The U.S. spends tens of billions of dollars in congressionally approved foreign assistance each year, including spending by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the State Department and other programs. It gave out $72 billion in total in 2023.
That funding includes a budget of $607.5 million for USAID’s designated family planning and reproductive health program.
The freeze has already affected family planning resources used by thousands of people abroad, causing numerous health clinics to shut down and bungling supply chains for contraception.
One analysis from the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion-rights research group, determined that that the weeks-long freeze denied family planning care to 912,000 women and girls across dozens of countries that use U.S. foreign aid.
That same analysis predicts that at least 8,340 pregnant people will die because of the freeze if it does continue until April as the Trump administration intended.
Zambia is one country that receives a large amount of U.S. aid, with a sizeable chunk of that allocated for family planning services. In 2023, the south-central African country received nearly $600 million in U.S. aid, with $10 million going toward family planning, according to a break down of federal data from the Guttmacher Institute shared with The Hill.
During the freeze, piles of U.S.-provided contraceptive devices like condoms sat unopened in warehouses, causing shortages in clinics around the country, according to Rachel Moynihan, an advocacy and communications specialist at the United Nations Population Fund.
“It’s really the whole system that is being gunked up by this,” said Rachel Clement, senior director of U.S. government affairs at Population Action International, a reproductive rights group.
“And it’s having a trickle-down effect where people are trying to make these tough decisions in a funding environment where there isn’t a replacement.”
The Zambian government greatly increased its commitment to provide family planning supplies to address the shortage caused by the freeze. But many countries simply do not have the resources to replace the help they receive from the U.S.
“There isn’t another global donor that is able to step in at the level the U.S. government was funding these things at,” Clement said.
