Very Sane Congresswoman Wants You To Put Your Abortion In This Potty Colander

So everyone let's get right on that.

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

Good news! There’s a Republican in Congress who actually cares about water pollution!

Bad news — she only cares about it in one very, very specific instance.

Rep. Mary Miller (R-Illinois) loves fracking, thinks climate change is a “sham,” has voted on multiple occasions to eliminate pollution-related regulations (water safety measures in particular), and boasts a 1 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters. But now, all of a sudden, she’s decided that she really, really cares about clean water — though only to the extent that she can use it as a cudgel against abortion.

Last week, Miller introduced the Clean Water For All Life Act, which would ban the use of telemedicine for prescribing abortion medication, require a physician to be present when a patient takes said abortion medication, and would also require the physician to provide the patient with a “catch kit” to prevent them from flushing the products of the resulting miscarriage down the toilet.

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You are probably wondering what the hell a miscarriage “catch kit” even is, and if you are anything like me, you are picturing one of those multi-pots for cooking pasta and steaming vegetables. And you would not be entirely incorrect! I found one on Amazon and it does, in fact, look like a colander.

The bill would require patients to “catch” their miscarriages and then return them to their physician “for proper disposal.” It’s still in its early stages, so it does not yet require the patient to provide for an elaborate funeral for their, at most, strawberry-sized fetal remains.

This, unfortunately, is nothing new. In the years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, anti-abortion-rights groups have pushed the evidence-free claim that flushing a miscarriage from a medical abortion down the toilet is a serious environmental and health concern. It is not! Indeed, it is no worse (and frequently not as bad) as many other things that get flushed down the toilet on the regular. Flushable wipes, for one. Sewer systems are specifically designed to manage human waste, including the byproducts of abortion and miscarriage. Very frequently, people will miscarry without even knowing they were pregnant in the first place, mistaking a miscarriage with a particularly heavy period. (Also, some people go into full-on labor without ever knowing they were pregnant, as evidenced by the TLC horror show that was I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.)

Yet, according to a press release from Rep. Miller’s office:

This legislation seeks to crack down on the dangerous and unethical practices associated with chemical abortion pills and to protect both human dignity and America’s water systems.

This legislation amends Title 18 of the United States Code to prohibit chemical abortions conducted without the physical presence of a healthcare provider and establishes safeguards to ensure proper medical oversight and responsible disposal of abortion-related medical waste.

“The murder-for-profit abortion industry has completely ignored the dangerous and unethical disposal of pre-born baby remains and toxic chemical waste produced by abortion pills,” said Congresswoman Mary Miller. “I introduced the Clean Water for All Life Act to put an end to their reckless and inhumane practices.”

“The loss of human life from Chemical Abortion Pills every day sickens so many Americans, but very little thought is given to what happens after a Chemical Abortion. Heroic efforts to confront these deadly drugs are underway on a lot of fronts, but Students for Life has been unique in adding environmental concerns to the reasons to scrap the current FDA policy. We are proud and grateful to Rep. Miller and her unapologetic leadership in this innovative bill. Babies deserve better, and many of us are being exposed to abortion water pollution in our drinking water,” said Kristan Hawkins, President, Students for Life of America.

Miller made more or less the same claims during a press conference last Wednesday.

“The murder-for-profit abortion industry is not only ending innocent life, but is also polluting our water, endangering women and operating with virtually no accountability,” Miller said.

“The fact is, the abortion pill ingredients used to starve a pre-born child remain active and unfiltered in our water treatments,” she continued. “That means families across the nation may be unknowingly ingesting abortion-related chemicals in their drinking water, exposing them to potential health risks like infertility and cancer.”

This would be super concerning if it were remotely true, which it is not.

While there is certainly an ongoing issue with the inability of our water filtration systems to filter out all traces of all pharmaceutical drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol break down very quickly in the body and there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of trace amounts of them in our drinking water as a result of medication abortions. We’re far more likely to find trace amounts of drugs like antibiotics, NSAIDs, carbamazepine (an anti-seizure medication), birth control and other hormone-based medications, and blood pressure medications, and while these trace amounts have been proven to affect fish and other aquatic life, there is no hard evidence yet that the trace amounts present in drinking water is affecting humans.

“If you were to drink two litres of water a day for 70 years, at the end of those 70 years, you would have taken 1% of the normal daily dose of someone taking that prescribed medication. For a variety of standard medications, the concentrations are exceedingly low,” Sébastien Sauvé, an associate professor of environmental chemistry at the Université de Montréal in Quebec, said in an article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

In case it was not clear enough that the purpose of this legislation is not to protect the environment or anyone’s health, but to shame abortion providers and patients alike, it actually includes exceptions for medically necessary abortions.

“(B) does not mean an act described under subparagraph (A) if the act is performed with the purpose to-

“(i) save the life or preserve the health of the unborn child;

“(i) remove a dead unborn child caused by spontaneous abortion; or

“(iii) remove an ectopic pregnancy

You know, because if someone takes these drugs to remove the byproducts of an unfinished miscarriage that occurred naturally or to remove an ectopic pregnancy, it doesn’t affect the environment at all. The water can totally tell whether or not you just didn’t want to have a baby or if you wanted a baby and it didn’t work out. Sort of like when that Masaru Emoto guy “proved” that “water has feelings” by yelling at one thing of water and praising another and then freezing them both to see which produced the prettiest ice crystals. (Fun fact — the movie that popularized his widely debunked “study,” What The Bleep Do We Know, was produced by Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, the organization founded by Shirley Maclaine spiritual advisor and frequent Merv Griffin guest, JZ Knight.)

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Because people like Rep. Miller don’t want to be seen as going after women in desperate circumstances, the only person who would be punished if her bill were to be passed would be the abortion provider — who would receive up to five years in prison and/or fined up to $50,000 for violating the law.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that will always be the case. Several states have already attempted to prosecute women for having miscarriages or for failing to properly dispose of their miscarriage byproducts.

Georgia Woman Won't Go To Prison For Having A Miscarriage After All

Let Us All Congratulate Ohio On Not Throwing A Woman In Prison For Miscarrying

It is unlikely that the bill will pass, but it doesn’t necessarily need to. What Rep. Miller and others want to do is to get it into people’s minds that abortion providers and patients are bad, selfish people who are murdering the environment and forcing you to drink dead baby parts. They want to plant the seed so eventually they can pass a stupid law like this, which is intended not to protect our drinking water but to shame and inconvenience abortion providers and patients.

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