If you’ve been listening to the pro-life movement for any length of time, you may have heard the Endangered Species Act come up. And it should, as endangered species are harmed by abortion pills.  

No, that’s not some clever way of trying to convince liberals to care about preborn babies (though if it works, maybe it’s worth a try). Believe it or not, the concern is real — and even for those who support abortion, it may present a reason to question the FDA’s rushed, flawed approval of deadly chemical abortion pills. 

Here’s what you need to know. 

What is the ESA? 

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) was originally enacted in 1973 to do exactly what it sounds like: protect threatened fish, animals, plants, and other creatures.  

Under the ESA, federal agencies are required to ensure that their actions do not harm any species (or that species’ habitat) labeled “endangered” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the government organization responsible for maintaining a worldwide list of threatened species. 

What does that mean for federal agencies? 

In general, the ESA requires federal agencies to evaluate the potential effects their actions could have on endangered species before they proceed.

For the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) specifically, that means (according to regulations the agency created under the ESA) every new drug application must include an environmental assessment unless it qualifies for an exception. 

Even if a drug would normally qualify for an exception, the FDA must still require an environmental assessment if the drug has the potential to inflict serious harm on the environment or on endangered species. 

What does this have to do with abortion? 

Today, most abortions are chemical, not surgical, with chemical abortion accounting for 63% of all abortions. 

Typically, chemical abortion occurs in a two-drug process.  

First, a woman takes mifepristone, a drug that blocks progesterone, a hormone essential for maintaining pregnancy. Deprived of progesterone, the baby starves and dies, unable to get the nutrients it needs to survive. After the baby’s death, the woman takes a second drug, misoprostol, which induces labor, causing her to “give birth” to the dead baby. 

Setting aside the horrific nature of starving a baby to death, chemical abortion also poses another problem: waste.  

Most chemical abortions take place at home, not in a medical facility equipped to handle hazardous biological waste. But the matter expelled from a woman’s body via chemical abortion — including blood, chemically tainted tissue, and the dead body of a preborn baby — has to go somewhere, and the first choice is typically the toilet. 

The result? Over 50 tons of chemically tainted medical waste flushed down the drain and into U.S. water systems every year. 

Of course, that begs the question: What effects, if any, does such waste have on the fish — including endangered fish — who live in tainted water, or on the plants and animals who ingest that water? 

When the FDA first approved mifepristone for use in 2000, it based its approval on a 1996 environmental assessment that said the drug could be “used and disposed of without any expected adverse environmental effects.” 

Yet that assessment was conducted a full 30 years ago — and at that point, the FDA had no way of predicting just how widespread chemical abortions would become. 

In 2001, the year after mifepristone was approved, chemical abortions made up just 6% of overall abortions, with 12,712 women receiving chemical abortion pills at Planned Parenthood sites that year. 

Twenty-two years later, in 2023, estimates suggested a full 642,700 chemical abortions were performed in the U.S., 63% of overall abortions. 

That’s over 50 times the number of chemical abortions as in 2001 — and over 50 times the amount of chemical waste produced.  

But, since the 1996 study, the FDA hasn’t bothered to reevaluate the potential dangers this waste could pose to endangered species — or humans. 

What can we do about it? 

In December, Students for Life of America (SFLA) launched a nationwide campaign to demand that the Environmental Protection Agency add the active metabolites of mifepristone to its “contaminants” list, a list of chemicals it tracks to ensure all Americans have safe drinking water.  

SFLA has also filed multiple citizen petitions with the FDA calling on the agency to perform basic testing to determine whether and how the abortion waste flushed into our waterways is affecting the environment — and us. 

Additionally, SFLA is engaging directly in the legal fight on the Endangered Species Act itself by filing amicus briefs in cases related to the FDA’s violation of the ESA. 

Today, 50+ tons of chemical waste is being flushed into our waterways every year — an amount exponentially greater than that the FDA determined was safe for endangered species or humans. It’s beyond time for the FDA to conduct testing to determine the exact consequences of that waste.