The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it is launching a drinking water quality study to look for traces of abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol for the first time.
Anti-abortion activists, attorneys general, and lawmakers have been lobbying for the agency to carry the study for years.
Researchers at the agency will collect water samples “from several locations in different metropolitan areas” and test them for thousands of drugs, pesticides and synthetic chemicals, including mifepristone, misoprostol, and multiple types of “forever chemicals,” according to a description of the study.
Yes. An anti abortion group which has advocated for testing drinking water for the presence of birth control drugs was quoted. It’s something they’ve been advocating for for a long time. Many years ago it was considered a kooky conspiracy talking point.
The article describes the study as testing for thousands of chemicals. The article lists two birth control drugs among them.
It would be good to know if those chemicals are in drinking water.
A careful reader will notice that in those quotes no one is saying there isn’t presence or contamination, only that it’s nothing to worry about, is not harmful to people and isn’t on the official list of stuff the epa looks out for.
I genuinely don’t see the big deal. Crazy people have been right about stuff before. You figure out if they’re right by investigating that stuff rather than dismissing it out of hand. Including the crazy people claims in the big water study looking for a thousand other things is a good way to save money on lab costs.
It’s a dangerous precedent to allow these kinds of decisions to be driven by anti-abortion and anti-women’s rights activists.
On the other hand, and bear in mind I am not a medical professional:
These compounds are present in effluvia. The wastewater treatment system (I’m generalizing here) tries to follow the most basic downstream and upstream procedures but can still end up with significant amounts of stuff from effluent in its clean source. If we know that stuff that ought to go through the out pipe makes its way to the in pipe already, and we know of a specific chemical present in the out pipe, it seems reasonable to test for that chemical in the in pipe.
Alternately: I don’t think finally testing something people have been saying for twenty years is a bad precedent.
Yeah I’m going to go ahead and trust medical and wastewater professionals over you here.
Acquiescing to anti-women’s rights activists should never be an option in a fair and equal society.
It’s reasonable that you trust them.
You did not quote them saying that there are not prescription medications in the drinking water supply. You quoted them saying “it’s fine and safe and nothing to worry about.”
While it’s your prerogative to accept that at face value, I think it’s worth knowing if prescription drugs are in the drinking water supply.
Furthermore, if you’ll let want to win people over to “your side” you need to actually break down and prove people you disagree with wrong with hard evidence as opposed to dismissing their claims out of hand.
I’m doing nothing outside of discussing the article in depth here.
There’s a lot of people who want to tell me how to win arguments or win people over. I don’t care. I’m not a Barbie doll to be molded to be the perfect feminist political commentator that charms all of you over to “my side” with my stellar manners.
If you want to side with groups that are motivated by stripping women of their rights, you go right on ahead. I’m allowed to hold my own opinion about you based on that.
I don’t think suggesting it’s worth engaging with the factual content of an argument you’re opposed to is necessarily silencing women’s voices or forcing them into a feminine mold.
If we’re evaluating the merit of an argument based solely upon what distasteful groups also argue those points were on pretty crappy rhetorical ground.