Wisconsin GOP bill would force women to return aborted tissue to doctors

Republican lawmakers want Wisconsin women who have medication abortions at home to collect blood and fetal remains in fluorescent orange biohazard containers called “catch kits.” 

OB-GYNs would be legally mandated to provide these containers to patients when prescribing legal abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol, and women would be mandated to return collected contents to their physicians.

This is the reality that authors of Assembly Bill 718—all Republicans—want to see enforced in Wisconsin. Anti-abortion lawmakers have dubbed the bill the “Clean Water for All Life” Act and, if passed, it could take effect as soon as May 2026. 

Under the law, OB-GYNs or any doctors providing abortion pills to patients would be required to collect the kits or face a Class I felony, punishable by more than three years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Once obtained by physicians, the contents of each “catch kit” would be returned to drug manufacturers for “proper disposal.”

Women who undergo medication abortions would not be punished for failure to comply with collecting fetal remains in catch kits, unlike their physicians.

‘It’s invasive, it’s insane,’ say OB-GYNs

Three OB-GYNs told UpNorthNews that they’re deeply disturbed by how lawmakers from the so-called “small government” party have found a new way to inject themselves into the private relationships between women and their physicians.

“It’s so invasive,” said Wisconsin OB-GYN Dr. Carley Zeal. Patients “are processing the loss of a pregnancy even if they’re inducing it on their own. For some people, collecting that stuff would just be so guttural and so painful. It’s insane to think that the government would force us to do that.”

That is exactly what the bill would do. Sixty-three percent of Wisconsin women who end their pregnancies now use the safe two-pill abortion regimen in the privacy of their homes instead of undergoing a surgical procedure. 

Medication abortion can be safely used up to 11 weeks of pregnancy.

If AB718 becomes law, thousands of Wisconsin women each year would be required to use “catch kits” and medical waste bags provided by physicians to collect every sanitary napkin, tissue, blood clot, and bit of fetal remains—even if they have to scoop them out of a toilet.

“This bill is terrible. It’s torture from a patient perspective,” said Dr. Kristin Lyerly, a Wisconsin-based OB-GYN. “Then, from a physician’s perspective, to have to counsel people that they have to do this.”

“I can’t even imagine having to explain to my patients when they’re experiencing an abortion that they have to fish what comes out of their body out of the toilet, put it in a bag, and bring it back to the office. I don’t know how I would explain that.”

Dr. Anna Igler, a Wisconsin OB-GYN who underwent a surgical abortion herself after learning that her much-wanted pregnancy was unviable, called the bill “really cruel.”

“That’s a horrible, horrible thing to ask someone to do,” she said. “It adds to the grief and trauma, the sadness of the entire thing.”

Republican justification: ‘clean water’

Republican lawmakers who authored the bill claim they want to protect the state’s drinking water from exposure to abortion medications and fetal remains. 

“It addresses the fact that we have endocrine disruptors that are going into our water on a regular basis in our state and nation, due to women aborting at home,” said bill co-sponsor Rep. Lindee Brill of Sheboygan Falls.

The Clean Water for All Life Act describes “abortion-inducing” drugs in the bill as “hazardous endocrine disruptors.”

Endocrine disruptors “are natural or human-made chemicals that may mimic, block, or interfere with the body’s hormones, which are part of the endocrine system,” according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Leaders of national anti-abortion groups such as Students for Life have used Republican-controlled state legislatures to pass similar legislation, claiming that abortion drugs and fetal remains end up in water systems.

“We are all drinking other people’s abortions in the wastewater,” Kristi Hamrick of Students for Life claimed in testimony to Texas legislators last spring.

No scientific evidence that abortion pills pollute

However, there is no evidence that this is an environmental issue, Nathan Donely, environmental health science director for the Center for Biological Diversity, told PolitiFact.

“Pharmaceutical waste can be a big issue when we’re talking about widely used drugs, but to somehow point to mifepristone as a bad actor here is completely disingenuous.”

