(LifeSiteNews) – The attorneys general of 14 states wrote to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to urge it to begin tracking the abortion drug mifepristone’s contamination of the nation’s water supply.
The June 5 letter, led by Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, began by summarizing the expansion of abortion pills since 2022 to distribute them by mail for private home use, to perpetuate abortion as much as possible around state abortion bans. This new normal, the letter argues, “has serious implications for the Safe Drinking Water Act.”
“The metabolites in mifepristone and its approved generics remain active post-excretion, meaning they ‘retain (their) considerable affinity toward the human progesterone and glucocorticoid receptors’ after disposal,” the attorneys general wrote. “On top of this, conventional wastewater treatment is not designed to remove these type of contaminants, so there is strong reason to conclude that the compounds persist in both the environment and the water supply.”
By design, mifepristone harms an existing pregnancy by ‘competitively inhibit(ing) the actions of progesterone at progesterone-receptor sites’ and by ‘promot(ing) uterine contractions and softening of the cervix,’” they argued. “It follows that if mifepristone reaches sufficient concentration, pregnant women who unintentionally ingest the drug through the public water supply could be at greater risk of health complications than the general population. In addition, recent research suggests that mifepristone can affect reproductive organ development and fertility. Yet, unlike other endocrine-disrupting chemicals, such as polyfluoroalkyl substances, the agency has yet to take necessary action to mitigate the risks to vulnerable populations.”
The state law enforcement chiefs called on the EPA to add mifepristone to its Draft Contaminant Candidate List, which contains substances “currently not subject to any proposed or promulgated national primary drinking water regulations” but to be considered for further investigation, citing the agency’s statutory responsibility to “identify the contaminants most harmful to ‘sensitive subgroups,’ including ‘pregnant women.’”
The letter was co-signed by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas.
Last summer, Liberty Counsel Action published an 86-page report that examined a wide variety of records and research to find serious deficiencies in the oversight of how the abortion industry disposes of its “medical waste,” starting with a fateful erroneous prediction in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s original approval of mifepristone that the drug would only have a minimal environmental impact, with the question of disposal largely overlooked, both from chemical byproducts of the pills themselves to the flushing of aborted remains down users’ own toilets after use.
The authors cited one estimate from Students for Life’s “This Is Chemical Abortion” initiative that “‘as much as “40+ tons of chemically-tainted medical waste – human tissue, placenta, and blood’ (aborted babies and related byproducts) are flushed into our waterways,” a problem that most state and local regulations fail to account for, effectively allowing the abortion pill business to “use wastewater treatment plants as their de-facto medical waste facilities for decades.”
The report noted that the EPA itself explains that standard wastewater treatment facilities “are not designed to remove pharmaceuticals.” LC Action added that “wastewater treatment plants are not intended to process fetal remains (medical waste facilities exist for this purpose), though they end up serving in this capacity as fetal remains from chemical abortions are often flushed into the sewer system.
The consequences for individuals who unknowingly drink the tainted water are unknown, but one potential effect could be infertility, given the fact that mifepristone blocks the fertility hormone progesterone.
Last October, the EPA reportedly tasked scientists with developing new methods to detect traces of abortion pills in wastewater. This past March, Republican U.S. Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois proposed the Clean Water for All Life Act, which would prohibit administering abortion pills without “physically examining the patient”; “being physically present at the location of the chemical abortion”; or “providing a catch kit and red bag medical waste, including instructions for the patient to bring such kit and bag to the healthcare provider for proper disposal.” Violators would face up to five years in prison and/or up to $50,000 in fines.
