'Catch Kits' for Fetal Remains Are Republicans' Latest Dystopian Plan To Punish Abortions
GOP lawmakers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are pushing the idea that abortions are a water quality issue.
Are abortions poisoning us all? That's the latest line of attack from Republicans in Wisconsin and elsewhere, with lawmakers arguing that women who take abortion pills must prevent their blood and fetal tissue from contaminating the water supply.
It's hard to even know where to begin with this one. Maybe we should just start in Wisconsin, where some GOP lawmakers are looking to make doctors who prescribe abortion drugs send patients home with "a catch kit and medical waste bag" and instructions for its use. For physicians, failing to do so would be a crime punishable by up to $10,000 and/or three and a half years in prison, according to the Green Bay Press Gazette.
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'The people of Wisconsin deserve clean water'
Women who take abortion drugs to terminate a pregnancy—but not to treat a miscarriage, if I'm reading correctly—would be instructed to use the bag to collect any "medical waste or infectious waste" produced by the process and then return it to the doctor's office.
It's hard to look at legislation like this and imagine that it's actually about anything but punishing women who have abortions.
But the reason given by the Wisconsin lawmakers behind the idea—Sen. André Jacque (R–New Franken) and Reps. Lindee Brill (R–Sheboygan Falls) and Nate Gustafson (R–Omro)—is that the products of abortion are a water contamination issue. "The people of Wisconsin deserve clean water and an assurance that harmful endocrine disruptors and pathological waste does not contaminate our lakes, streams, rivers, and wetlands," wrote the lawmakers in a memo looking for legislation cosponsors.
The measure "has been sent in for introduction, but does not yet have an official bill number, and has not yet been assigned to a legislative committee," Anthony Carver, a legislative assistant in Jacque's office, told me.
A draft copy of the bill does not precisely define how the catch kits must be used, only that physicians who prescribe abortion-inducing drugs—defined as any "drug, medicine, oral hormonal compound, mixture, or preparation, when it is prescribed to terminate the pregnancy of a woman known to be pregnant with an intention other than to produce a live birth or remove a dead fetus"—must provide patients with "a catch kit and medical waste bag, including instructions for the patient to use the catch kit and medical waste bag and to return the catch kit and medical waste bag to the physician's office for proper disposal."
Women would not be punished for failing to use the kits, but drug manufacturers could be. "The manufacturer of any abortion-inducing drug shall be responsible for proper disposal of the abortion-inducing drugs and mitigation of any release of an endocrine disruptor caused by the improper disposal of abortion-inducing drugs, including from the disposal of pathological waste," states the draft bill. Endocrine disruptors would be defined as hazardous materials, and the state's Department of Natural Resources would be required to start monitoring water for their presence.
A Broader Movement
This isn't just some kooky idea concocted by a few state lawmakers in Wisconsin. It's been gaining ground with anti-abortion groups and Republican lawmakers more widely.
Students for Life has been pushing the catch kit idea for years. In 2022, the group petitioned the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to require abortion catch kits as part of mifepristone prescribing rules.
"We are all drinking other people's abortions in the wastewater," Kristi Hamrick, the group's vice president of media and policy, testified before the Texas legislature in April. A measure introduced in Texas that same month sought to make the state test its water for abortion medication and hormones found in birth control pills.
So far, "we've seen so-called 'Clean Water' legislation introduced in Oklahoma, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, Maine, Idaho, and West Virginia," according to Jessica Valenti's Abortion, Every Day newsletter.
And, in June, 25 U.S. senators and representatives wrote to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin to express "concerns regarding mifepristone and its potential contaminant effects on our nation's waters." They warned that mifepristone could have "potential endocrine-disrupting effects when present in drinking water supplies" and this could be affecting fertility rates.
'Only Conjecture,' Says the FDA
No one has produced any evidence that abortion pills are getting into the water supply in sufficient amounts and/or causing health problems. It's pure conjecture. And it's being pushed for a political purpose, not an environmental one.
"Environmental experts have said there is no credible evidence that abortion medication is present in the water supply at levels that would harm humans or animals," notes the Green Bay Press Gazette.
The FDA rejected Students for Life's request that the agency study the effect of the abortion drug mifepristone on U.S. water, stating that if offered, "only conjecture that remnants of Mifepristone in the nation's water system are 'causing unknown harm to citizens and animals alike.'"
"The Petition provides no evidence showing that bodily fluid from patients who have used mifepristone (a one-time, single-dose drug product) is causing harm to the nation's aquatic environment," said the FDA in its January 2025 rejection letter.
