The EPA Tells States to Test the Water for Birth Control and Abortion Pills

The government just cosigned the anti-abortion movement's craziest claim

Well, it happened. After years of anti-abortion pressure, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recommended that states test their drinking water for abortion medication and birth control, putting the drugs on a federal list of potential “contaminants.”

The move clears the way for Republicans to restrict abortion and contraception under the guise of protecting the environment—including humiliating regulations that could force women to bag up their pregnancy tissue as medical waste. And at a moment when pregnancy-related arrests are rising and states are moving to punish abortion patients, it marks a dangerous acceleration toward a full-blown reproductive surveillance state.

Everything you need to know is below—from the history of the lie and the way it’s being weaponized in legislation, to what this EPA action means for abortion and birth control right now.

Click to skip ahead: - WTF do you mean, ‘abortion in the water’?? - How do they come up with this stuff? - Is there any science behind it? - What’s the real goal here? - What’s a ‘catch kit’ bill? - What about contraception? - Can the gov’t really surveil abortion & birth control pills in the water? - What’s up with the EPA? - So how do we fight back?

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WTF do you mean, ‘abortion in the water’??

Anti-abortion activists claim that when women use medication to end their pregnancies, remnants of the drug poison the environment and water supply. They also say that pregnancy tissue is getting into the drinking water, and that Americans are all “drinking abortions.”

As you can probably guess, there is no truth to any of this. But don't take my word for it—Kristi Hamrick, vice president of Students for Life (SFL), the organization behind the campaign, admitted as much at a 2025 conference:

“This is not because the environment was my first weapon of choice—it’s because it’s the one we have now…Environmental law has teeth. It already exists. And, frankly, I’m for using the devil’s own tools against them.”

This is the same woman, by the way, who once told a stunned group of Texas legislators that they were effectively sipping on fetal remains with their morning coffee.

How do they come up with this stuff?

The short version is that the strategy emerged from polling: SFL found that while young Americans oppose abortion bans, they support the environment. So the group started a “Clean Water” campaign to pressure federal agencies and help lawmakers craft state and national legislation.

At first, SFL claimed that mifepristone in the wastewater was polluting the environment, harming wildlife, and killing endangered species. But after Donald Trump’s second White House win and the steady rise of MAHA, the group deliberately shifted focus to one of RFK Jr.’s pet projects. Kennedy is weirdly obsessed with the idea that fertility rates are dropping because of environmental factors, so it wasn’t long before SFL started claiming that abortion pills in our drinking water was making Americans infertile.

This is part of a broader conservative playbook: SFL and other anti-abortion organizations know that Americans are overwhelmingly pro-choice, so they need other ways to win over voters. Just as Republicans push abortion restrictions under the guise of protecting women’s health or preventing domestic abuse, they’re playing the same cynical game with the environment.

Is there any science behind it?

Nope.

We metabolize abortion and birth control pills like any other medication, and only trace amounts leave our bodies at all. Using anti-abortion logic, every single drug people take—from antidepressants to Viagra—would be a “pollutant.”

In fact, an EPA study found that it would take “months to decades of drinking two liters of raw, untreated wastewater per day to expose a person to a single dose” of the most commonly prescribed medications. And an environmental impact report conducted by the FDA before the agency approved mifepristone found that “the projected environmental introduction concentration from use is less than 1 ppb.”

That means less than one part per billion.

As the Guttmacher Institute noted last year:

“[T]here is no evidence to suggest that mifepristone is harming the environment or people’s health. These ideological attacks on mifepristone run counter to the expertise of scientists, advocates and civil servants who are actually working to improve the quality of our water and the environment.”

In other words, this is political—not scientific.

What’s the real goal here?

This tactic goes far beyond winning hearts and minds. Framing abortion pills as an environmental hazard opens a new legal front for conservatives, allowing them to:

• Weaponize environmental law, like the Clean Water Act

• Create new liability, reporting, and monitoring requirements tied to medication abortion

• Surveil patients by tracking the presence of abortion medication and birth control in the wastewater

• Lay the groundwork to target contraception

• Introduce federal and state bills targeting the “disposal” of abortion-related tissue or medication—aka, catch kit bills

What’s a ‘catch kit’ bill?

Buckle up. ‘Catch kit’ legislation forces miscarriage and abortion patients who use mifepristone to bag up their pregnancy tissue as medical waste. Under the bills—which have been introduced in multiple states and twice nationally—flushing is illegal.

Tellingly, some of these bills will exempt miscarriage patients from the catch kit requirement if their fetus’s ‘heartbeat’ has stopped. Which begs the question: is the mifepristone in those miscarriages somehow less of a “contaminant”? Can the water tell the difference between an abortion and a miscarriage?

And if this was really about clean water, why would anyone using mifepristone be immune?

We all know the answer: this is actually about humiliation. Conservatives hate that abortion pills allow women to end their pregnancies in the privacy of their own homes—without having to go through a gauntlet of protesters calling them sluts and murderers. They want us to be shamed, and what better than by forcing us to bag up our own blood?

What about contraception?

