Republican AGs Ask EPA To Restrict Abortion Pills, Calling Them Contaminants to Drinking Water

Republicans are trying a new strategy to impose federal restrictions on a pill used for chemical abortions, mifepristone, by asking the Environmental Protection Agency to review its potential impact on waterways. Anti-abortion activists have been frustrated by what they feel is a lack of action on the part of the Trump administration to restrict access to abortion pills. With abortion-inducing pills such as mifepristone still widely available, 14 Republican attorneys general — led by Missouri’s attorney general, Catherine Hanaway — are asking the Environmental Protection Agency to add mifepristone to its Contaminant Candidate List, CCL, for further study, which could lead to restrictions.In April, the EPA released its draft Contaminant Candidate List, which did not include mifepristone, but Republicans are hoping that will change. In their letter to the agency, the attorneys general say that the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to lift restrictions on mifepristone was “unlawful and unsafe,” and “increased the number of chemical abortions occurring in the home, resultingin tons of chemically tainted medical waste being flushed into American waterways.”The letter says that an “upsurge” in chemical abortions has “serious implications for the Safe Drinking Water Act.”The attorneys general noted that an organization that helps facilitate abortions, Aid Access, recommends that, after an abortion, women flush any blood and tissue down the toilet. “The metabolites in mifepristone and its approved generics remain active post-excretion,” the letter to the EPA states. “On top of this, conventional wastewater treatment is not designed to remove these types of contaminants, so there is strong reason to conclude that the compounds persist in both the environment and the water supply.”The letter reads, “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 a statement, Indiana’s attorney general, Todd Rokita, a signatory to the letter, said, “Drug-induced abortions occurring outside of the legal, direct and personal care of a properly licensed physician are causing pain and suffering to women.”“Obviously, this starts with the individuals persuaded by Planned Parenthood and Big Pharma to use mifepristone to abort their pregnancies, but increasingly it extends to other women who might ingest the drug from their local water supplies,” he added.On Thursday, a group of 19 House and Senate Republicans sent a letter to the EPA urging the agency to add mifepristone to its CCLThe Republican lawmakers say in their letter, “In addition to killing unborn babies and threatening the wellbeing or lives of their mothers, mifepristone has the potential to impact our national water system, a danger that was acknowledged by the Food and Drug Administration thirty years ago.”“In 1996, the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) claimed that adverse environmental effects from mifepristone were ‘not anticipated,’ but acknowledged that ‘[m]ifepristone may enter the environment from excretion by patients, from disposal of pharmaceutical waste, or from emissions from manufacturing sites,” the letter reads. Several anti-abortion groups have asked the EPA to study mifepristone, citing concerns about its potential effect on waterways.Conservatives’ strategy of turning to the EPA has caught the attention of some Democrats. In May, Senator Patty Murray asked the EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, “Do you seriously believe there’s abortion in the water, like some of the far-right activists are suggesting?”“You just said ‘abortion in the water?’” Mr. Zeldin responded. “I have not had a conversation with anyone at the agency as far as abortions in the water … I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”When Ms. Murray mentioned a report from the New York Times that said EPA officials have launched a study into concerns about mifepristone in the water, Mr. Zeldin said, “Unless you’re referring to a pharmaceutical that is on the list of the hundreds of pharmaceuticals that are part of the Contaminant Candidates List 6 … Aside from that, I’m not aware of anything else at the agency other than that.”In a statement to The New York Sun, a spokesman for the EPA said it “takes the issue of pharmaceuticals in our water systems seriously” and “employs a rigorous, science-based approach to protect human health and the environment.”“EPA has developed [a] draft list consistent with its commitment to assess ongoing evaluations of water contaminants and update prioritizations of certain contaminants appropriately with goals of improving our knowledge of contaminants in drinking water. Stakeholders will now have an opportunity to comment on the draft CCL,” the statement added.

Republican AGs Ask EPA To Restrict Abortion Pills, Calling Them Contaminants to Drinking Water

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