New water testing guidance is backdoor attempt to strip access to reproductive health care, amounts to ‘uterus surveillance’ Wyden warns
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., today demanded answers from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its recent decision to recommend that states and localities begin testing drinking water for abortion medications and oral contraceptives.
Earlier this month the EPA released an updated list of “human health benchmarks” for water contaminants, containing 374 pharmaceuticals recommended for testing, following a long pressure campaign by anti-reproductive freedom extremist advocates. The list includes abortion medications like misopristol, methoxtrexate, and mifepristone, as well as oral contraceptives. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin suggested that the new guidance could help lay the groundwork for future state and federal restrictions on these medications.
“While you claim these benchmarks are merely to “empower local decision makers,” your own statements suggest a darker reality: this is laying the groundwork for sweeping state and federal restrictions on reproductive health care,” Wyden wrote in his letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. “This administration’s attempt to co-opt environmental policy to wage a shadow war on reproductive rights is an egregious abuse of power. I demand that you immediately abandon this medically and scientifically bankrupt campaign, withdraw any guidance that targets essential reproductive health care, and return the EPA to its actual mission of protecting human health and the environment.”
In his letter, Wyden requested a response by May 5, 2026, detailing the scientific, peer-reviewed justification for including contraceptives and abortion medications like misopristol, methoxtrexate, and mifepristone on the benchmark list, and a full accounting of the EPA’s communications with anti-abortion advocacy groups regarding this policy.
The full letter is here.
A web version of this release is here.
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