Senior officials at the Environmental Protection Agency directed a team of scientists over the summer to assess whether the government could develop methods for detecting traces of abortion pills in wastewater — a practice sought by some anti-abortion activists seeking to restrict the medication now used in over 50 percent of abortions.
The highly unusual request appears to have originated from a letter sent from 25 Republican members of Congress to Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, asking the agency to investigate how the abortion drug mifepristone might be contaminating the water supply.
“Are there existing E.P.A.-approved methods for detecting mifepristone and its active metabolites in water supplies?” the lawmakers asked at the end of the public letter, sent on June 18, an effort led by Senator James Lankford and Representative 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 E.P.A.-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 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 E.P.A. scientists’ review, though there is no sign that any methods are under development for detecting mifepristone in wastewater. A spokesman for Senator Lankford said the office had not received a response to the lawmakers’ letter as of Friday. The E.P.A. 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 E.P.A. was merely reacting to the lawmakers’ inquiry.
“E.P.A. is frequently asked questions by Congress and the agency does, in fact, do due diligence to try to locate answers and prepare replies,” Ms. 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 E.P.A. 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 E.P.A.’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 E.P.A. in the last year said he immediately questioned the potential consequences of the technology he had spent years developing. Speaking on 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 E.P.A., 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.”
Ms. Hamrick said she was thrilled that the E.P.A. had started looking into these questions. “This is long overdue,” she said, adding that the government had been “absolutely negligent” by granting what she called a “de facto permit for abortion pollution.”
A spokesman for Mr. Lankford said that scientific research into the effects of mifepristone on the environment “should not be controversial.”
“While federal regulators are quick to study the impact of chemicals in our water and septic systems, they have ignored the environmental and public health consequences of widespread chemical abortion,” the spokesman said.
It is appropriate and not uncommon for the E.P.A. to receive requests from Congress to conduct research on pollutants in water, said Elizabeth Southerland, a former official in the E.P.A.’s Office of Water who worked at the agency for 30 years and left in 2017. “But this request is off the charts,” Ms. Southerland said. “We often got letters from congressional representatives asking for a new analytical method, but it was because they had a known situation of contamination or pollution.”
To identify chemicals in a water sample, scientists use a specialized tool to measure their mass — a precise number that is typically shared by only a handful of chemicals out of millions of possibilities. This kind of wastewater surveillance technology has been used to assess how much fentanyl is circulating in a community. It was also used during the coronavirus pandemic to measure the spread of the virus — with scientists able to pinpoint specific areas with high levels of infection.
Students for Life doubled down on a campaign that focused on wastewater several months after Roe was overturned. In several letters to government agencies, the organization said that trace amounts of abortion pills and fetal remains in wastewater could arguably injure people, animals, and the environment. At a private meeting in November 2022, Students for Life employees expressed frustration that government officials were not screening wastewater for abortion pills, ultimately resolving to hire “student investigators” to test the water on their own.
The group is now pursuing a more extensive study on the topic, Ms. Hamrick said.
The campaign gained little traction under the Biden administration. In the spring of 2024, a letter from 11 members of Congress, including Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, now the secretary of state, asked the E.P.A. administrator to answer a series of general questions on how the rising use of abortion pills might affect the water supply.
When the request came in from Mr. Rubio’s office, the E.P.A.’s Office of Research and Development did look into whether any previous research had been done on the matter and found that it had not, according to two former E.P.A. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. The office did not initiate any new research into the topic, the two officials said.
This year’s version of the letter was more pointed, going one step further and specifically asking what resources the E.P.A. would need to test for mifepristone in water.
“We commend this administration’s dedication to protecting life and safeguarding public health,” the letter begins.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Caroline Kitchener is a Times reporter, writing about the American family.
Coral Davenport covers energy and environment policy, with a focus on climate change, for The Times.
The post Under Trump, E.P.A. Explored if Abortion Pills Could Be Detected in Wastewater appeared first on New York Times.
