For women and girls in low-income communities across Kenya, access to contraception has never been a luxury-it has been a lifeline. It is the difference between safety and danger, choice and coercion, life and death. But today, that system of support is collapsing. The unraveling began with radical policy shifts in Washington, intensified through an ideological crusade against reproductive rights, and is now taking its harshest toll thousands of miles away in Nairobi’s informal settlements.

Experts, activists, and community health workers warn that the US government’s decision to destroy millions of dollars’ worth of contraceptives-supplies already purchased, shipped, and originally intended for African countries-will worsen an already dire public health crisis. While the Trump administration insists the stockpiles are being eliminated as part of a bureaucratic clean-out aligned with its broader ideological agenda, the consequences for Kenyan women are unmistakable: more unintended pregnancies, more unsafe abortions, and more preventable deaths.

This crisis is not unfolding organically. It is being manufactured-piece by piece-by decisions made far from the communities now suffering the fallout.

The story began with reports that $9.7 million worth of contraceptives-including intrauterine devices, hormonal implants, and birth control pills-were left idle in a Belgian warehouse rather than being distributed to Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Zambia, and Mali. In November, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) revealed that the situation was even worse: another 20 truckloads of contraceptives were being held at a hidden location in Belgium. Some of these products have already degraded due to improper storage.

These supplies were funded under programs previously supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an agency that President Donald Trump dismantled earlier this year as part of his second-term restructuring agenda. Despite multiple philanthropic organisations offering to purchase and transport the contraceptives at no cost to the US, the........

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