Hooper, the FDA complained that the company’s Direct-to-Consumer television claims for ParaGard “misleadingly suggest that … ParaGard does not have the potential negative health effects of hormone contraceptives such as long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARC), including progesterone-containing IUDs or implants. Although it is true that ParaGard is hormone-free … ParaGard is associated with many of the same serious risks as other LARC products, including risks related to pregnancy and ectopic pregnancy, and vaginal bleeding. Moreover, because it is an intrauterine device, there are additional risks to Paragard, some of which may be fatal, which include embedment, perforation of the myometrium, migration, and pelvic inflammatory disease.”
Given that ACOG denies the potentially abortifacient effects of IUDs, one wonders whether the informed consent process is reliable here in the United States or even exists for women in low, lower-middle, and middle-income countries targeted by the IPPF, the U.N., and others for such long-acting contraceptives. For decades, many concerned parties have perceived racist overtones in the efforts of population control lobbies, and suspected a long-term agenda to hinder the growth of developing nations and steer the global balance of power.
At the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, for example, many female delegates voiced concerns of this nature. Washington Post journalist Joel Achenbach quoted Rosiska Darcy de Olivera, co-chair of the Brazilian Women’s Coalition as objecting, “To say that women from the South who have many babies are responsible for the environmental crisis — it’s a scandal.” That same year, Farida Akhter, writing in Issues in Reproductive and Genetic Engineering, observed: “One cannot separate their premises: racism, eugenics, and political and economic exploitation of the poorer countries by the Western world. This is one very strong reason why women should be critical of the slogan of reproductive rights. … In practice, reproductive right means the right to pick up a contraceptive produced by multinational corporations and provided by international agencies and the state in countries like Bangladesh, under population control programmes…”
More recently, Ms. Akhter has argued that “The population control policies and programmes carried out in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America and among the poor, black and immigrant communities of the northern countries are horrendous examples of this control.” Akhter is a founder of the Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering (FINRRAGE).
Concerns about health risks associated with devices and drugs such as copper IUDs, rod implants, injectables, and hormones have included concerns about the underlying nutritional status of, and limited health care resources available to, women in lower-income countries. In Tanzania, for example, average female body weight ranked in the 20th centile as compared to the 50th centile for American women at the time when the copper IUD and other contraceptives were being tested and approved for use in the United States. The particular risks to poor women in lower-income countries have been voiced by pro-life/pro-family women’s health advocates at United Nations International conferences since 1992 in Rio, 1994 in Cairo, 1995 in Copenhagen, 1995 in Beijing, 1996 in Istanbul, and 1998 in Rome.
If the U.S. is indeed “running down the clock” on the $9.7 million in warehoused birth control in Belgium — or is ultimately successful in incinerating the products at a cost of less than $170,000 —it might be a sign that someone in Washington, D.C. is finally beginning to heed the medical evidence.
LifeNews Note: Teresa A. Donovan, MPH, is an associate scholar of the Washington, D.C.-based Charlotte Lozier Institute and former senior writer and editor of Presidential Messages & Correspondence for President George H.W. Bush. She has served more recently in higher education, including work focused on environmental and public health sciences at the University of Kentucky and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine |UC Center for Environmental Genetics. This column originally appeared at The Washingtomn Stand.
