Republicans Fan the Flames of Big Government Regulations

By now you have probably heard that Texas health officials are moving to require that fetal remains be buried or cremated. Texas is following the lead of Indiana, which imposed a similar requirement last year.

According to the Washington Post:

Abortion providers generally use third-party special waste services to dispose of fetal remains. Previous rules [in Texas] allowed fetal remains, along with other medical tissue, to be ground up and discharged into a sewer system, incinerated, or handled by some other approved process before being disposed of in a landfill.

I have questions. Is it sanitary to dispose of medical tissues by grinding them up and piping them into a sewer system, or by disposing of them in a landfill? I’m completely uneducated on how medical waste is handled, but that sounds sketch to my lay ears.

Texas health officials appear to share my concern:

The health commission has said the rules will result in “enhanced protection of the health and safety of the public.”

But wait. If that’s the case, why do the new requirements only cover fetal tissue? If this is a public health issue, shouldn’t it cover all medical tissue and medical waste products? And that, quite frankly, is the core of the problem here. I am a-okay with state health agencies setting sanitary requirements for the handling of medical tissue and medical waste to promote public health and safety. That’s their job. But that’s not what this is. In regulating fetal tissue differently from other medical tissue, Texas health officials are belying their claimed health and safety motivation.

Texas Governor Greg Abbot was not shy about this in his own remarks:

With little notice, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) approved the proposal, saying that he does not believe fetal remains should be “treated like medical waste and disposed of in landfills,” the Texas Tribune reported.

Comments like this should shut down any claim that this requirement serves public health and safety needs. Abbott totally okay with non-fetal medical tissue and medical waste being dumped in landfills. This isn’t about medicine, health, or safety. It’s about ideological opposition to abortion. Abbot isn’t alone in admitting this.

“For far too long, Texas has allowed the most innocent among us to be thrown out with the daily waste,” state Sen. Don Huffines (R-Dallas) said in a packed public hearing on the proposed rule in August, the Austin American-Statesman reported.

Let’s be very clear about what we’re talking about here. According to the Washington Post, the new requirements apply “regardless of the period of gestation.” In other words, we’re talking first trimester too.

In contrast to the Indiana law, Texas’ requirement is being set by state health officials. I generally prefer to see medical standards set by health officials rather than by the legislature, both because lawmakers are not medical experts and because this makes it easier to change standards to keep up with new research.

However, this is about to change:

Because the rules fall under the rulemaking authority of the state health department, they do not need legislative approval. But Republican lawmakers have already filed legislation to write the rules into statutory law when the legislature reconvenes in January, the Texas Tribune reported.

What about miscarriages? Does this requirement apply to them too?

Following criticism from medical providers, the state’s Health and Human Services Commission clarified that the requirement does not apply to miscarriages or abortions that take place at home. It also does not require birth or death certificates to be filed, to maintain confidentiality.

Wait wait wait. Birth and death certificates are not required “to maintain confidentiality”? Remember that we’re not just talking about stillbirths here. We’re also talking about first trimester abortions. Unless I missed something big, fetuses are still not persons.

It is, at least, receiving that this bill does not apply to miscarriages or abortions that occur at home. Indiana’s law, which was quickly suspended by a federal judge, was not so picky. But this does raise an interesting question—if the concern, as voiced by Abbot and Huffiness, is to ensure that children’s bodies are not thrown out with our medical waste, why make a rule that applies only to abortions or miscarriages that take place in medical facilities?

If the concern is actually about ensuring that fetal remains are disposed of properly, shouldn’t these same requirements apply to miscarriages and abortions that take place at home? That the health officials’ new regulations apply only to miscarriages or abortions that occur in a medical facivility suggests that the requirement is more about burdening abortion clinics than it is about how fetal remains are disposed of.

One last point—if doctors were refusing to allow women who miscarry in a hospital or medical official, or who have a late-term abortion for a wanted pregnancy, to individually bury or cremate the remains (potentially with a small gravesite), I would absolutely have a problem with that. Women should be able to mourn the loss of a child in their own individual need. Not every woman is going to want to go the cremation or burial route, but some will. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about the inverse—forcing cremation or burial on every woman who miscarries or aborts in a medical facility on every woman—and about extending this requirement to a gestational period where there are no visible remains to be seen.

It’s ironic, really, that Republicans spend so much time talking smack about government regulations, but are so happy to make medically unnecessary government regulations to advance their own ideological causes. Republicans are against big government only until they hold the reins of power. Then they’re all for it.

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