In the Press...
The Washington Times article on Smith-led letter to EPA Admin. Zeldin'Republicans ask EPA to consider abortion drug as contaminant in public water systems'By Kerry Picket A group of Republican lawmakers from the House and Senate are asking Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin to add a chemical abortion drug to the list of contaminants in public water systems.
“In addition to killing unborn babies and threatening the well-being or lives of their mothers, Mifepristone has the potential to impact our national water system, a danger that was acknowledged by the Food and Drug Administration thirty years ago,” the lawmakers wrote. “In 1996, the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) claimed that adverse environmental effects from mifepristone were ‘not anticipated,’ but acknowledged that ‘[m]ifepristone may enter the environment from excretion by patients, from disposal of pharmaceutical waste, or from emissions from manufacturing sites,’” they wrote. They argue the drug poses serious risks to women, stating that “more than one out of ten (10.93%) women who take this dangerous pill experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging or another serious adverse event within 45 days. “As the use of mifepristone has risen, its impact on drinking water should be closely researched and monitored,” the lawmakers asserted. The Republicans asked the EPA to add mifepristone to CCL 6 to “determine whether the active metabolites that enter our Nation’s water system through mifepristone abortions threaten access to our safe drinking water” and study “whether the level of mifepristone present in the Nation’s water system is significant enough to cause endocrine disruption.” The letter comes at a time when the FDA is moving forward on a safety study of mifepristone that will be an analysis of hundreds of thousands of cases, with interim results potentially released in July. What to know
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