Published in partnership with the Center for Media and Democracy
In the escalating war on women and their right to bodily autonomy, some right-wing groups are pushing a peculiar claim about abortion-inducing drugs—namely, that the most commonly used synthetic steroid, mifepristone, is contaminating the country’s water supply.
Yet reproductive rights groups, environmentalists, and scientists are quick to point out that claims of concern over “water purity” and “ecological degradation” are nothing more than a weaponization of environmental laws in order to restrict access to mifepristone and reduce the number of safe abortions performed in the United States.
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“There is absolutely no evidence that this is an environmental issue,” Nathan Donley, the Center for Biological Diversity’s environmental health science director, told PolitiFact. “Pharmaceutical waste can be a big issue when we’re talking about widely used drugs, but to somehow point to mifepristone as a bad actor here is completely disingenuous.”
However, with anti-abortion proponents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Lee Zeldin at the helms of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), respectively, advocacy groups like Students for Life of America and Liberty Counsel Action continue to make inroads with the Trump administration and congressional Republicans in propagating this “greenwashed,” pseudoscientific narrative.
Attacks on Medication Abortion
Most medication abortions in the U.S. involve a two-pill regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol, a medication primarily used to reduce stomach acid and cause the uterus to contract. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—a federal agency overseen by HHS—approved mifepristone for use in medication abortion in 2000, marking a major turning point in women’s health care. Currently, the FDA approves usage of the drug up until 10 weeks of gestation, with some providers routinely prescribing it through 11 or 12 weeks.
The use of abortion-inducing drugs that are administered at home has increased significantly over the past decade, in part due to the COVID pandemic from 2020 to 2023 and the Supreme Court decision to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion in 2022. During the pandemic, the FDA issued an April 2021 order that the drugs could be prescribed over telehealth, lifting the requirement that medical professionals see patients in person.
The FDA made that order permanent in early 2023, and despite legal challenges from anti-abortion activists, those guidelines remain in place. Immediately after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, trigger laws banning abortion went into effect in 13 states, with 17 other states indicating either hostility to or an unwillingness to protect abortion access.
Still, despite the Supreme Court decision and the best efforts of the anti-abortion movement, abortion rates in the U.S. have not meaningfully decreased in the past few years. In fact, data from the Guttmacher Institute shows that abortions facilitated by clinicians actually increased by 21 percent between 2020 and 2025, and that a rise in medication abortion accounts for the majority of that change, constituting 63 percent of all U.S. abortions in 2023.
Unlike surgical abortion procedures, medication abortion has been much more difficult to restrict at the state level. Even though laws in three states (Florida, Oklahoma, and Texas) explicitly prohibit providers from mailing abortion drugs, women living in other states with restrictive or total bans can still access FDA-approved medication to terminate a pregnancy. Research shows that in states with total abortion bans, more people are accessing these drugs via telehealth than are traveling out of state for care.
Not surprisingly, the continued availability of medication abortion is now the primary target of anti-abortion activists. Most recently, Louisiana sued to roll back the FDA telehealth order for mifepristone, classifying the medication as a controlled substance and claiming that it is too dangerous to be dispensed this way. In May, a divided Supreme Court blocked a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals order, restoring current FDA guidelines nationwide for now.
Students for Life of America
Students for Life of America (SFLA), a nonprofit organization pushing for the elimination of all forms of abortion in all circumstances, stands at the forefront of anti-mifepristone advocacy.
SFLA traces its origins to a college student–run initiative started in the late 1980s before it was taken over in 2006 by Kristan Hawkins, its current president. Hawkins has overseen explosive growth in total revenue and expenses during her two decades at the helm, expanding the nonprofit from a budget of less than $200,000 in total revenue to over $17 million in 2024.
The organization claims to have more than 1,300 campus groups across the country, and to have “trained more than 100,000 students on pro-life topics.”
Like most nonprofit organizations, the majority of SFLA’s funding is obscured. A financial analysis of IRS Form 990s conducted by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) found that seven of the top eight foundations contributing the most to SFLA between 2020 and 2024 are donor-advised funds, which allow people to make charitable contributions anonymously.
A total of almost $6.5 million came via these foundations in this four-year period, including $2.1 million from Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, almost $2 million from Schwab Charitable Fund, almost $1 million from National Christian Charitable Foundation, $895,000 from California Community Foundation, and just over $458,000 from Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program.
