Surveilling your toilet water is the antithesis of small government, but the Freedom Caucus wants to do it

Anti-abortion Wyoming legislators who were the first in the nation to approve a bill banning all medication abortions changed their strategy this year after a state district court in November rejected their work as unconstitutional.

They didn’t bother sponsoring any bills to challenge the ruling, which found the ban violated residents’ right to make their own health care decisions. The legislators are pinning their hopes on the Wyoming Supreme Court reversing the case on appeal.

But as a fallback, Republican lawmakers took a page from the playbook of Students for Life, a national anti-abortion organization. It’s spent the last two decades trying — and failing — to convince federal agencies and courts that fetuses and chemicals from medication abortions disposed of in public water systems pose a threat to humans, wildlife and the environment.

Lucie Holt, president of Students for Life at the University of Wyoming, told the House Labor, Health and Social Services Committee last Friday that “do-it-yourself chemical abortions are making our public waterways mass graves.”

The number of inaccuracies packed into that one short sentence are almost impressive.

Despite a stack of facts against House Bill 159, “Protecting Water From Chemical Abortion Waste,” including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s blunt declaration there’s no evidence to back up the sensational claims, the panel voted 6-2 to send it to the full House.

If committee members had read the 20-page FDA denial letter of the Students of Life’s petition to mitigate the alleged hazards to wastewater from mifepristone, the first of two drugs used in a chemical abortion, the vote might have been different.

The FDA found mifepristone excreted by patients at levels less than 1 part per billion in aquatic environments. The agency said concentrations that small don’t have a significant effect on the environment.

Upon hearing that information, supporters of the bill should have ended the charade and punted HB 159 into oblivion.

Of course, they didn’t dare. This extreme measure is sponsored by Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, former chair of the far-right Freedom Caucus that has taken control of the House and can pass anything it wants.

Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, R-Cody, new head of the caucus and chair of House Labor, rushed to get Bear’s bill passed like she was going to a five-alarm fire.

Members of the public were limited to two minutes each to testify. In a move I’ve never seen before, she didn’t allow committee members — there to get information about proposed legislation — to ask experts giving public testimony any questions. When Rodriguez-Williams halted public comment after about 30 minutes, she shut out at least seven people waiting online.

To preempt claims HB 159 is a pro-life bill, Bear noted it protects the life of a mother and the public. “It’s not intended to protect the life of an unborn child, which unfortunately will never be able to make snow angels in the snow, go to a prom, own a business and have a family,” Bear said.

I’m glad he cleared that up. For a minute I was starting to suspect the measure had nothing to do with safe water, but was just a smokescreen to effectively make medication abortions so difficult to obtain that women would turn to unsafe options, like ingesting dangerous plants.

Winter Black testified she’s hearing women share tips about such alternatives. “Bills like this are not going to stop people from ending their pregnancies,” Black said. “It’s only going to make it far more dangerous for women to do so.”

The Freedom Caucus wants to make it tough, if not impossible, for Wyoming women to obtain a medication abortion. Another one of its proposals, House Bill 64, “Chemical abortions-ultrasound requirement,” would require a pregnant woman to receive a transvaginal ultrasound no less than 48 hours before obtaining medication for an abortion.

Sara Burlingame, executive director of Wyoming Equality and a former legislator, described it as a “gruesome” procedure that “would empower a doctor to penetrate a woman’s body in order to get information for the state.”

Under HB 159, a woman seeking a medication abortion must be given a “catch kit” and a fluorescent red or orange biohazard bag to capture the remains of a discharged fetus. The bag must be taken to the medical provider within seven days and the woman examined by a physician.

“I don’t think this is pragmatic or practical,” said Wendy Volk of Cheyenne. “We have a critical shortage of medical providers. There will be very few who will be willing to give out prescriptions for drugs for this.”

The bill would make it a felony for physicians or pharmacists to violate the law, punishable by a $10,000 fine, up to three years in prison, or both. Volk is spot-on. Who’s going to risk such a penalty?

But given there’s no solid way to test for mifepristone in the water, or to know why someone took it, enforcing this bill seems nearly impossible. 

Rene Hinkle, a Cheyenne OB-GYN physician, explained mifepristone has many uses, including to stop postpartum hemorrhaging of women who are bleeding out after deliveries. It’s also given to patients with Cushing’s disease.

Hinkle also pointed out the chemicals Bear purports to be concerned about aren’t released from the body in fetal tissue, but in other bodily substances. She asked the committee if women who have medication abortions “are going to also have to catch their urine and feces?”

“That’s not feasible, that’s not sanitary, we should not be doing this,” said Christine Lichtenfels, executive director of Chelsea’s Fund, a Lander nonprofit. “There are much greater [harmful] sources to regulate, such as fracking chemicals.”

Jennifer Zygmunt, water quality administrator of the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, said she’s not aware of any approved methods to detect chemical waste directly linked to abortion pills. Given the low amounts and infrequent use of mifepristone, and the dilution that would occur, she said it’s unlikely the chemical would be detected in water sampling.

Evansville Mayor Candace Machado testified her constituents are asking, “Why are our legislators wasting our taxpayer money on bills that are inappropriate, inhumane and frankly absolutely ridiculous? I’m in agreement with them.”

Rodriguez-Williams interrupted to tell the mayor to focus on the bill.

Machado plowed ahead full speed. “It’s extremely inappropriate that we are spending taxpayer money on these bills when they are infringing and imposing on human rights and targeting women in this state,” she said. 

Sheridan’s Emma Laurent of Wyoming United for Freedom believes the bill’s supporters are using other states’ model legislation “to create conspiracy fodder to scare women into thinking their private health care decisions are now traceable and therefore open to retribution.”

House Minority Leader Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, and Rep. Ken Clouston, R-Gillette, were the only committee members who voted against the bill. Clouston said he’s pro-life but found HB 159 “a little bit unreasonable and maybe a little ahead of its time.”

Believe me, this bill won’t get better with age. It should be defeated now and buried forever.

I wholeheartedly share Yin’s view: “Telling women that they have to capture their miscarriage in a bag is probably one of the most shameful things I’ve seen the government ask people to do.”

Rodriguez-Williams significantly limited peoples’ testimony. I’d like to include more thoughts from opponents, but I’ll leave the last words to Burlingame.

“In an effort to make some medical abortions illegal or monitored or policed by the state,” she said, “we’re now opening up everybody’s homes to the state. 

“DEQ says it doesn’t distinguish between some medical waste and others, or distinguish between menstrual blood and miscarriage blood,” Burlingame added.

Then she spoke directly to the Freedom Caucus: “The idea that the folks who brought you here to represent them want you to grow government to the size that it can fit in our toilet is not something that’s supported by the facts.”