Emails detail confusion in State Department over Trump plan to destroy contraceptives

Newly disclosed emails reveal confusion at the State Department during the Trump administration’s push last year to destroy almost $10 million worth of family planning commodities in a Belgian warehouse that were intended for distribution in some of the world’s poorest nations.

U.S. diplomats in the region were left in the dark about the supplies sitting in the warehouse in Geel, while a senior official privately shared erroneous information that suggested some of the contraceptives could be used to induce abortions.

In one email, a diplomat working at the U.S. Embassy to Belgium wrote to a colleague at the State Department in Washington “there is no one here that knows definitively what is in the warehouse,” after The Washington Post and other news organizations had reported that the facility housed contraceptives and HIV-prevention medications purchased by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.

The exchange on Aug. 13 is part of a tranche of dozens of internal emails and other internal documents from last summer that were released by the State Department after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Center for Reproductive Rights, an advocacy group based in New York City.

The records paint a chaotic picture of the Trump administration’s move to shut down USAID and block the distribution of $9.7 million worth of contraceptives that were meant for developing nations. Belgium and other international humanitarian organizations had unsuccessfully tried to purchase the supplies from the United States and distribute them before they expired.

The Trump administration, led by billionaire Elon Musk’s government efficiency effort DOGE, moved to dismantle USAID soon after taking office in January 2025, accusing it of being a corrupt and “criminal” organization.

The administration ultimately abandoned its plan to destroy the supplies because of Belgian prohibitions on their incineration. By then, almost all were spoiled by inadequate storage and transportation, according to a report released last month by the USAID Office of Inspector General.

The inspector general wrote that as of June, four truckloads of goods remained at the original warehouse, while another 20 truckloads were stored at a nearby overflow facility, where they had been moved during the discussions about their destruction.

Because the majority of goods were not stored in a temperature-controlled environment, they were no longer considered safe for use by health care authorities. The U.S. government has spent more than $400,000 dollars on the storage and transportation of the goods, the inspector general estimated.

“This administration talks a lot about waste, fraud and abuse, and trying to root it out, but this is waste, fraud and abuse,” said Liz McCaman Taylor, a lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The State Department had initially failed to respond to two Freedom of Information Act requests made last year by the nonprofit organization, according to the center. After the group sued the agency in the D.C. District Court in December, the State Department disclosed the emails and other documents last month.

The State Department declined to comment on the specific content of the emails and other documents disclosed, but confirmed in a statement “that a preliminary decision was made to destroy certain abortifacient birth control commodities from terminated Biden-era USAID contracts.”

The State Department did not specify what contents of the warehouse it considered abortifacient, a term that describes drugs used to induce abortions. Under U.S. law, the United States is prohibited from funding abortions abroad but allowed to pay for contraceptives for family planning.

“The State Department worked with USAID to ensure HIV treatments and condoms were not destroyed,” the statement continued.

In one email, a senior official from the State Department incorrectly described several contraceptives as abortifacients.

On Aug. 8, an unnamed State Department official emailed Jeremy Lewin, a political appointee who oversaw foreign assistance at the State Department, with a list of what is described as “Current Viable Abortifacients” being housed at the warehouse.

The unnamed official listed two different contraceptive devices — a subdermal implant and an intrauterine device — and the daily oral contraceptive Levonorgestrel. None of the three items are classified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as abortifacients used to induce abortions in pregnant women.

Higher doses of Levonorgestrel can be used to prevent pregnancy after intercourse as an emergency contraceptive, though the FDA does not classify it as an abortifacient since it does not work if a woman is already pregnant. The State Department did not address a question from The Post about whether it considers these devices or drugs to be abortifacients.

“Everything else has practically been destroyed,” the unnamed State Department official wrote, appearing to refer to other contraceptives that had been stored incorrectly and were no longer viable. The official’s name, like many others mentioned in the emails, was redacted under privacy laws.

No response from Lewin was included in the records released to the Center for Reproductive Rights. Lewin did not respond to a request for comment.

The State Department has yet to explain why it pushed to destroy the contraceptives, and it did not respond to questions about whether their characterization as abortifacients triggered the action. In its statement, it said it “prohibits providing certain assistance — directly or indirectly — to foreign nongovernmental organizations that perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning.”

It added that this prohibition also applies to “any organization or program which supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”

McCaman Taylor, the lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the administration was being “disingenuous” by referring to abortion-related laws when questioned about the destruction of contraceptives.

“These are not abortion drugs, just plain and simple. The administration absolutely knows that,” she said.

The emails show that the issue of whether there were abortion-inducing drugs in the warehouse caused internal confusion among other senior State Department officials.

Brendan Hanrahan, a top political appointee at the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, asked in an Aug. 12 email whether there were any drugs stored at the warehouse that could be used to “induce an abortion if taken by a woman once she is already pregnant,” questioning a report in the New York Times that there was not.

This set off a series of emails among diplomats in Washington and Europe trying to find more information. The diplomat at the embassy in Belgium — Deputy Chief of Mission Kathleen Lively — responded that embassy staff did not know what was at the warehouse, which had been operated by a contractor for USAID.

Hanrahan declined to comment. Lively did not respond to a request for comment.

The State Department referred questions from The Post about the status and contents of the warehouse to an email address associated with USAID. No one at that email address responded to the questions.

“The State Department had no insight into USAID data pertaining to contraceptives at the warehouse due to the fact USAID did not share this data with the department,” the State Department said in its statement.

In its earliest days, the second Trump administration took aim at U.S. foreign assistance, pausing all aid and dismantling USAID, which had been an independent agency.

The Trump administration moved its functions under the State Department, with almost all USAID staffers put on leave or fired by March 2025. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a top Trump ally, served as acting USAID administrator until Aug. 29.

Critics say that the administration has effectively decided to end support for the use of contraceptives in family planning, blurring the line with abortions. The efforts echo domestic moves to limit the use of federal funding known as Title X for contraceptive drugs.

In a congressional appearance last month, Rubio testified that the Trump administration does not want to distribute contraceptives internationally.

“The government of the United States is not going to be involved in distributing contraceptives and all these other things around the world,” Rubio told the House Committee on Appropriations on June 2 when asked about the status of the goods at the Belgian warehouse and how much it had cost to store them.

The emails disclosed show that Rubio was kept aware of the fate of the contraceptives, with the issue mentioned in briefing notes for a planned meeting between Rubio and Belgium’s deputy prime minister, Maxime Prévot. The State Department redacted the contents of the memo, contending that disclosure would reveal internal deliberations. Rubio and Prévot met in early January, according to public statements.

The June report by the USAID inspector general estimates that the U.S. government has likely paid over $434,000 in storage and transportation costs for the drugs since January 2025, with that number increasing by $24,000 each month as it continues to store the products.

That is more than double the $167,000 The Post reported last year as the estimated cost of destruction.