SFLA launched its associated political lobbying arm, Students for Life Action (SFL Action), in 2019 to help elect anti-abortion candidates to state and federal offices, write model legislation, and further its anti-abortion goals through direct canvassing of voters. Last month, the group again lobbied Congress to push for “defunding” Planned Parenthood by rescinding federal reimbursements for the health care it provides low-income patients. In April, SFL Action followed up on its previous efforts to get the EPA to reclassify mifepristone as a “forever chemical” along the lines of PFAs.
Weaponizing Environmental Policy
In the summer of 2020, in response to the FDA proposal to amend its guidelines to allow mifepristone to be prescribed over telehealth, SFLA launched thisischemicalabortion.com, a website and associated campaign alleging that the medication is potentially harmful to women. The site alleged that in allowing telehealth prescriptions the FDA would be “cutting out health and safety standard[s]” and putting patients at risk of “injury, infection, lost fertility and even death.”
According to the American Medical Association, hundreds of peer-reviewed clinical studies and decades of evidence-based research have underscored the safety of mifepristone. In fact, its safety profile is comparable to that of ibuprofen, the common over-the-counter analgesic, with studies showing that less than one-third of 1 percent of patients experience any serious adverse reactions to mifepristone.
A tactical shift in SFLA’s approach began to emerge several months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, with references to the “environmental impact” of mifepristone suddenly surfacing on their site, along with allegations that using it for abortions results in “human remains, tissue, and potent chemicals” entering the wastewater system.
“It’s time to call on the FDA to investigate and hold the line on chemical abortion pill regulation to protect the people and the planet,” the SFLA site proclaimed.
In November 2022, SFLA announced that the organization had filed a citizen petition demanding that the FDA modify the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) for mifepristone so that prescribers would be required by law to give patients a “medical waste bag and catch-kit” with all mifepristone prescriptions. In other words, doctors and other medical professionals would be held responsible for disposing of fetal tissue, which would be treated as medical waste.
In its press release, SFLA alleged that “tainted blood, tissue, and human remains” were being “flushed away” into sewer systems.
“We’re calling on an environmentally concerned Congress and state legislators to support Red Bag Medical Waste disposal of tainted human remains, to protect aquatic life, endangered species, and our food supply from the deadly consequences of Chemical Abortion Pills,” Hawkins said in the release.
In the years since, SFLA has largely stuck with this “environmentally conscious” framework as a means of pushing elected officials to restrict access to mifepristone.
In April 2023, the group filed another petition, this one requesting that the FDA halt access to mifepristone until the agency studies whether trace amounts of the drug in wastewater might impact “endangered or threatened species or designated critical habitats.” Five more citizen petitions from SFLA have followed since then, all of which include language about “preserving waterways” and “protecting endangered species.”
Today, SFLA routinely makes sweeping claims about the supposed environmental hazards stemming from medication abortion, encompassing everything from contamination of drinking water to endangered species habitat degradation to human “endocrine disruption.”
Despite these alarmist claims, the evidence behind them is exceedingly thin. For instance, SFLA frequently cites and misrepresents a 20-year-old U.S. Geological Survey study in service of bolstering its anti-mifepristone message. While this study does indicate that trace amounts of pharmaceutical chemicals can be found in the environment, including by way of human excretion, the study did not test for or analyze the presence of mifepristone per se.
“While there is growing concern over wastewater contamination from widely used pharmaceuticals such as anti-inflammatory drugs, antibiotics, and analgesics, there is no evidence that mifepristone and other abortifacients are present in wastewater systems or that such presence would pose risks,” writes Melanie Benesh, vice president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, in Undark.
Donley of the Center for Biological Diversity points out that focusing on the potential presence of mifepristone distracts from other serious threats to water quality, including pesticides, lead, nitrate, and actual PFAs.
“There are legitimate water quality threats that we need to attack and rectify in a regulatory manner,” he told The 19th. “And then there are things [like mifepristone] that are out in left field [and] just distract people.”
SFLA’s other big talking point is that bodily tissue from at-home medication abortions contaminates the environment when it’s flushed into public wastewater systems. But any tissue that enters wastewater systems is processed through the standard sanitation steps taken at water treatment plants. In addition, its call to require women to use medical waste bags and catch kits for all self-induced abortions necessarily applies to miscarriages as well—a touchy subject that SFLA avoids addressing.
Surprisingly, an SFLA leader acknowledged weaponizing environmental policy to achieve its anti-abortion goals. Vice President Kristi Hamrick disclosed at the organization’s 2025 annual conference that this strategy was developed after many years of relatively unproductive lobbying of state and federal lawmakers to restrict mifepristone access through the legislative process.
This approach “is not because the environment was my first weapon of choice,” Hamrick told conference attendees. “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.”
