Weekly Spotlight: No, Abortion Pills are not in Your Water

A week in reproductive rights and far-right nonsense.

No, abortion pills are not poisoning your drinking water.

Cannot believe we have to say that, but here we are.

Anti-abortion campaigners in the US have been pushing the idea that mifepristone is contaminating the water supply and creating some kind of environmental crisis.

There is no evidence that abortion pills in drinking water are posing a danger to people.

Yet this week the US Environmental Protection Agency bowed to pressure and announced that mifepristone will be included in testing of drinking water, alongside contraception, hormones and more than 1,000 other chemicals.

The important bit is that this testing can show whether a chemical signature is present. It cannot tell you how much is there or whether it poses a health risk.

So this is not proof that abortion pills are “in the water” in any meaningful sense, despite the headlines.

The anti-abortion group, Students for Life has been pushing this line for years, and they have been pretty open about why.

At a conference last year, one of its vice-presidents talked about environmental law having “teeth”.

This is why it is worth paying attention even when the claim sounds completely bonkers.

Something starts on the fringe. It gets repeated enough. Politicians pick it up. Someone demands an investigation. Suddenly a federal agency is spending time on it.

Meanwhile, women are facing actual reproductive health risks.

New reporting from ProPublica and Texas Public Radio found that nearly 200 women died following ectopic pregnancies in the US between 2020 and 2025, almost double the number in the previous six years.

The increase started during the pandemic, so abortion bans do not explain all of it.

But since Roe was overturned, deaths involving ectopic pregnancy have been higher in states with strict abortion bans than in states without them.

In Texas, hospital data also showed an increase in patients experiencing substantial blood loss following ectopic pregnancy compared with pre-pandemic years.

An ectopic pregnancy can kill you and treatment is time-sensitive. But, doctors working under abortion bans have described delays and confusion around when they can intervene, despite ectopic pregnancies being exempt from those bans.

So we have invented panic over abortion pills in the water on one side, and very real women bleeding during pregnancy emergencies on the other.

Quite the set of priorities.

And yes, we should be paying attention here too.

Earlier this year, the Guardian reported on the Sanctuary, a Westminster political base backed by crypto billionaire Ben Delo.

It has provided space, networking and media facilities to a mix of right-wing political figures and groups. People connected to events there have included Reform figures, anti-immigration activists and Paul Coleman of Alliance Defending Freedom.

That does not mean everyone in the same room agrees on everything. It does show, again, that anti-abortion politics does not operate in isolation.

The same networks can overlap around abortion, migration, nationalism, “free speech”, feminism and the endless war on “woke”.

That is why we keep following the people, the money and the organisations, as well as the ridiculous claims.

Because “abortion pills are poisoning the water” sounds laughable.

Until it becomes something the government is actually testing for.

And that is the bit worth watching.