Episode Details

The EPA has officially added abortion medication and hormonal birth control to a federal drinking water contaminants watch list, announced jointly by RFK Jr. and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin as a Make America Healthy Again initiative.

This is the administration that pulled out of the Paris Agreement, gutted wetland protections, approved a 211-mile mining road through a national park, and is actively expanding fossil fuels and coal. But birth control in the water is where they draw the line. Students for Life ran a fake environmental campaign for years claiming women are putting abortion medication in the drinking water. There is no science behind it.

Former EPA officials told the New York Times that existing wastewater surveillance technology can already identify abortion medication on a specific street or in a specific home. Law professor Mary Ziegler warns this could lead to a much more robust set of prosecutions.

The EPA just opened a 60-day public comment period, Senator Ron Wyden called it a barely-veiled invitation for anti-abortion groups to flood it with demands to add mifepristone. Comment deadline is June 1st. Tell them birth control and abortion medication are not environmental contaminants, there is no peer-reviewed science supporting this, and that listing them opens the door to surveilling women in their own homes.

If they’re flooding the comment period, we flood it too. Birth control being on this list is not an accident. More on that soon.

Here’s the link to leave a comment.

https://www.regulations.gov/docket/EPA-HQ-OW-2022-0946

Shoutout to Abortion, Every Day for reporting on this.