On Fox News’ Fox & Friends Weekend, Kristan Hawkins, president of the anti-abortion group Students for Life of America, promoted the debunked claim that traces of medication abortion pills such as mifepristone have been found in wastewater, leading to further pollution in the country’s waterways and causing harm to both people and wildlife.
Environmental experts have repeatedly debunked Hawkins’ and her organization’s claims of mifepristone and “fetal remains” in wastewater, explaining that there is “no evidence that mifepristone has harmed the environment or people via wastewater” and that it is “a miniscule fraction of the total volume of pharmaceutical drugs that find their way into wastewater.”
On the March 10 episode of Fox & Friends Weekend, Hawkins said that “chemical abortion pills" are "polluting our waterways with known endocrine disruptors.” Co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy provided no pushback to the claim, simply responding, “Yeah.”
Since at least 2020, Students for Life of America has been promoting this false claim, even going so far as to call on the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to investigate the environmental impact of “fetal remains” from medication abortion regimens in the U.S. water supply. The group has also attempted to weaponize the Clean Water Act and the current fight against “forever chemicals” to force the FDA to rescind its approval of mifepristone.