FIRST ON FOX: Bicameral lawmakers are highlighting the Biden administration's failure to adequately study the environmental impact of the abortion pill, particularly amid the rise in at-home medication abortions.
"The full impact of mifepristone has never been sufficiently studied," Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., wrote in a letter to Michael Regan, President Biden's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator.
The lawmakers stressed the importance of this development in light of the rising number of medication-induced abortions, for which mifepristone is commonly administered. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 63% of all U.S. abortions last year were conducted by medication. This marked a 10% rise in the method relative to the share of all abortions since 2020.
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Rubio and Brecheen alleged that the only survey of the effect mifepristone has on the environment was an assessment from 1996. They claimed the survey, which was relied on by the Food and Drug Administration when it approved the medication in 2000, "failed to consider that human fetal remains and the drug’s active metabolites would be making their way into wastewater systems across the U.S."
"The American people deserve to know the negative effects caused by chemical abortion drugs," they wrote.
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The Republicans described that "Because chemical abortions are primarily self-induced and performed at home, the blood and placental tissue containing mifepristone’s active metabolites are flushed into wastewater systems along with the fetal remains of the unborn child."
They further requested answers from Biden's EPA, asking how the agency plans to "ensure the safety of our waterways and drinking water," what the "negative health effects for humans associated with exposure to mifepristone and fetal remains in drinking water" are, and how aquatic animals might also be affected.
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"Once received, EPA will review this letter and will respond appropriately," the agency told Fox News Digital.
Mifepristone has encountered significant controversy as Republicans scrutinize the medication and what they say are lax regulations for it, while Democrats hail the drug as safe, effective and even necessary health care, while abortion access continues to be limited across the country.
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Abortion rights groups have likened various concerns over the drug and its implementation to attempts to exercise control over women's bodily autonomy.
"Study after study has shown medication abortion and mifepristone to be safe and effective — with or without a health center visit. Those findings have only grown clearer in the more than two decades mifepristone has been on the U.S. market," Planned Parenthood Federation of America President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement earlier this year.
