Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Life

Mandatory Fetus-Funerals Coming to Texas

New rules in Texas — not proposed rules or rules speculated in the abstract in a philosophy seminar, but actual, real-life rules — require medical facilities that perform abortions to treat fetal tissue as dead bodies, either burying or cremating the tissue in question. A chilling sentence from Tracy Clark-Flory’s Vocativ piece on the story reads: “In response to concerns expressed by activists and the general public, officials have clarified that fetuses will not be required to receive death certificates, and women who miscarry at home do not have to ceremonially bury the tissue.” The rule will, however, apply to the products of miscarriage, should that miscarriage occur at a medical facility.

I’m sure there’s a way to respond to this that doesn’t involve suggesting any male legislators who made it so that this is even a question be required by law to ceremonially bury their own, uh, theoretically-baby-making material. I’m sure there is, but I’m having trouble finding one.

I respect that for religious reasons, some people view abortion as wrong in all cases. What I would like to know, and am struggling to imagine, is the secular justification for compelling medical facilities to treat fetal tissue like people. Struggling, because there really isn’t one. This isn’t the pope offering up instructions for Catholic believers. It’s Texas.

Why should we care about any of this? Because it’s an outrageous interference with reproductive rights, which is bound to have consequences for actual, real-life women, including many who feel a bit unsure about abortion until the moment comes when they find themselves needing one. I leave you with two additional articles, one about a 32-year-old woman in Tennessee currently “facing new felony charges” for having attempted to give herself an abortion, the other short interviews with women who had abortions before they became legal in the United States.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at [email protected]. Her book, The Perils of “Privilege”, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.