The EPA followed up on an unusual request about abortion pills

WASHINGTON — Senior officials at the Environmental Protection Agency directed scientists over the summer to assess whether the government could develop methods for detecting traces of abortion pills in wastewater — a practice sought by anti-abortion activists seeking to restrict the medication.

The highly unusual request appears to have originated from a letter sent from 25 Republican members of Congress to Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, asking the agency to investigate how the abortion drug mifepristone might be contaminating the water supply.

“Are there existing EPA-approved methods for detecting mifepristone and its active metabolites in water supplies?” the lawmakers asked at the end of the public letter, sent June 18, an effort led by Sen. James Lankford and Rep. Josh Brecheen, both of Oklahoma. “If not, what resources are needed to develop these testing methods?”

Scientists who specialize in chemical detection told the senior officials that there are currently no EPA-approved methods for identifying mifepristone in wastewater — but that new methods could be developed, according to two people familiar with the events, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

Abortion pills have emerged as a major focus for the anti-abortion movement since the fall of Roe v. Wade, as growing numbers of women in states with abortion bans have turned to websites and underground networks that send the pills through the mail, allowing them to circumvent the laws.

The widespread availability of abortion pills — which women usually take at home in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy — has inspired many anti-abortion activists to push for new approaches to curtail their use. That has included a campaign by one prominent group to raise awareness about environmental harms they say are caused when the medication and fetal remains enter the sewage system.

The medication, now used in over 50% of abortions, essentially prompts a miscarriage, and women sometimes pass fetal remains into the toilet. There is no evidence that abortion pills contaminate Americans’ water supply, and environmental experts have dismissed such claims.

It is not clear what became of the EPA scientists’ review, though there is no sign that any methods are under development for detecting mifepristone in wastewater. A spokesperson for Lankford said the office had not received a response to the lawmakers’ letter as of Friday. EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch did not respond to a question about the status of the work inside the agency, saying in a statement that the EPA was merely reacting to the lawmakers’ inquiry.

“EPA is frequently asked questions by Congress and the agency does, in fact, do due diligence to try to locate answers and prepare replies,” Hirsch said.

Some anti-abortion activists have been frustrated by the lack of action on the issue by the Trump administration this year, with many surprised last week when the Food and Drug Administration approved a generic version of mifepristone.

But several former EPA officials who had worked on water quality and chemical detection issues expressed concern upon learning that agency scientists had been asked to explore the potential for detecting the drug. Some said that the general technology they had developed for testing wastewater could be used for surveillance in states where abortion is illegal. In an extreme case, the people said, wastewater testing could help identify a particular street or home where the pills were used, though such measures would be legally fraught and extremely costly.

“They could isolate it to an apartment building or a school or a public building,” said Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, a former top official at EPA’s Office of Research and Development who worked at the agency for 40 years and left in 2021. “Could they go so far as to isolate it from an individual house? It’s unclear if that’s legal.”

Legal experts who specialize in abortion noted that wastewater testing technology could potentially be used to help surface cases necessary for enforcing abortion laws, allowing anti-abortion activists and district attorneys to identify particular areas where abortion pills have been used. Since the abortion bans took effect, even the most conservative prosecutors have struggled to find specific instances of women receiving pills — which they need in order to bring charges against doctors and others who help facilitate those abortions.

“The enforcement struggle is real,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. “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.”

When he heard what had been asked of his former colleagues, one scientist who had left the EPA in the last year said he immediately questioned the potential consequences of the technology he had spent years developing. Speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution, he described a “sinking feeling” that he and his colleagues had “accidentally built the Death Star.”

Leaders of Students for Life of America, a major anti-abortion group that helped organize the letter from Congress to the EPA, said the organization was not at all interested in using wastewater testing to trace mifepristone use back to particular women. Rather, the group said, the goal is to expose environmental harms it believes stem from abortion-related waste.

“Students for Life is not a prosecution-of-women organization,” said Kristi Hamrick, the group’s vice president of media and policy. “That’s not what we’re looking for.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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