No, They Didn't Find Mifepristone in the Water

7.27.26

THE QUICK & DIRTY:

No, They Didn’t Find Mifepristone in the Water: Antis’ new study is full of shit, not abortion pills.

In the States: Florida’s surgeon general thinks a measles outbreak is related to abortion; Maryland lost $3m in teen pregnancy prevention programs; Kentucky’s ban is pushing docs out of the state, and a Utah Supreme Court justice who should recuse himself from an abortion case

Language Watch: Ban is Back! But not in the way you think.

Voters Care About Abortion—When They Hear About It: New polling says Americans don’t really hear about the consequences of abortion bans

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No, They Didn’t Find Mifepristone in the Water

For years, Students for Life (SFL) has claimed that Americans are “drinking other people’s abortions.” Now they say they’ve got a peer-reviewed study to prove it.

The group’s press release declares that “testing shows abortion drug mifepristone in drinking water,” pointing to a study claiming “significant levels of mifepristone” in water samples from three cities. SFL president Kristan Hawkins says it proves “we were right all along.”

The problem? This study, published by anti-abortion authors in an anti-abortion publication, did not find mifepristone in the water. In fact, they didn’t even test for it.

First, a step back. If you’re unfamiliar with this bizarre claim, read my explainer below:

'Abortion in the Water:' The Fringe Anti-Abortion Claim Pushed by Trump's EPA, Explained

The short version is that antis know Americans hate abortion bans, so they’re focusing on the environment as a way to restrict abortion without sparking voter outrage. In fact, the campaign was made-for-MAHA: once RFK’s popularity took off, the group pivoted from claiming mifepristone was harming animal habitats to insisting the drug made Americans infertile.

Most incredibly, they don’t actually believe any of it. Vice president Kristi Hamrick admitted as much during a 2025 conference: “This is not because the environment was my first weapon of choice…I’m for using the devil’s own tools against them.”

None of this has stopped conservatives from weaponizing the lie: in April, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommended that states test their drinking water for abortion medication and birth control, putting the drugs on a federal list of potential “contaminants.”

All of which is to say, as ridiculous as it all sounds—this is serious. Now, onto the actual study:

• The research is published in Issues in Law & Medicine, a journal run by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine—a virulently anti-abortion organization that has actually sued the FDA over mifepristone. So when they say the study is “peer-reviewed,” they mean it’s co-signed by other anti-abortion activists.

• The authors are unqualified anti-abortion activists. Elise Rose is a “scholar” at the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), the research arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. Her co-author, Michael Varveris, is a concierge-medicine doctor who does body contouring in Florida and sells “anti-aging” supplements.

• Again, the kicker is that they didn’t actually test the water for mifepristone. Instead, they used a test that can tell whether something is blocking progesterone—not what that something actually is. And as experts pointed out in POLITICO, the ‘researchers’ failed to conduct further testing that could specifically identify mifepristone. That means what the pair found could be an insecticide, flame retardant, or even sunscreen.

• Even if the researchers had actually found mifepristone—which they didn’t—the amount was so tiny that you’d have to drink nearly 5 million liters of water to consume the equivalent of a single clinical dose. (For reference, that’s about two Olympic-sized swimming pools.)

Unfortunately, it might not matter that the paper is bunk. Look at what happened with the EPPC’s junk science study on mifepristone: our side didn’t issue a take down quickly or strongly enough, and now it’s part of the mainstream conversation on abortion. If SFL can get just a few media outlets to take the study seriously—or if Republicans are able to cite this ‘research’ without immediate and brutal pushback—we’re going to end up with another misinformation nightmare.

Extra credit: check out the Guttmacher Institute’s terrific policy analysis on ‘abortion in the water’

In the States: Florida, Maryland, Kentucky, Utah & More

Last week, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said that the state’s measles outbreak could be tied to abortion. Are you tired? I’m tired!

During a Friday press conference, Ladapo said that because so many cases were reported at a private Catholic college, the issue may be that students didn’t get the vaccine because it’s “developed with the cells that are a progeny from…an aborted fetus.”

“Whether there’s a connection between the fact that, you know, some of the students at this university chose not to receive that vaccine, and it happens to be a vaccine that is related to the practice of abortion, I’m not sure.”

Meanwhile, Maryland programs have lost $3 million in vital federal funding thanks to the Trump administration’s obsession with jacking up the teen pregnancy rate. Remember: the White House cut $67 million from Teen Pregnancy Prevention programs last month, claiming that the lessons were explicit or pornographic.

Tellingly, HHS didn’t respond to requests from Maryland Matters asking for examples of lessons that “promoted sexual activity.” That hasn’t stopped local conservative groups from celebrating the federal cuts: Jeffrey Trimbath of the Maryland Family Institute called the state’s teen pregnancy prevention programs “indecent” and “immoral.”

The truth? “Teen pregnancy is at the lowest rates that it has been at in many, many years,” Robyn Elliott at the Women’s Law Center of Maryland says. “Look at the data.”