“Clean water” legislation isn’t just asking state leaders to test for abortion pills, but for hormones used in birth control and gender-affirming care. And while Hamrick told POLITICO in 2022 that SFL’s work was “confined to abortion-inducing drugs,” it’s worth remembering that the organization wants to ban most forms of birth control. (They insist everything from IUDs to the Pill are really ‘abortifacients’.)

In other words, contraception was always on the chopping block with these people.

When in doubt, follow the language: endocrine disruptors—chemicals that interfere with the body’s hormones—has become central to the MAHA movement’s claims about declining fertility and chronic disease. It’s a real scientific term, typically used for environmental chemicals like pesticides and plastics. But now the anti-abortion movement has glommed onto the phrase: several “clean water” bills claim abortion pills are endocrine disruptors, and the Heritage Foundation used the same term a few months ago to lobby for a federal review of birth control.

It's not hard to connect the dots: Republicans are using the same catch-all phrase—incorrectly—to lump medications they don’t approve of together with the forever chemicals and pesticides that actually can impact fertility.

And labeling birth control as contaminants and endocrine disruptors doesn’t just open the door to future restrictions—it gives credibility to the long-running conservative lie that hormonal contraception is dangerous, a lie that’s flooded social media in recent years.

Can the gov’t really surveil abortion & birth control pills in the water?

Yes.

Former EPA officials have told The New York Times that their technology could “help identify a particular street or home where the pills were used.” It’s a troubling thought, especially in a moment when pregnancy-related arrests and legislation to punish abortion patients are on the rise. And as law professor Mary Ziegler noted:

“The concerning thing about identifying mifepristone in wastewater is that it could potentially lead to a much more robust set of cases, which would lead to a much more robust set of prosecutions.”

That said—just because the technology exists, it doesn’t mean it’s readily available. Not yet, at least. What’s far more likely right now is broader surveillance via state testing and reporting. That’s the first step—and exactly what this EPA action is designed to enable.

It’s not a coincidence that calls to test the water come alongside a surge in bills and policies designed to collect data on abortion patients: some states are pushing to make abortion records public, like birth or death certificates; others are requiring patients to answer invasive questions whose answers get reported directly to the state. Water testing is just one more piece of a coordinated campaign to build a reproductive surveillance state—one where patients feel watched and afraid.

What’s up with the EPA?

Earlier this month, the EPA released a list of 374 drugs that states and counties should monitor in their drinking water—including several forms of hormonal contraception and abortion medications. While the EPA isn’t demanding any regulations right now, the agency calls their list “a critical tool…that drives research, funding, and future decisions on regulating emerging threats in public water systems.” In other words, it’s meant to enable local leaders, agencies, and lawmakers to do the regulating.

As U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden wrote in a letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, the goal is to “weaponize environmental regulations to push a backdoor ban on contraception and medications used for abortion care.”

Also notable: abortion medications misoprostol and methotrexate are on the list, but mifepristone isn’t. Yet. Wyden points out that the EPA opened a 60-day public comment period—a barely-veiled invitation for anti-abortion groups “to flood the agency with demands to target mifepristone.” Which is exactly what SFL is already doing.

What’s most important to know? This is all deliberate, and the EPA caved to anti-abortion pressure.

So how do we fight back?

Take it seriously. Too often, people hear “drinking abortions” and check out—and I get it, it’s absurd. But if it’s not too absurd for the EPA, then we can’t let legislators, reporters, researchers, or voters laugh it off.

Speak up—often. Remind people the goal isn't to protect the environment—it’s to surveil communities, target contraception, and punish women.

Don’t shy away from the gross details. Republicans are trying to hide the horror of this tactic inside boring water regulation committees. But what they’re actually proposing—catch kits, forcing women to bag up their blood and tissue—is grotesque. Whether you’re talking to a reporter, legislator, activist, or neighbor, make it impossible for them to avoid the disgusting reality.

Focus on catch kits. At AED, we’ve had a lot of success in getting the right kind of press attention by calling this so-called “clean water” legislation what it really is: “catch kit bills.” The name is memorable enough to travel on social media and in press coverage—and it forces anti-abortion lawmakers to confront the reality of what they’re actually proposing.

Highlight the hypocrisy. If this is really about clean water, why does so much of the legislation only target abortion patients? Why do certain pregnancy losses get to skip the horror of the catch kit requirement? Could it be because this isn’t about the environment at all?

Find allies. Anti-abortion groups didn’t just invent a conspiracy theory—they successfully lobbied the federal government into treating it as a legitimate regulatory concern. Environmental organizations and anyone who cares about the integrity of public health policy should be paying attention to this.

Think long-term. Nothing on this EPA list is going to happen tomorrow—but that doesn’t make it any less urgent. The anti-abortion movement plans ten and twenty years out. (Think ‘Baby Olivia’ bills—they’re playing the long game.) They know changing environmental regulations takes time, and they’re willing to be patient. We need to do the same.

Don’t get caught up in fear. They’re trying to create a chilling effect. It wasn’t enough to insert themselves into the exam room, now the anti-abortion movement wants to terrorize women in their own homes.

Fuck that, and fuck them.