The OB-GYNs interviewed by UpNorthNews called the idea that abortion drugs are poisoning the state’s water “ridiculous.”

Those drugs “are not in the remains that come out of the uterus,” explained Dr. Zeal, who is also a complex family planning specialist. “They are metabolized in the body and are excreted through the urine.”

“When you take any sort of medication, it’s your urine and feces that have the leftover contaminants. They’re not in the products of conception,” agreed Dr. Lyerly.

In reality, research has shown that domestic animals such as cows—whose feed contains hormones—excrete endocrine-disrupting chemicals in their urine that can enter Wisconsin’s water systems.

“This is clearly a frivolous bill. They aren’t concerned about other drugs—when you take chemotherapy, or blood pressure medication, or antibiotics. They’re only concerned about medication abortion.”

The doctors also noted that both drugs are commonly used to help women who miscarry naturally to expel fetal tissue.

Still, Republicans promoting AB718 say they won’t require fetal remains from miscarriages to be collected in catch kits, even though abortion pills essentially produce a miscarriage.

‘About shame and stigma’

“This bill is about shame. It’s about stigma. It’s about making it as difficult to obtain abortion care as possible—and trying to make women feel bad,” said Democratic Sen. Kelda Roys, a supporter of abortion rights.

“As someone who’s gone through a miscarriage, I can’t even really imagine the feasibility of how you’d be able to use a catch kit because it’s not a quick process,” said Roys, who is running to be the Democratic nominee for governor of Wisconsin.

“And somehow the water quality is being harmed? There’s no scientific basis for that whatsoever. There’s no evidence that abortion medication is harming the water supply in any way,” she told UpNorthNews.

Roys also pointed out that Republicans have repeatedly opposed Democratic legislation to replace dangerous lead water pipes and to clean up man-made PFAS contaminants entering the state’s waterways.

In fact, the Republican-controlled Legislature has for years withheld $125 million dedicated to PFAS cleanup in Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ budget.

“We have actual contaminants to worry about. Things like PFAS and lead are serious problems. You can’t take these creepy Republican bills seriously on the water quality front when they ignore the actual crises that are poisoning children today.”

Roys added that AB718 is written so broadly that any endocrine-disrupting drug—including contraceptives and Viagra—could require users to collect waste in catch kits.

2026 election could decide future of abortion access

Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, has vowed that, as long as he is governor, he will “veto any bill that takes away Wisconsinites’ reproductive freedom or makes health care any less accessible than it is today. Period.” 

Evers is not running for re-election this year.

Democratic candidates vying to replace Evers—including Roys—support protecting abortion rights. The primary election is Aug. 11.

However, the two leading Republican candidates for governor, Tom Tiffany and Josh Schoemann, have both taken strong anti-abortion positions and are unlikely to veto the Clean Water for All Life Act if elected.

The push to ban mifepristone—partly fueled by false claims that it contaminates water—is also gaining support from Republicans at the federal level.

On Jan. 14, the Republican-led Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions HELP Committee held a hearing about the safety of mifepristone and whether it has been detected in the nation’s waterways.

Democratic Committee member Sen. Patty Murray called the Republican claims “insane.”

“We all know that the push to use environmental laws to rip away mifepristone is not about the environment,” Murray said. “Anti-abortion groups are pushing invasive and dehumanizing laws to block women—in states where abortion is legal, like Wisconsin—from getting care in the privacy of their own homes.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also promised to “review” the safety of mifepristone after the midterm elections in November.

In the meantime, Wisconsin OB-GYNs say they will continue to raise the alarm about false Republican claims that medication abortions and fetal remains harm the water supply.

“It’s so important for us in states like Wisconsin, when we see ridiculous legislation like this, to make sure that we take it seriously,” Dr. Lyerly said.

Added Dr. Zeal: “If Republicans are worried about protecting pregnancy-capable people from being exposed to things that could harm their pregnancies, then they might be more concerned about other environmental protections.”