Speaking of data, let’s turn to Kentucky—where the state’s abortion ban is pushing healthcare providers to study and practice elsewhere. In an op-ed at the Courier Journal, registered nurse and public health graduate student Jordan Cobb warns that the next generation of medical professionals don’t want to practice in a state where they can be arrested for doing their jobs:

“A survey of Kentucky medical students conducted by medical students at the University of Louisville found that 85.6% disagreed with the state’s abortion policies, 87.5% believed the laws negatively affect public health and nearly three-quarters said they would consider completing their residency training elsewhere because of Kentucky’s current laws.”

Planned Parenthood wants a Utah Supreme Court justice disqualified from hearing a case that could determine abortion rights in the state. That’s because just before taking the bench in 2025, Justice John Nielsen argued in an amicus brief that Utah’s ban doesn’t violate the state constitution.

“The rules about recusals are objective and clear,” said Shireen Ghorbani, president of Planned Parenthood Association of Utah. “A judge should recuse when their impartiality might be reasonably questioned.”

Nielsen also wrote a brief arguing for a constitutional amendment that would let the Legislature repeal citizen-passed ballot initiatives. And we know what that is all about.

Right now, abortion is legal until 18 weeks of pregnancy; that’s because the state Supreme Court upheld a block on a near-total abortion ban that went into effect after Roe was overturned. But if the Court hears the case again—with a different makeup and an anti-abortion justice—that ban could come back to haunt Utah women.

Let’s be clear: this is why Utah Republicans nominated Nielsen in the first place. I’ll keep you updated as I learn more.

Quick hits:

• The Planned Parenthood in Springfield, Missouri just started prescribing abortion medication;

• The Copper Courier has profiled the doctor who helped roll back Arizona’s abortion restrictions;

• Live Action (🚩) is blasting the Massachusetts bill that would expand abortion access after 24 weeks, claiming abortion is never necessary to save someone’s health or life;

• And don’t miss this conversation that fellow Substacker Jessica Yellin had with a Texas woman who was refused miscarriage treatment at two different emergency rooms.

🚨 Language Watch: Ban is Back 🚨

You all know I’m obsessed with anti-abortion messaging tactics, and this latest one is a fucking trip. Kelsey Pritchard, the communications director at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told the Daily Signal (🚩) today what message their canvassers are bringing to voters in battleground states. See if you can spot what she’s doing here:

“It’s that the Democrats have become the party of the position of no limits whatsoever on abortion, and if they get a majority, and they will pass the so-called ‘Women’s Protection Act’ and ban states from having pro-life laws and establish abortion at any point in pregnancy in every single state across the nation.”

That’s right—they’ve brought ban back, baby!

If you’ve been reading AED for a while, you probably remember that the anti-abortion movement made a conscious decision to stop using the word ban after Dobbs. Instead, we saw the rise of terms like minimum national standard, reasonable restrictions, and consensus legislation—all phrases that mean ban but don’t sound as scary. SBA even convinced Virginia candidates to run ads that promised, “it’s not a ban!”

It’s incredible, really: their policies are so unpopular, they can’t even call them by name anymore. Now, four years after the end of Roe, ban is so toxic they want to saddle Democrats with it.

I have to admit, it’s kinda brilliant. In the same way they used consensus legislation to mask the fact that nobody wants abortion bans, they’re using “banning pro-life laws” to make it seem like it’s Democrats forcing policies that violate voters’ wishes.

I’m willing to bet that we’re going to see a lot more of this messaging in the months to come—so keep your eye out. And if you spot it out there in the wild, let me know!

Voters Care About Abortion—When They Hear About It

While we’re on messaging, let’s talk about what works for our side. New polling from Reproductive Freedom for All/Impact Research found that battleground voters see support for a national abortion ban as a “dealbreaker” for politicians, and that eight in ten say it’s important for lawmakers to protect access to reproductive healthcare.

Those are all fantastic numbers, so what’s the problem? Well, Impact reports, “we have a believability gap” to deal with.

“Most battleground voters are not hearing about the issue of abortion, so while many express concerns about Republican policies that restrict access to abortion, they also believe these policies are unlikely to happen.”

This is part of the reason I complain so much about the lack of mainstream abortion coverage—and why I do this work. People care about abortion rights deeply, but they often have no idea what’s going on because they’re not seeing the consequences of bans. And, of course, Republicans are doing an excellent job covering those consequences up.

When voters do hear about abortion, these are the messages Impact found especially resonant:

I’d add something to that list: it’s not just that Republican policies are causing women to die—and it’s more than ‘their priorities are out of whack’. It’s that the GOP is obsessed with women’s bodies at the expense of everything else—young women’s bodies, especially. I’m working on a column that I’ll share soon: it’s about Republicans as the Party of Peepers. 👀

The awful truth is that with or without media coverage, Americans will find out about the consequences of bans one way or another: the longer these laws exist, the more likely voters are to be impacted themselves, or know someone who has been.