An undue burden
A federal judge on Friday issued a preliminary injunction blocking the State of Texas from implementing rules that require cremation or burial of “fetal remains.”
Judge Sam Sparks wrote in the decision that the rules implemented by Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) constituted an “undue burden” on access to abortion care.
“It seems unlikely DSHS’s professed purpose is a valid state interest and not a pretext for restricting abortion access,” Sparks wrote. “By comparison, Plaintiffs face likely constitutional violations, which could severely limit abortion access in Texas.”
The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit in December challenging the rules, and will now seek an order from the court to permanently strike down the rules.
The rules could add up to $2,000 to the cost of abortion care, according to the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Texas.
It’s hard to imagine anything more intrusively insulting. Maybe next they’ll be writing laws that tell women to enroll their aborted fetuses in school.
I have for years thought it odd that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church has never insisted on full funeral rites for miscarried babies, or for that matter for menstrual blood, which can easily contain a fertilised ovum (zygote) or beyond; up to and including a foetus.
Just one more to add to the list of Catholic ‘mysteries’, I guess.
In Catholic theology, funerals have a role in comforting the survivors and in offering prayers for the deceased in regard to an easier, shorter, or totally skipped time in Purgatory. As a rough consensus opinion, infants aren’t subject to Purgatory anyway – they’ve not been able to sin (no matter how many times they may have managed to pee on daddy’s face or get mommy up again at 2 A.M.), and original sin just means that they’re waiting for the End to get into heaven and wait comfortably in transcendent day-care til then. (And yes yes, it’s theology, so it’s just working out claims consistent-enough with things you’re determined to accept without or against evidence when it comes to the stuff that your core beliefs don’t directly address.)
Unbaptized infants can optionally receive funerals in that comfort-for-survivors aspect. Texas is demanding them for pre-infants to hurt survivors. Effectively, they’re weaponizing the fetuses they’re supposed to be “protecting”.
And, of course, cremation is utterly forbidden by Christians. How is the contents of an urn supposed to ‘rise again’ on Judgment Day?
My orientation for PP guest escort is next month. I can’t get on the front lines soon enough.
Freemage, I envy you. I live quite a long way from the nearest PP, and while I could probably arrange to escort every now and then, it would be a problem, given the extreme distance.
I have considered from time to time if there is a role for people like me. After all, the women living in my area who need the services also live a long way from the nearest clinic, and are probably in tough financial situations. Maybe if I opened up a transport service for young women (or older women; I’m not going to be ageist) who need to get to PP, that would have some of the same impact.
I would probably have to quit my job, though, if the demand became too great, because I work about 90 hours a week right now (I know, I know, that’s impossible. Larry Summers did say women were not willing to put in that sort of hours, so either I am not a woman, or I’m not putting in that sort of hours, right?)
PP escort is a great thing to do and can take some guts as well from what I’ve seen. Luckily such protests outside clinics in NZ are an extreme rarity and our Police don’t allow anything like the level of harassment that seems to be tolerated in the US. Then again, free speech is not such an absolute in this country (or most others).
I think we need to learn how to do it ourselves. I learned recently that in the pre Roe days there was a group of feminists who went around teaching women how to perform early abortions. These were “menstrual extractions” not herbal medicine abortions. Their rate of complications was comparable to that of competent physicians.
iknklast: If your schedule ever frees up, yes, I’m sure there are women who would be eternally grateful for the sort of help you describe there.
Rob: I’ll be honest–in my part of the country, the protests tend to be more rude and appalling than threatening and violent. The clinic is in an area that’s moderate-blue on the election maps, which doesn’t hurt.