Clean Water for All Life Act

HB7983, the Clean Water for All Life Act, introduced March 18, 2026, and currently before the House Committee on the Judiciary, makes two principal changes to title 18 of the United States Code. First, it renames Chapter 74 from 'Partial-Birth Abortions' to 'Abortion Crimes.' Second, it inserts a new section, 18 U.S.C. § 1532, creating a federal criminal offense and adding a corresponding clerical entry to the chapter's table of sections.

The new offense is set out in § 1532(a). The jurisdictional hook limits the offense to conduct 'in or affecting interstate commerce.' Within that scope, the offense covers whoever 'provides or attempts to provide abortion through a chemical abortion drug' -- attempts are expressly included, not only completed acts. The offense is constituted by three conjunctive conditions, each joined by 'and': (1) without physically examining the patient; (2) without being physically present at the location of the chemical abortion; and (3) without providing a catch kit and red bag medical waste, including instructions for the patient to bring such kit and bag to the healthcare provider for proper disposal. Because all three conditions are joined by 'and,' the offense requires that all three be absent -- a person who physically examines the patient, is physically present, and provides the required kit and waste container with instructions would not commit the offense as drafted.

The American Council reads this structure as a meaningful set of minimum in-person care standards: a provider must see the patient, be present when the drug is administered, and equip the patient to return biological waste safely. These are not bureaucratic technicalities. They reflect our conviction that every human life -- including the unborn child -- and every woman deserves care that is embodied, present, and accountable. Telehealth dispensing of drugs that end a human life, with no provider in the room and no safe-disposal plan, treats a profound moral act as a mail-order transaction. We believe this bill correctly requires otherwise.

The criminal penalty prescribed in § 1532(a) is imprisonment of not more than 5 years, a fine of not more than $50,000, or both, calculated per occurrence. The bill does not specify a minimum sentence; the ceiling is 5 years. The per-occurrence structure means each separate provision or attempt is a separate exposure to that penalty range. No civil penalty mechanism or separate enforcement agency is established by this text; enforcement runs through the existing federal criminal justice system.

The bill's definition of 'abortion' in § 1532(b)(1) is carefully bounded. It covers 'the act of using, prescribing, administering, procuring, or selling of any instrument, medicine, drug, or any other substance, device, or means with the purpose to terminate the pregnancy of a woman, with knowledge that the termination by any of those means will with reasonable likelihood cause the death of the unborn child.' Three categories of acts are expressly excluded from this definition: (i) acts performed with the purpose to save the life or preserve the health of the unborn child; (ii) removal of a dead unborn child caused by spontaneous abortion (miscarriage); and (iii) removal of an ectopic pregnancy. These carve-outs are joined by 'or,' meaning any one of the three purposes suffices to take the act outside the definition. The bill contains no explicit life-of-the-mother exception framed in those terms; the exemptions as drafted are oriented toward the unborn child's life and health, spontaneous abortion, and ectopic pregnancy. Whether a provider acting to save the mother's life would fall within one of those three categories -- particularly the first -- is a question the text does not answer with full clarity, and we note that an honest reading of the bill reveals that gap.

'Chemical abortion drug' is defined in § 1532(b)(3) to mean, under subparagraph (A), 'mifepristone, misoprostol, mifeprex, mifegyne, or any substantially similar generic or non-generic drug or chemical dispensed for purposes of causing an abortion,' or, under subparagraph (B), 'any drug developed, marketed, sold, or distributed for the purpose of causing an abortion.' The two subparagraphs are joined by 'or,' so either description is independently sufficient. Subparagraph (B) is written in forward-looking terms and would reach drugs not yet named or approved at the time of enactment, provided they are developed, marketed, sold, or distributed for the purpose of causing an abortion.

'Catch kit' is defined in § 1532(b)(2) as 'a collection container designed to catch and hold medical waste or infectious waste, often used for collecting samples for testing.' 'Red bag medical waste' is defined in § 1532(b)(5) as 'a biohazardous waste container made to contain medical or biohazardous waste,' whose container must either be red with lettering and symbols in a contrasting color, or include required warning labels in fluorescent orange or orange-red with lettering and symbols in a contrasting color. These two definitions work together to describe what a provider must supply the patient before any chemical abortion drug provision is lawful under this section.

'Unborn child' is defined in § 1532(b)(6) as 'an individual organism of the species homo sapiens from fertilization until live birth,' and 'fertilization' is defined in § 1532(b)(4) as 'the fusion of a human spermatozoon with a human ovum.' These definitions reflect, and we believe rightly reflect, the scientific and moral reality that a distinct human life begins at fertilization. They ground the entire statute in a framework that takes the humanity of the unborn child as a premise, not a conclusion to be argued away.

The bill contains no explicit provision addressing the patient's right to decline, no anti-retaliation section, no spending restriction or appropriation, and no carve-out for particular categories of provider or institution beyond what is implicit in the jurisdictional limit of 'in or affecting interstate commerce.' No exemption is stated for rape, incest, or fetal anomaly. The bill does not address conduct that falls entirely outside interstate commerce, though as a practical matter federal criminal jurisdiction over pharmaceutical distribution will ordinarily reach the relevant conduct. Constituents and legislators should read the bill with these absences in mind alongside the provisions that are present.