THE Clean Water for Life Actintroduced last week by Illinois Republican Rep. Mary Miller, looks like an environmental law. Its sponsors would have you believe that their goal is to protect our drinking water from contaminants. But the new bill is really just a subtle attack on medication abortion.
If passed, the law would place strange restrictions on medical abortions under the guise of dealing with “environmental contamination” associated with “abortion-related medical waste.”
Medication abortions should be completed in the “physical presence of a health care provider,” according to statement by Miller. (It is not clear whether this means that the prescription should be written in person or that the drug should be taken with the provider watching.)
The legislation would also require a medical examination of patients and the health care provider would have to provide “a medical waste kit and red bag disposal system, along with instructions to return the waste to a health care provider for proper handling.”
Essentially, this bill would end telehealth abortion care and mail order mifepristone. Anyone who somehow meets all of these requirements should collect whatever comes out of their vagina after a medical abortion and return it in person to the provider for disposal. All of this is supposed to save our water supply from contamination.
This is impossible, more than a little gross and downright cruel. While the legislation may be wrapped in seemingly progressive environmental language, it is clearly intended to punish abortion patients. Republicans in Congress tried to use bogus environmental arguments undermine abortion rights beforehowever when it comes to actual, known sources of pollution and contamination, their party is all about deregulation. It shows the hypocrisy of the GOP.
Mifepristone has no known environmental hazards
In a press release dated March 18, 2026;Miller argued that “more than 50 tons of chemically contaminated medical waste — including blood, placental tissue and human remains — are released into US water systems each year as a result of these drugs,” saying the statistic “raises serious concerns about environmental contamination.”
Miller must know this is untrue. THE New York Times reported in October 2025 that scientists told Republican lawmakers there is no EPA-approved way to detect mifepristone in wastewater.
As alleged evidence to support her claim, Miller cites Students for Life America, a youth group on a mission to “abolish abortion,” linking to its website on so-called “chemical” abortion. The site is full of statistics and graphics about how drugs can affect our groundwater.
Some of this information may be true. Traces of many drugs—from antibiotics and antidepressants, to contraceptives and steroids—end up in the water supply. Endocrine disruptors such as steroids have been found to reduce fertility in fish and even causes fish to change sex. Scientists are assessment of concerns that antibiotics in water may increase antibiotic resistance in some bacteria.
But like the Guttmacher Institutea policy and research organization specializing in sexual and reproductive health and rights explains, “there is no evidence to suggest that mifepristone harms the environment or human health.”
This probably explains why the anti-abortion organization Students for Life doesn’t cite sources for its claim that more than 50 tons of chemical waste from abortion ended up in our drinking water by 2024. One video mentions a “first-of-its-kind national study” that found traces of mifepristone in wastewater in several major cities, but I couldn’t find more information about that year. writers or whatever.
This conveniently makes it impossible to investigate or invalidate the claim.
Mifepristone helps thousands of people, harms zero fish
A medical abortion is an alternative to a procedural abortion, ie either suction or dilation and evacuation (D&E). Both are typical performed by a healthcare provider in a medical facility.
A patient can also self-administer a medical abortion. There were an estimated 642,700 medication abortions in the US in 2023—nearly two-thirds of all US abortions that year—according to Guttmacher.
Here’s how they work: Generally prescribed a pregnant woman two drugs. First, they take mifepristone, which stops the pregnancy by blocking progesterone. Between 12 and 24 hours later, they receive misoprostol, which causes the uterus to contract so that it can expel the accumulated blood and tissue.
(Read more: Mifepristone, misoprostol and abortion drugs: Experts explain how these drugs can be used to end a pregnancy)
Typically, about one to four hours after taking the second medication, patients will experience cramping and begin to bleed, according to Planned Parenthood. Some of what comes out may look like normal menstrual blood, but there will likely also be large blood clots that could be as big as a lemon. Bleeding can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days.
The fetus will also come out as part of this, although it may not be distinguishable from other tissues depending on how far along the person was in their pregnancy. Medical abortions are only approved up to the 10th week of pregnancy, so when Miller and her colleagues use phrases like “remnants of a preborn baby” in their account, it’s intentionally misleading. At ten weeks, a fetus weighs about 1.2 ounces and is about the size of a prune or small apricot. He is not a baby and he does not look like a baby.
a “catch kitwhich Miller wants to force patients to use is, apparently, a medical waste container, but I confess I don’t know exactly what it would look like. I once had to collect all my urine for 24 hours for a kidney test. I basically had to carry around a giant jug with a handle and pee in it whenever they had to put something similar on patients. The pans people use in hospitals This would be a problem for doctors to solve.
Either way, patients will have to sit on one of these things or hold it under their sinuses for hours to comply with this legislative proposal. (It’s not clear what they should do for the next few days, when the bleeding slows but doesn’t stop completely.) Then they should transfer whatever they “caught” into a medical waste bag or several bags. And finally, they should take the bags to their provider’s office.
Don’t drop it
Medical abortions have been done more popular in recent years as some states restricted access to abortion after its fall Roe v. Wade in 2022. They now make up about 63 percent of all abortions nationwide, up from 53 percent in 2020.
Abortion opponents hate this statistic. But direct attacks on abortion are very unpopularbecause as of March 2026, most people in the US support legal abortion in “most” or “all” cases—60 percent nationally, according to Pew Research. That figure includes 36 percent of Republicans, and with the midterms coming up, Republican lawmakers are trying to continue their anti-abortion agenda without alienating voters.
For years, Republicans have attacked mifepristone from every direction. Most of their attacks were based on outlined security concerns— false claims that the drug is dangerous, even though decades of research and millions of real-world uses worldwide disprove that claim. (Statistically, it’s safer than both Tylenol and Viagra.)
Now, they’re testing this environmental tactic. I don’t buy it, and neither should you. (Friends don’t let friends spread the word.)
Historically, Republican lawmakers have done nothing climate change, extinction of speciesor air or water quality. And today’s Republican Party is pretty much like that strongly anti-environmental as possible.
In 2025, the Trump-appointed Commissioner of the Environmental Protection Agency—the federal agency charged with protecting the environment—cut more than 400 grantsincluding funding earmarked for improvement of drinking water in some areas. House GOP members have introduced the LICENSE Act, which would do just that require states to lower water quality standards in the name of “economic efficiency”.
These are not people who care about your drinking water. They are, however, politicians who care a lot about what goes in — and out — of your vagina. And that’s none of their business.
