THE SET-UP: It’s been said that “water is life.” Now the EPA is going to find out if water is Pro-Life.
According to The New York Times, “senior officials” ordered a “team of scientists” to develop a test they can use to find mifepristone in America’s wastewater. They’re responding to a “highly unusual request” made by twenty-five Congressional Republicans in a letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. The letter was spearheaded by Oklahoma Senator and ordained Baptist Minister James Lankford. In it, the group wrote:
“[M]ifepristone is a potent progesterone blocker that disrupts hormonal balance in pregnant women to induce abortion. This raises questions about the drug’s potential endocrine-disrupting effects when present in drinking water supplies. If residual amounts of the drug and its metabolites persist in wastewater, prolonged exposure could potentially interfere with a person’s fertility, regardless of sex.”
Lankford made his case last June on Tony Perkins’ radio show:
[A]s gross as it sounds, much of our sewage water ends up being filtered and ends up being drinking water downstream. But that process doesn’t take out everything. The PFAS, we talk about forever chemicals, that’s still in the system. Medications often are still in the system or other chemicals that are in our sewage go straight into our streams and creeks. and it ends up going downstream. We have no idea the environmental impacts of mifepristone because the EPA has never studied that before. What happens when it gets recycled back into our drinking water? Does that affect future fertility? Can that cause miscarriages? We don’t know because that’s never been studied.
Perkins is the long-serving head of The Family Research Council. Originally founded by the infamous Dr. James Dobson, the FRC has been at the forefront of the political Evangelical movement since 1983. Perkins is, of course, vehemently opposed to the “abortion pill” and it appears that this might be an effort to rope the EPA into back door effort to get the pill banned and, perhaps, to simultaneously generate outrage over the potential contamination of water by chemical abortions.
The Pro-Life website Lifenews.com, which agreed with the NYTimes’ characterization of the requested intervention as “highly unusual,” explained the rationale:
[T]he agency typically focuses on broader contaminants like PFAS chemicals rather than specific pharmaceuticals. But pro-life groups hailed the inquiry as a critical step toward exposing the hidden environmental toll of chemical abortions, which now account for nearly two-thirds of all U.S. abortions, killing millions of babies. They argue that mifepristone, a potent progesterone blocker, and the remains of aborted babies are flushed into sewage systems, evading proper medical waste protocols and polluting downstream water supplies.
It’s something of Hail Mary Pass given the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2024. Despite the Pro-Life bent of the Court, it preserved access to the pill by default when it dismissed a case activists hoped would lead to the pill’s demise. Instead, the dismissal left the pill in the hands of the FDA. Although RFK Jr. pledged to review the drug, the FDA “quietly” approved a generic version of mifepristone just days before the government shutdown.
The irony, of course, is that Pro-Life Evangelicals and groups like the Family Research Council tend to be hostile toward the EPA, environmental regulations and anything that prioritizes the environment. They were silent when science established the downstream effects of Americans’ use of antidepressants on ecosystems and wildlife:
Amid decades of growing use, one subtle side effect has emerged: the drugs are showing up in rivers, lakes, and streams around the world where fish are swimming in them. Even vanishingly small concentrations of these drugs can change fish’s brains and alter their behavior.
“It’s been shown for so many different species, and for almost all of the SSRIs, that they have effects at very low concentrations,” says behavioral ecologist Tomas Brodin. “And we find them virtually wherever we take water samples.”
Brodin and a cadre of scientists are sounding the alarm about the growing threat antidepressants and other psychoactive medications pose to wildlife. By changing how fish hunt, evade predators, and mate, these drugs can threaten entire populations and ecosystems. And because we draw drinking water from these very rivers and streams, it may one day affect us as well.
As such, it’s a clever ploy. Then again, the EPA has done nothing to regulate antidepressants nor, given recent Supreme Court rulings, does it have the power to do so without Congressional action. That may be their long game. If the EPA can manufacture fear of abortion pills making men infertile because the water is tainted, maybe they could get a law passed?
The most telling part of this ploy is the repeated association with PFAS. It’s a widely-known and feared “forever chemical” that has millions of Americans concerned and calling for government action. Trump’s EPA has gone back and forth on proposed regulations of PFAS chemicals, in no small part because the otherwise gutted EPA is in thrall to the chemical industry, which has a revolving door between it and the agency.
Ironically enough, the great Sharon Lerner of ProPublica published an report today on the EPA’s refusal to release a completed…
…report on the toxicity of a “forever chemical” called PFNA, which is in the drinking water systems serving some 26 million people. The assessment found that PFNA interferes with human development by causing lower birth weights and, based on animal evidence, likely causes damage to the liver and to male reproductive systems, including reductions in testosterone levels, sperm production and the size of reproductive organs.
I’d be shocked if the Family Research Council made a stink about Zeldin’s unwillingness to let that report see the light of day. - jp
EPA Moves To Roll Back Drinking Water Standards
https://www.newsweek.com/epa-drinking-water-pfas-standards-10839033
Amid Rollbacks on Environmental Protections, the EPA Goes the Other Way on Delaware River Water Quality
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06102025/delaware-river-water-quality-environmental-protections/
Trump EPA officials order scientists at Office of Water to stop publishing research, report says
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-epa-scientists-water-research-b2830523.html
Lead pipe projects face delays amid EPA funding holdup
https://www.eenews.net/articles/lead-pipe-projects-face-delays-amid-epa-funding-holdup/
Healey rips EPA over delays in lead removal funding
https://www.salemnews.com/news/state_news/healey-rips-epa-over-delays-in-lead-removal-funding/article_a9904f40-e2af-5220-a532-f4fd7efb715d.html
Court dismisses Texas farmers’ PFAS suit against EPA
https://www.agdaily.com/news/court-tosses-texas-farmers-pfas-suit-against-epa/
Court Dismisses Suit Forcing EPA to Regulate PFAS in Sludge
https://southernmarylandchronicle.com/2025/10/07/court-dismisses-suit-forcing-epa-to-regulate-pfas-in-sludge/
Let’s Fact Check the Environmental Protection Agency
https://www.earthday.org/lets-fact-check-the-environmental-protection-agency/
So devious