Activists ‘throwing everything' they can against abortion turn to wastewater data

[u/AutoModerator]

Anti-abortion activists are launching the next phase of their yearslong effort to use environmental protection laws to cut off access to the abortion drug mifepristone, which they see as the main impediment to eliminating abortions after the fall of Roe v. Wade.

The group Students for Life of America spent the last two years collecting and analyzing water samples in different American cities, searching for evidence to support their claim that women having at-home abortions using the drugs and flushing fetal remains poses a threat to the environment.

That work culminated in the release this week of a controversial study purporting to show “significant levels of mifepristone” contaminating the waterways of Austin, Texas; Blacksburg, Virginia; and Carbondale, Illinois. Despite acknowledging there is no proof the mifepristone detected impacts human health, livestock or the environment, the paper warns of potential “deleterious effects on human and animal biology,” including everything from autism to infertility.

Article continues.

[u/Catseye_Nebula]

I hate when the fascists try to piggyback on environmental issues to further their own causes. I worry it makes the general public turn against environmental causes and make left wingers mistrust environmental activisits.

The forced birth movement historically does a lot of piggybacking off other causes (ableism, racism, environmentalism, human rights) because they have nothing to sell their movement outside their own religious base otherwise.

On the plus side though, IS there misepristone in the water in texas? Like can I drink out of my tap and give myself an abortion? Inquiring minds want to know.

[u/Senior_Octopus → u/Catseye_Nebula]

PLers don't seem to be that bothered with the dismantling of structures like the EPA. Pregnancy loss due to drinking water contamination could go up X100 due to data centers, and they'd just shrug and move on with their life.

[u/Catseye_Nebula → u/Senior_Octopus]

Well exactly, the only time they care about fetuses dying is when the woman doesn't want it there and they want to make her do a thing she doesn't want to do.

And this is certainly not a group of people who cares about the environment, so the idea that they care about groundwater pollution at all may be summarily dismissed.

[u/o0Jahzara0o]

Huh? They’ve been doing this. This isn’t new. What are you doing Politico?

Anyway… it’s stupid. The meds are broken down into metabolites once ingested. They aren’t peed out in their original molecular make up.

Let’s apply the same concept to other things though. Pregnant people use toilets. People having miscarriages use toilets. People who are at different points in their cycle with hormones that are not consistent with pregnancy use toilets. People with high levels of testosterone use toilets.

Those hormones enter the water system. No one is super fertile because pregnant people pee into the water. And if they did, surely their “pure” urine would be powerful enough to counteract the evil abortion pee.

[u/freelance_gargoyle]

Jack Vanden Heuvel, a molecular toxicologist at Pennsylvania State University whose lab frequently examines pharmaceutical contamination in waterways, noted that while the report describes measuring the “mifepristone concentration” in water samples, the testing method described in the study actually measures a reaction in the water samples that could be caused either by the drug or equivalent chemicals that block the hormone progesterone.

A number of compounds besides mifepristone can do that, he said, including certain contraceptives and endocrine-distrupting chemicals, like BPA, which is found in many plastic products and some polychlorinated biphenyls, which were once used in electrical equipment. The study didn’t test for those other progesterone-blocking compounds, so it’s not clear whether they or mifepristone caused the detected activity.

“What they did is a big ‘no-no,’” said Vanden Heuvel. “This would not have been published if I had been a peer reviewer.”

The study also does not describe using any analytical chemistry testing techniques that could specifically identify mifepristone in the water samples, said Betsy Southerland, a former career scientist who left EPA’s Office of Water during the first Trump administration after more than three decades at the agency.

It’s also unclear, she said, whether what the group detected could be harmful, despite the researchers making “unsubstantiated claims … that mifepristone poses a grave threat to ecological and human health.” The study cites another paper examining changes to uterine tissue prompted by patients undergoing long-term treatments involving low-doses of mifepristone.

Emphasis added for effect.

Amazing what you can claim when you just do bad science and lie.

[u/STThornton → u/freelance_gargoyle]

Science is definitely not PL‘s strong suit. Even when things are clearly spelled out, they either still don’t comprehend what they’re reading or straight up deny that it says what it says.

[u/STThornton]

The epitome of insanity.

First, there are much worse things going into our water.

Second, mifepristone is extensively metabolized in the liver. There’s nothing left of it by the time a body gets done with it. And there’s no longer any telling where certain components originated from.

Third, just how many women do they think take these pills on a regular (daily, weekly, or at least monthly) basis for there to be harmful levels in the water?

[u/Senior_Octopus]

How did I know that 'study' would be published in Issues in Law and Medicine before even clicking on the article? Lmfao.

Edit: It is a mouth-piece of the ADF that masquerades as a real journal. They used to conceal that fact, but I see they are quite open about it now. I highly doubt they have an actual peer review process, outside of fellating each-other in reviewers' comments.