The agency goes on to note that there were environmental assessments done before the abortion drug mifepristone and the prescribing rules around it were approved, and even using very conservative estimates, these found no reason to suspect special care was warranted. These calculations, "along with FDA's finding that the drug 'will not have a significant effect on the quality of the human environment,' show that 'remnants of mifepristone' are not causing harm to the environment and to people through environmental pathways, and also show, by extension, that metabolites from patients using mifepristone have not been 'causing teratologic repercussions or congenital anomalies in animals like birth defects,'" the agency said.
Politics Masquerading as Science
The science here is underwhelming, to say the least.
In Wisconsin, the fundamentally political nature of the proposal is further revealed by the fact that catch kits would seemingly not be required if abortion-inducing drugs were prescribed to "remove a dead fetus."
Mifepristone, and especially misoprostol—the two drugs prescribed together in the U.S. to induce abortions—are often prescribed to people whose bodies have suffered a natural but "incomplete" miscarriage, where the fetus is no longer alive but their body won't let go of it or has only partially expelled all fetal remains. If these drugs are really causing a big problem with the water supply, a woman's intention when taking them shouldn't make a difference.
The fact that this is only aimed at women who take abortion pills seeking to terminate pregnancies and not those who take them seeking to complete miscarriages kind of gives away the game; this isn't about environmental contamination, it's about punishing women who get abortions and potentially criminalizing abortion doctors and abortion pill manufacturers.
Of course, there are slippery slopes here. Catch kit proposals seem like they would eventually start wrapping up women who miscarry, too, at least if anyone involved cares about logical consistency in the least. And if people can be punished, or subject to special rules, for peeing while under the influence of abortion medication, what other drugs—birth control pills, opioid painkillers, hormone medications—could require similar interventions?
But perhaps the most perplexing thing about the catch kit solution—and, especially, Wisconsin's "hold drug manufacturers responsible" variant of it—is just how exactly it's expected to work, at the micro or macro level.
If endocrine disruptors are found in water supplies, how can anyone say that these came from abortion drugs and not countless other sources? Or, even if it's feasible to specifically test for traces of mifepristone or misoprostol, how could anyone say these resulted from people being prescribed abortion drugs to terminate a pregnancy and not to help complete an already underway miscarriage?
Things are equally complicated when it comes to what, exactly, women given these catch kits are supposed to do. Women who take abortion pills—for miscarriage treatment or an elective abortion—do not simply expel blood and tissue and fetal remains in one discrete push. It's a process that can take days, or longer. Bleeding can last for weeks. Are they supposed to hover over the catch kit every time they have to use the bathroom? For how long? How big are these catch kits? And how will anyone know when they've actually done it enough?
Perhaps all this trouble would be worth it—an unfortunate reality of taking these drugs and ending a pregnancy in this way—if there was really evidence that these drugs were really causing mass problems with our water. But there's not. It's putting women—including possibly women who did not want to end their pregnancies but miscarried naturally and need pharmaceutical help completing the process—through uncomfortable and humiliating rituals based purely on political propaganda.
Putting the Latest Meta Allegations in Perspective
Everyone is making a big deal about allegations that Meta halted research related to Facebook and Instagram use and mental health when it started turning up results that put the company in a bad light. And maybe this is as big and bad a deal as it initially seems. But I think we should keep in mind, firstly, that the allegations come as part of a major, multi-district lawsuit against the company filed by school districts, parents, and state attorneys general. They are, for now, just allegations, perhaps divorced from relevant context. And they come from people extremely motivated to portray Meta in a particular, negative light.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement that the company disputes the allegations, "which rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions in an attempt to present a deliberately misleading picture." According to Stone, the study—which the suit characterizes as showing that people felt less depressed and anxious after quitting Facebook for a week—actually only found this result among "people who believed using Facebook was bad for them felt better when they stopped using it." That's quite a different beast than the claim making the rounds in the media right now.
SCOTUS Won't Hear a Case Involving Amazon, algorithms, and Section 230
The Supreme Court won't hear a case seeking to hold Amazon responsible for alleged "greenwashing" by third-party sellers. The case was brought by Planet Green Cartridges, which sued over companies selling what it alleged were printer cartridges falsely labeled as being remanufactured or recycled. Amazon argued that it was protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed, dismissing the case last March. "Planet Green Cartridges then petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case and clarify whether Section 230 protections extend to online marketplaces that also profit from the recommendation, promotion, or distribution of products on their website—as Amazon does—in addition to hosting the listings," notes Mashable. SCOTUS has now declined to step in.
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• The Federal Trade Commission's loss last week in its Meta monopolization case "is an unequivocal defeat for Khan and the Neo-Brandeisian antitrust movement she began," writes Max Gulker of the Reason Foundation (the nonrprofit that publishes this magazine). It signals "that antitrust authorities have little basis for finding illegal monopolies among big tech's digital platforms."
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