In Sync With the Trump Administration
SFLA’s citizen petitions to the FDA in 2022 and 2023 fell on deaf ears in the Biden administration, but Donald Trump’s re-election in 2024 presented a promising path forward.
HHS Secretary Kennedy has often claimed that male fertility (as indicated through sperm counts) is rapidly declining around the world due to environmental factors. In addition, his well-documented history of actively spreading anti-vax misinformation is indicative of his general distrust of pharmaceuticals.
EPA Secretary Zeldin also has a well-established anti-abortion track record. As a congressman, he typically voted along Republican Party lines to oppose abortion and signed a 2020 amicus curiae brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.
In June 2025, SFLA persuaded 25 right-wing members of Congress to send a letter requesting that the EPA investigate the “potential contaminant effects” of mifepristone on the country’s water supply. Lawmakers asked whether the EPA has “approved methods for detecting mifepristone and its active metabolites in water supplies,” and if not, what additional resources would be needed to do so.
SFLA was “thrilled” with the EPA’s positive response to the congressional request. “This is long overdue,” Hamrick told the New York Times a few months later, noting that the government had been “absolutely negligent” by granting what she dubbed a “de facto permit for abortion pollution.”
Politico reported in December 2025 that officials from the EPA’s Office of Water had met with SFLA the preceding month, apparently encouraging the organization to take advantage of the public comment period for its updated list of unregulated water contaminants, which it revises every five years.
The Office of Water maintains this “unregulated contaminants list” and requires public utilities to track the chemicals in drinking water, which provides the EPA with nationwide data on the impact of these chemicals on the public water supply.
Hamrick disclosed to Politico that the EPA told her it was too late in the process to include mifepristone on the proposed list of water contaminants but that SFLA could use the public comment period to push for adding the active metabolites in mifepristone to that list.
SFLA appears to have taken that suggestion and run with it, launching a campaign late last year. The organization asked its supporters to submit comments in support of the EPA adding mifepristone to the contaminants list, which would mandate testing for the active metabolites of mifepristone in waterways.
But the demand was specious. No chemical can be added to the unregulated contaminants list unless there is a standardized, proven testing method available to track it. No such method for testing the active metabolites in mifepristone has been used, though former EPA scientists admit that it’s theoretically possible to do that.
Nonetheless, SFLA claims to have collected more than 1,700 public comments before the comment period closed.
Parallel Legislative Efforts
As much as SFLA has lobbied federal agencies, it has simultaneously been working on parallel legislative efforts at the federal and state levels.
The organization routinely drafts and publishes anti-abortion model policies, which it provides to state lawmakers across the country. In the past two years, one model bill in particular, the Clean Water for All Life Act, has been introduced at least 11 times in eight states.
The bill relies on the same false “environmental protection” concerns, and compels women who terminate their pregnancy with medication to use medical waste kits. In addition, the language bans telehealth abortion care.
The two most recent versions of the bill, AB 718 and SB 734, were introduced in Wisconsin by Rep. Lindee Brill (R-27) and Sen. André Jacque (R-1), respectively, using the same title supplied by SFLA. Neither one progressed very far in their respective chambers, but emails obtained by CMD through records requests reveal how closely SFLA has been working with Brill, a freshman representative.
In addition to writing the model bill, SFLA supplied her with the quote that eventually appeared in an SFLA press release about AB 718. Emails also indicate that SFLA paid for Brill’s airfare and accommodations for at least two anti-abortion events this year, including one in late January and another in mid-June. She was a speaker at both.
Maine Rep. Reagan Paul (R-37) introduced the Clean Water for All Life Act (LD 887) in that state last year, but it was voted down in floor votes in both chambers. She was also a speaker at SFLA’s late-January and mid-June events.
On the flip side, SFLA celebrated a major legislative achievement this year with the introduction of the Clean Water for All Life Act at the federal level. Illinois Rep. Mary Miller (R) introduced the bill in mid-March, where it was immediately referred to the Judiciary Committee, with no further action to date.
“The murder-for-profit abortion industry has completely ignored the dangerous and unethical disposal of pre-born baby remains and toxic chemical waste produced by abortion pills,” Miller said in the press statement announcing the legislation. “I introduced the Clean Water for All Life Act to put an end to their reckless and inhumane practices.”
The group’s environmental gambit seems to be gaining momentum. In early June, 14 Republican state attorneys general joined 19 Republican congressional lawmakers in again submitting letters urging the EPA to reclassify mifepristone as a “water contaminant.” The letters bear a striking resemblance to the petitions and model policies routinely put forward by SFLA.
