GOP bill would make women drink

House Republicans on Wednesday introduced a bill that would require any pregnant person who uses abortion pills to use “catch kits” when terminating their pregnancy.

The Clean Water for Life Act, introduced by Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), would make it illegal to flush the remains of abortions or miscarriages down a toilet “to protect both human dignity and America’s water systems,” according to a press release from Miller. The bill is the first of its kind to gain national traction, although it is unlikely to pass.

“The for-profit abortion industry is not only taking innocent lives, it is also contaminating our water, endangering women and operating with virtually no accountability,” Miller said during a news conference Wednesday.

“The fact is that the abortion pill ingredients used to starve an unborn child remain active and unfiltered in our water treatments,” he continued. “That means families across the country may be unknowingly ingesting abortion-related chemicals in their drinking water, exposing them to potential health risks such as infertility and cancer.”

The bill would also ban telehealth abortion care, or the ability to prescribe abortion pills by mail, and require women to use capture kits (which prevent fetal remains from going down the toilet after terminating a pregnancy) and take medical waste to their doctor. Penalties include a fine of $50,000 and up to five years in prison.

Michael B. Thomas via Getty Images

The federal bill uses environmental protection language to push an anti-abortion agenda, pressuring the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency to take action. Supporters of the bill claim that abortion medications, including mifepristone and misoprostol, are contaminating public drinking water after people throw away abortion leftovers.

“Babies deserve better, and many of us are exposed to contaminated drinking water,” Kristan Hawkins, president of the anti-abortion organization Students for Life of America, said in Miller’s news release.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a national reproductive health research organization, traces of all medications, including over-the-counter medications like ibuprofen, can be found in wastewater. But there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that abortion pills contaminate drinking water or harm the environment.

“Federal policymakers are pushing another bad-faith attempt to restrict medication abortion, this time repackaging anti-abortion misinformation as false concerns about water contaminants,” Anna Bernstein, senior federal policy advisor at the Guttmacher Institute, said in a statement this week.

“There is no evidence to support the claim that medical abortion impacts America’s waterways and drinking water,” Bernstein continued. “Instead of addressing well-documented sources of water contamination, this bill relies on false and misleading claims to further stigmatize abortion and undermine access.”

This is the latest in a long series of attacks on abortion pills by Republicans. Since the fall of federal abortion protections in 2022, abortion care rates have actually increased largely because pregnant people can access abortion pills through the mail, rather than going to a physical clinic.

Last week, anti-abortion advocate Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced a bill to ban the use of mifepristone for abortion nationwide. Once again, Hawley cited a trash scientific report that is often used in right-wing circles to spread misinformation about the supposed dangers of the abortion pill.