EPA to track abortion drugs in America’s drinking water
Students for Life of America on Friday celebrated the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to look for traces of abortion drugs in drinking water across the country. The EPA last week introduced a new study that will trace and track more than 1,400 substances: pharmaceuticals, pesticides, so-called forever chemicals and other contaminants. The two drugs used in chemical abortions, mifepristone and misoprostol, are included on the list of pharmaceuticals federal researchers will be monitoring.
Results from the study will be used alongside the agency’s ongoing actions under the Safe Drinking Water Act, said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the project would give Americans clarity about what is in their drinking water.
What led to this point? Students for Life of America has for years called on the EPA to test for the presence or level of abortion drugs found in water sources as at-home abortions have become more common. The organization has said that tons of chemically tainted human remains, blood, and placenta tissue enter waterways each year. Students for Life of America has said this is the result of women who take the abortion drugs being told to flush their aborted babies down the toilet.
Last year, the pro-life group urged Americans to petition the EPA to include mifepristone and misoprostol on their list of tracked contaminants. Members of Congress and a coalition of state attorneys general also filed requests to the EPA.
In March, U.S. Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., introduced a bill called the Safe Water Act that would require abortion pill distributors to provide women with medical waste collection kits when they are prescribed the drugs. In July, the journal Issues of Law & Medicine published a peer-reviewed study that found statistically significant levels of mifepristone in three American cities. Researchers collaborated with SFLA and the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute to test both treated and untreated water and found traces of the drug in both types of samples.
Dig deeper: Read my report in Vitals about why pro-lifers say studying the presence of abortion drugs in drinking water is long overdue.