Study: Abortion pills tainting water supply, posing ‘potential health risks’

A new study says the abortion drug mifepristone has reached environmental water and household tap water in three U.S. cities.

As a result, pro-life advocates are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to test water across the country and study possible risks to women, unborn children, animals and the public.

Mifepristone blocks progesterone, a hormone that helps the placenta remain attached to the uterus so an unborn child can survive. After taking mifepristone for an abortion, a woman can take misoprostol, which causes contractions that expel the baby and placental tissue. Since women often have these abortions at home, blood, tissue, the remains of unborn children and drug residue can enter toilets and sewage systems.

Issues in Law & Medicine published the study, “Anti-Progesterone in Environmental Water,” on July 20.

Researchers Michael Varveris, M.D., and Elise Rose, Ph.D., collected 36 samples from Austin, Texas; Blacksburg, Virginia; and Carbondale, Illinois. In each city, they took four samples upstream from a wastewater plant, four downstream from the plant and four from household taps.

A laboratory in the Netherlands received the samples without information about where the researchers had collected them. The lab used a cell test called PR CALUX to measure chemicals that block progesterone receptors.

The study found anti-progesterone activity equivalent to up to 41 parts per trillion of mifepristone. The highest tap-water sample reached 39 parts per trillion in Austin. All four tap samples in Austin and Carbondale showed more anti-progesterone activity than the control samples under the study’s ranking test. Two of the four Blacksburg tap samples fell below the test’s detection limit.

The researchers also found normal wastewater treatment did not consistently reduce the anti-progesterone activity.

“Because of the importance of progesterone for human and animal health, the presence of anti-progesterone in environmental and tap water poses potential health risks,” Rose said in a statement. “Everyone should be concerned that we are possibly being exposed to an endocrine-disrupting compound without our consent.”

The Guttmacher Institute says chemical abortions made up 63% of all abortions in America in 2023. It counted about 642,700 chemical abortions that year.

Students for Life of America helped drive the water-testing effort and sent the study to EPA after its release.

“Not only does this show that we were right all along – some of us are drinking other people’s abortions – but it also shows the EPA that there is a test for mifepristone, as that is one of the criteria the agency considers when adding something to a tracking list,” Students for Life president Kristan Hawkins said in a release.

Heartlander News reported last fall about how the EPA had already opened a review of abortion-pill pollution after 25 Republican members of Congress pressed the agency for answers. EPA scientists told federal officials at the time that the agency had no approved method for testing water for mifepristone.

The pressure has since grown. On June 5, 14 state attorneys general and 19 members of Congress sent separate requests asking EPA to place mifepristone on its sixth Contaminant Candidate List.

The EPA’s draft list covers drugs as a broad group but does not name mifepristone. The list helps the agency decide which unregulated contaminants need more study and may require federal limits later.

The test measured all anti-progesterone activity together and reported it as mifepristone equivalents. The authors want broader testing to name the exact chemicals, including five known byproducts of mifepristone, and determine their effects.

The study provides the EPA with new evidence it lacked when it began its review. Pro-life advocates say the government now must find out how far this pollution has spread and whether it threatens wildlife and the public.