Your water may be contaminated by abortion pills, officials warn.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told the Daily Caller News Foundation that it is reviewing comments from 14 attorneys general urging the agency to classify mifepristone as a water contaminant.
“Pharmaceuticals, like Mifepristone, encompass a diverse group of chemicals, including prescription and over the counter drugs,” an EPA spokesperson told the DCNF. “EPA is currently reviewing comments submitted on its draft contaminant candidate list 6 (CCL 6), which lists pharmaceuticals as a group, and human health benchmarks for 374 individual pharmaceuticals that are approved by the FDA and may occur in surface and groundwaters and/or treated drinking water.”
“While EPA cannot predetermine the outcome of its rulemaking, the intent of the draft sixth Candidate Contaminant List is to begin the process of evaluating the occurrence of several contaminant groups, such as pharmaceuticals, in drinking water. EPA’s mission and the intent of the Safe Drinking Water Act is ensuring safe drinking water for the American public,” the spokesperson said. “Millions of Americans have long demanded answers about pharmaceuticals in their water, and EPA is proud to have announced actions to address these concerns.”
For over a year, lawmakers and others have raised concerns over the abortion pill’s potential risk of harming the general population’s fertility
“[Americans] deserve, at the very least, a science-based review … [on mifepristone’s] presence in wastewater and any impacts it would have on public health,” a spokesperson for Republican Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, who initiated a June 5 letter to the EPA, told the DCNF. “[One] in 25 women who take chemical abortion drugs end up in the emergency room, and they commonly suffer from severe hemorrhaging, serious infection, incomplete abortions requiring surgery, and other complications as well.”
“We have become aware of a growing threat to the country’s waterways,” the letter stated. The letter alleged that the Food and Drug Administration eliminated many of the protections minimizing mifepristone’s potential public health risks over the past decade, leading to waste tainted by the pill being flushed into waterways and unintentionally ingested by the general population.
Progesterone is a hormone that strengthens the uterus’ linings so fertilized eggs can grow. Mifepristone is a progesterone blocker, which means its designed to end pregnancies by preventing that hormone from being used, softening those linings and triggering contractions. However, recent studies suggest that the pill can affect reproductive organ development and fertility, according to the letter.
Last year, 19 members of Congress signed a letter asking the EPA to review the pill’s environmental risks. When residual amounts of progesterone blockers are flushed into waterways, prolonged exposure to them could interfere with the fertility of both women and men, the June 2025 letter alleged.
“We want citizens to know that the abortion pill regimen is contaminating our water supply,” Nebraska Right to Life executive director Sandy Danek told the DCNF when asked about Republican Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers‘ decision to join Hanaway’s coalition. “During the chemical abortion process, usually done at home, the ‘remains’ are very likely to be disposed of in the toilet. Unlike a medical facility with medical waste protocols, the fetal remains, placenta, blood and amniotic fluid are flushed down the drain. Wastewater treatment plants and septic systems are not equipped to remove human remains, large tissue or pharmaceuticals.”
Some doubt mifepristone’s alleged environmental risks.
“There is absolutely no evidence that this is an environmental issue,” Center for Biological Diversity (CBD)’s Environmental Health Science Director Nathan Donley said, according to PolitiFact. “Pharmaceutical waste can be a big issue when we’re talking about widely used drugs, but to somehow point to mifepristone as a bad actor here is completely disingenuous.”
CBD is a “left-of-center environmental activist and legal advocacy organization” that advocates for population control, according to InfluenceWatch.
Almost two thirds of abortions are done with abortion pills like mifepristone, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled to protect access to medication abortion in May, sparking widespread backlash from pro-life movement, the DCNF previously reported.
(DCNF)
