On June 5, 2026, Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway wrote to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on behalf of herself and 13 other state attorneys general questioning whether “the abortion pill[1]” was contaminating American water.

Do not dismiss the complaint as some pro-life ruse.  There has been a dramatic shift from surgical to pharmaceutical abortion.  The active agents in mifepristone – the first of the two “abortion pills” – remain active post-excretion, i.e., they enter public water systems.  The second pill induces contractions that result in expulsion of embryonic and fetal remains, along with other uterine contents.  They are usually lost in the patient’s toilet and flushed into the public water system (though there is anecdotal evidence from plumbers of increasing pipe obstructions).  That means active elements of mifepristone and misoprostol are entering public water.  As the attorneys general put it, “tons of chemically tainted medical waste [are] being flushed into American waterways.”

What does this mean?  It means that, if ambient concentrations of mifepristone reach “sufficient concentration,” it could affect pregnant women who unintentionally are exposed to it.  Nor is there clear research about how it could affect “reproductive organ development and fertility,” i.e., the next generation of young people entering puberty.

These are public health issues.  These are the same issues that are raised when it comes to levels of contaminants in public water supplies, including rivers and streams.  These are the same issues that were raised when people complained about being exposed to other people’s smoking.

Let me emphasize: these are public health issues. The public has a right to know about the larger impact of these drugs and the casual way in which they enter public waterways in exactly the same way that people came to know more about the toxicity of second-hand smoke.  That, after all, resulted in smoking being banned from most indoor spaces.

So, why aren’t you hearing about the “abortion pill” as a public health issue?  Because to hear about that would clash with the mythology of Big Abortion.  Big Abortion wants you to believe that the “abortion pill” makes abortion truly “private,” uniquely a woman’s decision.  Society has no business telling her what to do.  Apparently, society also should say nothing about the consequences it faces as a result of laissez-faire choice.

Abortion is a lucrative business.  Planned Parenthood juggles its books with accounting legerdemain to camouflage how dependent it is on its abortion revenue scheme.

The “abortion pill” is touted in some quarters as a miracle drug, a way to promote abortion without the visibility (and overhead) of abortion infrastructure, like clinics.  Abortionists see it as post-Dobbs salvation.  Dispense it virtually.  Claim little need for follow-up (which can be sloughed off to the local ER anyway).  Send it across state lines to subvert prolife jurisdictions whose restrictions cut into abortionists’ profits.   Separating abortion from its infrastructure not only cuts costs for abortionists but allows them to subvert prolife state laws.  Yes, it’s a miracle.

Not unlike the attitude towards “the Pill,” John Rock’s anovulant contraceptive that promised salvation from one’s own body and responsibility for what one does with it.  We won’t talk about the rise in estrogen levels in public waterways since that “miracle.”

Both “pills” function by manipulating hormonal balances in the female reproductive system.  Take note of that: both involve significant hormonal impacts.  Those hormones and their regulators have to go somewhere.  We tell people not to flush their used medications willy-nilly down the toilet but to take them to their pharmacy for proper disposal.  We recognize unregulated disposal of drugs into the environment is a biochemical hazard.  We even put signs on public wastewater sewers not to dump anything other than runoff rainwater so as not to contaminate watersheds (and even the rainwater is tainted by running along streets with droplets of motor oil).  But massive introduction of anti-progesterone medications into those same systems: no problem!  It’s just another “TRAP” (targeted restriction of abortion providers)!

As a public health issue, it’s also a social justice issue.  There’s been noise on the Catholic Left applauding Pope Leo’s new encyclical Magnifica humanitas as a welcome shift away from “pelvic theology” to “social justice.”  It supposedly marks the beginning of the end of the Church’s “preoccupation” with sex.

The fact that about 73 million abortions occur worldwide annually suggests that, far from being a preoccupation of ecclesiastical monopoly, the Church’s voice seems rather necessary.  The truth of Magnifica humanitas is not that AI might displace man-as-worker.  It is the far bigger temptation that technology can replace human morality, moral decision-making, and moral responsibility.  A “pill” will take care of our problems.  A computer can relieve our workload.  The truth Magnifica poses, in both instances, is: at what personal human cost?  And that – like mifepristone seepage into public waters – is as much a public as a personal concern.

[1] The term, like most abortionist rhetoric, is misleading.  The “abortion pill” is actually two drugs that essentially produce a miscarriage.  Mifepristone creates a hostile uterine environment that eventually denies the developing child nutrition, causing him to die.  Misoprostol then induces contractions to force delivery of the dead baby and uterine contents.