After months of intense resistance regarding the abortion rights advocates and the medical community, Texas will now require fetal remains to be cremated or buried instead of disposed of in sanitary landfills. Texas approved new rules this week requiring all hospitals and health care facilities that perform abortions to bury the fetal remains instead of disposing of them in a sanitary landfill like other forms of biological medical waste.
Texas Will Require Aborted Fetuses To Be Buried Or Cremated
According to NY Times, the newly approved rule, which go into effect on December 19, mandate that aborted fetal tissue must be buried regardless of how long it has been gestating. The rules also state that it can either be buried directly after an abortion has been performed or it can be buried or scattered after it has been incinerated. Fetal remains can also be steam disinfected before burial, according to the released guideline.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, an American lawyer and politician in Texas, suggested the burial requirements earlier this year, and at his request, health officials proposed a draft of the rules in July. “I believe it is imperative to establish higher standards that reflect our respect for the sanctity of life,” he said in a summer fundraising email. “This is why Texas will require clinics and hospitals to bury or cremate human and fetal remains.”
Many activists claimed the rules were a completely unnecessary regulation that would further burden women already faced with difficult decisions about their pregnancies, as per Daily News. The first version of the rules did not include language about miscarriages — prompting women to ask why state officials would pile regulations onto grieving mothers and motivating the legislation writers to add in the execution.
What Is Abortion?
Abortion or miscarriage is the ending of a pregnancy by removing a fetus or embryo before it can survive outside the uterus. As explained by BPAS, there are two types of abortion treatment, 'Medical' and 'Surgical' abortion. The medical abortion considered by women as the natural process at it just uses pills to abort. Surgical abortion involves a quick, minor operation. It can be through vacuum aspiration or dilatation and evacuation.
