Fetus Funerals: The Dystopian New Turn in the Fight Against Abortion Rights
Two years ago, Denee, a 39-year-old mother of two, was in a car accident. She was pregnant at the time, and at the hospital, staff informed her that the child she was carrying no longer had a heartbeat.
Devastated, and not wanting to carry a nonviable pregnancy to term, Denee decided to take the abortion pill. “I didn’t set out to have an abortion,” she tells me over the phone. “I didn’t want to have an abortion. Unfortunately, I needed one anyway.”
Denee lives in Austin, Texas, a state with a notoriously draconian record when it comes to reproductive rights. Although she was able to get the quality care she needed in 2014, she now fears for other women in her region: Earlier this year, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission quietly proposed rules that would require fetuses to be buried or cremated, instead of being disposed of along with other medical waste.
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