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Memos & Media Guidance
Republicans Want to Use Misleading Environmental Claims to Restrict Mifepristone Nationwide
TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Reproductive Freedom for All
RE: Republicans Want to Use Misleading Environmental Claims to Restrict Mifepristone Nationwide
DATE: Tuesday, March 24, 2026
Republicans Want to Use Misleading Environmental Claims to Restrict Mifepristone Nationwide
Anti-abortion lawmakers recently introduced the “Clean Water for All Life Act,” the first federal bill that seeks to restrict access to medication abortion under the guise of environmental protections. The bill would require an in-person exam before any medication abortion prescription and mandate that patients be provided a medical waste “catch kit” to dispose of the pregnancy, threatening health care providers who don’t comply with five years in prison.
This legislation would also prohibit providers from prescribing abortion pills via telemedicine, forcing patients in every state—including those where abortion is legal and protected—to see a provider in person to access medication they can currently receive by mail. GOP Representatives Mary Miller (IL), Diana Harshbarger (TN), and Sheri Biggs (SC) are behind the bill.
Anti-abortion groups, led by Students for Life of America, have run a dangerous pressure campaign to push junk science through federal environmental regulators claiming, without evidence, that mifepristone is contaminating the U.S. water supply. Last year, several states introduced similar legislation to require “catch kits,” despite the fact that there is no evidence to support the lie that medication abortion can be found in drinking water. In fact, an EPA study found that it would take “months to decades of drinking two liters of raw, untreated wastewater per day to expose a person to a single dose” of the most commonly prescribed medications. Today’s legislation is an escalation of anti-abortion extremists misleading and stigmatizing efforts to cloak surveillance and pregnancy criminalization in environmental concerns. Students for Life also intends to flood the EPA with public comments urging the agency to add mifepristone to its drinking water contaminant tracking list, which the agency plans to release in the coming months.
Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju released the following statement:
“This is an abortion restriction dressed up as environmental policy, and it’s the latest example of Republican lawmakers misusing regulations to push anti-abortion policies. Anti-abortion extremists know voters reject their agenda, so now they are lying and pushing junk science to track, surveil, and criminalize providers of medication abortion. This has nothing to do with clean water and everything to do with control.”
Last summer, 25 Republican members of Congress sent the EPA a letter prompting senior officials to direct scientists to research whether mifepristone could be detected in wastewater. Anti-abortion groups amplified the push at the state level, and last year South Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming introduced similar legislation.
The introduction of the Clean Water for All Life Act comes on the heels of Senator Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) bill last week that aims to revoke FDA approval of mifepristone and make it illegal to distribute nationwide. Both draw from debunked, anti-abortion propaganda.
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For over 55 years, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.
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