Texas is seeking to shame women who make the most difficult decision any human being ever can make.
It is whether to terminate a pregnancy.
How is the state seeking to lay shame on the women who make that decision? Effective on Dec. 19, hospitals, abortion clinics and other health facilities will be required to bury or cremate the remains of aborted fetuses.
The initial proposal sent shock through the abortion-rights community. Many in that camp feared that the state would require death certificates for these fetal remains. The state re-thought some of its initial provisions and decided to go with what is about to become law.
One of the initial provisions would have covered women who suffer miscarriages at home.
As the Dallas Morning News commented in an editorial: “The Department of State Health Services proposed the rule change in July. Its first draft sent tremors among both abortion-rights advocates and the state’s medical community. Would the remains now be required to have a death certificate? Would women who suffer miscarriages at home be required to see to the burial of their fetus?
“Thankfully, the department heard some of these concerns and acted to make clear that the new rule will not apply to miscarriages or abortions that occur at home, for example. Hospitals or clinics, not the women themselves, will be charged with seeing to the eventual burial of the remains. … Those changes are welcome. Requiring mothers suffering a miscarriage at home to see to the burial of the remains of what they had been carrying in their wombs would have been beyond cruel.”
If you check out the link attached to this blog post, you’ll see a letter that Gov. Greg Abbott issued. It contains some fascinating language in which it declares that fetal remains should be treated as human remains and not as “medical waste.” He calls pro-choice advocates “anti-life” proponents.
Oh, my.
The rule that will take effect, in my view, is unduly harsh toward women. It seeks to shame them for making a decision only they can make in consultation with God, their family, their conscience. As the Morning News notes: “It will require facilities to treat fetal remains as if they were bodies of the dead, no matter how or why the pregnancy was ended …”
There is no way on Earth either side is going to persuade the other side of the rightness of their argument — or the wrongness of the opposing view.
I am just sickened in the extreme by government’s continual effort to intercede in decisions that only women can make.
