Texas Abortion Law: State Sued Over Fetus Tissue Burial Rule By Women's Rights Groups

A coalition of women’s rights groups has filed a lawsuit attempting to block new regulations passed by the state of Texas that reportedly affect a woman’s abortion rights.

According to the restrictions that are set to take effect Dec. 19, it is mandatory to bury or cremate the embryonic and fetal tissue resulting from abortions, miscarriages or ectopic pregnancy surgery, regardless of the woman’s beliefs or wishes. According to NBC, the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, approved the legislation, saying fetal tissue remains should not be “treated like medical waste and disposed of in landfills.”

However, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and other groups, who filed the lawsuit Monday, say that the rules attempted “to restrict a woman's right to access safe and legal abortions by increasing the cost of reproductive health care services and the shame and stigma surrounding abortion and pregnancy loss.”

Similar measures have already been blocked in Louisiana and Indiana by earlier legal challenges.

“These insidious regulations are a new low in Texas' long history of denying women the respect that they deserve to make their own decision about their lives and their healthcare,” said Nancy Northup, President of the Centre for Reproductive Rights, in a press release.

The new requirements were proposed less than a week after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down earlier Texas abortion laws ­­-- which required doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and for abortion clinics to conform to the same building standards as surgical centers – in June this year.

“These regulations are an insult to Texas women, the rule of law and the U.S. Supreme Court, which declared less than six months ago that medically unnecessary restrictions on abortion access are unconstitutional,” Northup said in the release.

According to the Associated Press, Planned Parenthood currently disposes of such remains by incineration, along with other medical tissue.