The environmental movement used to focus on pollution and was built to confront real problems such as poisoned rivers, toxic air, and chemical runoff. Now, the same movement that once targeted pollutants in our water ignores one of the clearest sources: the abortion pill. This isn’t an oversight. It fits perfectly with the misanthropic worldview that defines their pro-abortion “green” narrative.
The same movement that wants to touch every part of our lives, including banning plastic straws, eliminating gas-powered stoves, restricting air travel, shutting down development, and reducing the number of people on Earth, is oddly silent when it comes to the abortion industry dumping chemicals into our waterways.
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This isn’t a niche concern. What the chemical abortion pill sales team calls “medication abortions” increased exponentially from 6% of all abortions in 2001 to 63% in 2023, according to the Planned Parenthood–founded Guttmacher Institute, though that cannot be verified because we have no national abortion reporting law. Mifepristone and misoprostol, the most popular abortion drugs, are now used in most abortions nationwide. These pills are taken at home and often flushed down the toilet or tossed in the trash, along with the baby that the drugs starve to death and eject from the mother’s body, together with chemically tainted placenta tissue and blood. Water treatment plants don’t filter these drugs out, meaning a rapidly rising amount of chemicals ends up in rivers and lakes with unknown effects.
Studies show that other drugs that manipulate the female reproductive system end up contaminating our water systems and harming animals. Researchers have even found that these hormones can cause male frogs to develop female traits.
Yet the environmental Left says nothing because acknowledging the ecological risks of abortion undercuts their narrative. That is why it is imperative that we call this out. Otherwise, we will allow a story of necessary scarcity and degrowth to capture the minds of our young people when we need one of abundance and flourishing.
A central assertion of the modern environmental movement is that the best way to save the environment is to have fewer people. According to one popular chart that has bounced around online left-wing echo chambers, having one fewer child in the world allegedly does more to reduce emissions than going car-free, avoiding plane travel, and switching to a bug-based diet combined. To them, abortion isn’t a side issue. It’s the plan.
To protect abortion, environmentalists abandon their own standards. They claim abortion pills are safe because there’s little evidence of ecological harm. But since when do they wait for evidence before regulating? There are no long-term studies on the effects of abortion medication on wastewater, both because the aggressive use of these drugs is such a recent phenomenon and because it is verboten in the environmental and medical establishment to question the safety of abortifacients. But environmentalists have banned straws, gas stoves, and grocery bags on less scientific grounds.
Clearly, when it comes to liberal priorities, science takes a backseat to the Left’s social engineering agenda. We’ve seen how this works when it comes to abortion procedures. We know women who have such abortions face long-term psychological and physical risks as a result, but the medical propaganda proclaims matter-of-factly that there are “no long-term health risks.”
When it comes to abortion pills, the medical industry likewise says they are safe, and that is that. But with what other issue do we play games with ecosystems without knowing the costs?
The environmental Left demands decades of environmental impact studies just to build a highway. Forests have burned to ashes while waiting for restoration plans to surpass the gauntlet of environmentalist-backed legal challenges. Millions of Californians have had their water use restricted to save a tiny fish in the Sacramento Delta. However, when it comes to the verified presence of abortion chemicals in our water supply, we’re supposed to be unconcerned and do nothing.
But on a much more fundamental level, we should question the environmental Left’s love of population decline in the first place. Population reduction doesn’t clean up our rivers, oceans, or air. Innovation, energy, and infrastructure do.
In recent decades, we have drastically improved our environment not by producing less but by doing even more and being cleaner than before. Increasing efficiency, embracing the cleaner energy of the future, and creating new products to replace harmful toxins have protected our environment even while our population and economy have grown.
PLANNED PARENTHOOD ALWAYS PUTS PROFITS FIRST
More children do not mean more pollution, even the folks at left-wing Vox admit it. But more abortion sure does. And policy should reflect that reality. We should regulate abortion drugs just as we do every other chemical pollutant, requiring gold-standard scientific studies on the long-term health and environmental effects before we allow their widespread use.
In the meantime, when we embrace a future built on abundance, we can discard the misguided misanthropy of the environmental Left, protecting people and the planet at the same time.
Chris Johnson is president and co-founder of the American Energy Leadership Institute, a conservative energy policy research and advocacy organization working to ensure America leads and dominates the 21st century.
Kristan Hawkins is president of Students for Life of America and Students for Life Action, with nearly 1,600 groups on middle school, high school, college, university, medical school, and law school campuses in all 50 states, along with a political operation that has focused on deadly chemical abortion pills. Follow her @KRISTANHAWKINS or subscribe to her podcast, The Kristan Hawkins Show.