Two Republican lawmakers penned a bicameral letter calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to analyze the pollutive effects of flushing unborn babies killed by chemical abortion drugs into waterways.

In an emailed news release, Students for Life Action (SFLAction) commended Oklahoma Rep. Josh Brecheen and Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford for leading the letter and calling attention to the “chemically tainted blood, placenta tissue, and human remains now flushed into our waterways.” Twenty-five members of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate have signed the letter as well.

“You don’t have to be pro-life to be concerned about endocrine disruptors in our waterways, potentially impacting our water safety, harming endangered species & our food supply, and perhaps even multiplying the rate of infertility,” SFLAction President Kristan Hawkins said.

SFLAction said that the Biden administration had used the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to make abortion pills widely available online, but did not analyze how the widespread use of the drugs would affect America’s water. According to Brecheen and Lankford’s letter, chemical abortions made up more than 60% of all clinician-provided abortions in 2023 — roughly 648,500 chemical abortions — but it is unknown how many women decided to take abortion drugs at home without consulting a clinician.

The letter calls for the Trump administration to consider assessing the environmental concerns associated with the abortion pills. One of the last environmental studies on mifepristone’s effects on the environment was in 1996, the letter states, well before the abortion drug began to be widely used. The lawmakers also express concern in the letter that abortion drugs’ presence in waterways could lead to issues with Americans’ fertility.

“In this new letter, members of the U.S. Congress echo Students for Life’s fears for water safety and demand evaluation of the global consequences of the reckless deregulation and lack of testing,” Hawkins stated in the news release. “The Pro-Life Generation proudly stands with Rep. Josh Brecheen, Sen. James Lankford, and all who joined this effort to make sure that America has crystal clear water by demanding that the EPA test what’s in the water.”

CatholicVote reported that SFLAction issued a similar call to action last year when it filed an amicus brief in US Food & Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which challenged the FDA’s approval of mifepristone in 2000. At the time, SFLAction also wrote to Congress and the EPA, calling for investigations into mifepristone’s effects on the environment.