‘Weaponized environmentalism’? A Texas Republican wants to test wastewater for abortion medication

In Texas, a Republican senator just introduced a bill that would require wastewater treatment facilities to do some extra testing—essentially making guidelines more stringent than those currently federally mandated. 

While that might sound like an uncharacteristically environmentally forward cause for a Texas Republican, what the senator wants to test for may give you even greater pause: It’s the abortion medication mifepristone. 

On Monday, Senator Bryan Hughes of Texas’s first district introduced bill SB1976, which would require testing for a number of “urinary metabolites in the form of gluconates,” including hormones like testosterone; ethinyl estradiol (which is common in birth control pills); and mifepristone, aka the abortion pill.

While introducing the bill, Hughes told committee members that there is a particular concern around “endocrine-disrupting chemicals, such as those found in birth control,” not being removed during treatment that may reenter the water supply. He pointed to “abnormalities in pregnant women and children” as a result of those contaminants and said “a lot of research has been done on this.”

The interest in chemicals in wastewater makes sense. Experts agree that endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are concerning for humans and wildlife for a number of reasons. They may cause certain cancers or metabolic disorders, and last year, research from the Endocrine Society pointed to the possibility that girls may be starting puberty earlier due to EDCs.

And, worse, they’re essentially everywhere. They show up in personal care products, plastic, pesticides, industrial waste, and therefore, wastewater. Medications are excreted from humans into wastewater, not to mention from patients flushing leftover pills down the toilet. 

Some compounds are exceptionally tough to break down, too. Per the EPA’s 2009 Health Services Industry study, ‘‘synthetic compounds, such as pharmaceuticals, are often manufactured to be resistant to metabolic transformation. As a result, some pharmaceutical compounds that are present in the influent to POTWs (treatment facilities) may pass through treatment systems at conventional POTWs and discharge to receiving waters.’’

But if endocrine-disrupting chemicals are everywhere, where does the interest in mifepristone come from? 

Fast Company reached out to Senator Hughes to find out what evidence has been found to indicate that public safety depends on testing for mifepristone, or the chemical in birth control, but did not hear back by the time of publication. 

However, environmental experts are not convinced that bills like this make sense. Dr. Kimberly Garrett, PhD, MHP, an environmental toxicologist and postdoctoral researcher with Northeastern University’s Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute PFAS Project Lab, reviewed bill SB1976 and told Fast Company in a statement that it is “unscientific” and even called it “a form of weaponized environmentalism.” 

Garrett explained that while it may make sense to test for industrial chemicals—given that the main source of EDC pollution is from industrial and agricultural emissions—she doesn’t believe that is the bill’s goal. “Texas legislature is misappropriating environmental concerns about endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) to limit the reproductive health and choices of its residents,” she said.

Further, Garrett explained that the method proposed in the bill won’t address the problem of EDCs in wastewater. “Notably, the bill targets urinary metabolites rather than the chemicals themselves. Urinary metabolites are waste products excreted after chemicals (including endogenous hormones) travel through the liver. Effectively, metabolite monitoring as proposed in this bill targets only an individual and their liver as an indicator of personal behavior.”

Abortion-rights advocates raise concerns 

While it’s unclear what the real environmental goal for the bill is, there is another group with a specific interest in mifepristone and birth control chemicals in wastewater, which may have spurred the recent political interest. 

Students for Life, an anti-abortion group that advocates staunchly against the use of mifepristone, has been fighting for bills that target the drug. The group has long attacked the drug, alleging that it is unsafe and harmful to women, but the environmental argument is fairly new. In 2024, Students for Life sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calling on the organization to begin tracking mifepristone in addition to PFAS in wastewater on the basis that it presents a public health concern.

The group has been succeeding in its efforts, too. According to Jessica Valenti, an abortion reporter who writes the Abortion, Every Day newsletter, in addition to the new Texas bill, legislation that calls for testing wastewater for mifepristone has been introduced in Oklahoma, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, Maine, Idaho, and West Virginia.

Valenti asserts that Students for Life has clear motives that have to do more with painting abortion medication as “toxic” rather than out of any real concern for the environment.

“SFL has been lobbying the FDA to force women to bag up their blood and return it to a doctor as medical waste,” Valenti wrote. “One of the reasons conservatives hate abortion medication so much is that it robs them of the ability to harass patients outside of clinics.”

Fast Company reached out to Students for Life for comment.

Valenti also pressed that the bill may seek to target gender-affirming care, too, given that the list of hormones it wants to test for includes testosterone and estrone. 

“These are naturally occurring hormones, but conservatives could argue that an increase in either is proof that more people are getting gender-affirming treatment—or that the hormones are harming the environment,” Valenti wrote.

During the Texas Senate committee’s meeting on Monday, the bill appeared to have some support, though Senator Nathan Johnson, a democrat, spoke out against it. After questioning experts about the scientific reasoning for the bill, Johnson gave a one-liner that mimicked both Valenti’s and Garrett’s concerns. He said that the legislation is more about “hunting for women who are using mifepristone,” rather than public health.