Texas rules would require all medical facilities, hospitals and clinics to cremate or bury fetal remains, no matter the period of gestation.
The old rules allowed for fetal tissue, blood, organs and other body parts to be discarded, incinerated or ground, and then disposed of in a sanitary landfill. Texas’ proposed rules requiring the cremation or burial of fetal remains will take effect Dec. 19, according to state health officials. Full Article
“For far too long, Texas has allowed the most innocent among us to be thrown out with the daily waste,” state Sen. Don Huffines (R-Dallas) said in a packed public hearing on the proposed rule in August, the Austin American-Statesman reported. “Life begins at conception.”
Other states have passed restrictions on the use of fetal remains. South Dakota made it illegal to use aborted fetal tissue in research. In Idaho and Alabama it is illegal to buy, sell, donate or experiment on such remains. Full Article
As Emma Green wrote in the Atlantic, legal guidelines for organ and tissue use are somewhat of a murky area. Tanya Marsh, a law professor at Wake Forest University, said, “The question of what we own of ourselves — what is the legal status of biological material that’s been removed from us — there’s very little law about that, except to say that it’s not ours.”