June 3, 2024
For years, Students for Life of America (SFLA) and Students for Life Action (SFLAction) have been raising the alarm on the environmental concerns of Chemical Abortion Pills being flushed into America’s waterways, including medical waste, blood, and fetal tissues from toilet bowl abortions.
And now, brave members of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Oklahoma Rep. Josh Brecheen, worked off our actions by confronting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on their inaction of tracking mifepristone, one of the two Chemical Abortion Pills, in our waterways. In a letter spearheaded by Rubio and Brecheen to EPA’s Michael Reagan this week, they demanded the EPA track Chemical Abortion Pills as an environmental concern, citing the “dramatic rise in mifepristone’s use since its original approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000.”
SFLAction has been working closely with members of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate to draw attention to an issue initially flagged by the Pro-Life Generation (PLG), as Rubio wrote on X (formerly Twitter) stating that letter was “to hold the Biden Admin accountable on its push to make chemical abortion drugs widely available.”
READ: Sen. Marco Rubio Gives Master Class in Defending LIFE on NBC’s Meet the Press
Sen. Rubio and Rep. Brecheen, and all the other representatives who signed on, had the bravery and commonsense to take the alarm seriously, asking for specific action from the EPA, writing:
“The full impact of mifepristone has never been sufficiently studied. When the FDA approved the drug in 2000, it relied on a 1996 environmental assessment that failed to consider that human fetal remains and the drug’s active metabolites would be making their way into wastewater systems across the U.S. Any studies that have been conducted in the past should be repeated and updated to reflect the fact that the drug is far more prevalent today than it was three decades ago. In addition, the EPA should study the impact of the “byproducts” of mifepristone, such as the placental tissue, fetal remains, and active metabolites that are being flushed into our nation’s wastewater system.”
Brecheen also wrote on X, noting that “the American people have been largely left in the dark about the full negative effects of chemical abortion drugs.”
SFLAction applauds them for taking our concern to the seemingly unconcerned EPA, which recently told us it’d reconsider updating its ‘forever chemicals’ tracking list in 2026—hardly an agency concerned with the immediate and growing dangers of forever chemicals.
EPA informed us of this just after they and President Joe Biden tried showing their dedication to the environment by tracking “forever chemicals” through a new national standard while leaving out Chemical Abortion Pills. Months before that, SFLA sent a legal analysis to EPA, which was followed up by another letter to Congress co-signed by 40 other pro-life leaders, stating the following:
“As there is no mandatory national abortion data collected by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) nor is there consistent data regarding adverse outcomes by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the full scope of mifepristone use is poorly tracked. As such, data on the scope of any environmental hazard is also limited.
“However, the scope of potential environmental contamination is likely on the rise, when considering that three-quarters of abortions in Europe are committed with Mifepristone pills, according to the New York Times. Elsewhere the percentage is even higher, as an NIH report notes that countries like Finland use Mifepristone pills 97.7% of the time, and in Sweden, the pills are used more than 96.4% of the time.”
Abortion advocates should join Rubio, Brecheen, and Students for Life in stopping our drinking water from being tainted with medical waste. Abortion vendors aren’t allowed to do this, and medical centers can’t do this, so why can the EPA get away with it? Abortion supporters and pro-lifers alike should be united in this goal of holding the EPA accountable. And maybe the EPA will push aside politics and do what they’re supposed to: look after the environment, not politicians. We hope more elected officials follow in Rubio and Brecheen’s footsteps.
