Pro-choice supporters rally outside the Supreme Court before the June 2016 court ruling in a case that imposed heavy restrictions on abortion clinics in Texas and was struck down. (Michael Reynolds/European Pressphoto Agency) 
 
 After months of fierce opposition from abortion rights advocates and the medical community, Texas will require fetal remains to be cremated or buried instead of disposed in sanitary landfills. 
 
 On Monday, health officials finalized the new rules prohibiting hospitals, abortion clinics and other health care facilities from disposing of fetal remains — regardless of the period of gestation. The rules will take effect Dec. 19, according to state health officials, the Texas Tribune reported. 
 
 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. 
 
 The move comes after months of public comment periods, hearings and more than 35,000 comments submitted to health officials since the rules were first proposed in early July. 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. 
 
 The health commission has said the rules will result in “enhanced protection of the health and safety of the public.” Meanwhile, reproductive rights activists say the rules are unnecessary and make it more difficult for a woman to get a safe, legal abortion in the state. 
 
 “The rules target physicians that provide abortions and the hospitals that care for patients,” said Blake Rocap, legislative counsel for advocacy group NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, the Dallas Morning News reported. “It’s so transparent that what they’re really trying to do is denying access to abortion.” The group rallied outside the Department of State Health Services in late October and delivered more than 5,500 signatures from individuals in opposition to the proposal. 
 
 Others in the medical and funeral industries criticized the costs that would be associated with cremating or burying fetal remains — a process that can cost hospitals and abortion providers several thousands dollars in each case. But department spokeswoman Carrie Williams said the cost shouldn’t be a concern. 
 
 “What we found through our research is that the proposed rules won’t increase total costs for healthcare facilities,” Williams said in an email, the Dallas Morning News reported. “While the methods described in the new rules may have a cost, that cost is expected to be offset by costs currently being spent by facilities on disposition for transportation, storage, incineration, steam disinfection and/or landfill disposal.” 
 
 [Supreme Court rules against Texas and for science in abortion case] 
 
 Abortion providers generally use third-party special waste services to dispose of fetal remains. Previous rules 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. 
 
 David Brown, senior staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, on Monday said the rule was “an unnecessary burden and an intrusion” on a woman’s personal beliefs. “These new restrictions reveal the callous indifference that Texas politicians have toward women,” Brown said, the Texas Tribune reported. 
 
 Stephanie Toti, senior counsel for the center, said in a statement, “Texas politicians are at it again, inserting their personal beliefs into the health care decisions of Texas women.” 
 
 Meanwhile, several Republican lawmakers in the state have expressed support for the proposed rule. 
 
 “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. “Life begins at conception.” 
 
 Women who attended the hearing in August provided testimonials with mixed responses and personal details. One woman said she felt a great deal of closure burying a fetus after she had a miscarriage. Another said she had an abortion after she was raped, and that if she had been forced to bury the fetus it would have “essentially been the state of Texas rubbing my face in my own rape.” 
 
 Some groups, like the Center for Reproductive Rights, have said they would likely challenge the new rules in court. 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. 
 
 [How restrictive are abortion regulations in your state?] 
 
 Other states have passed restrictions on the use of fetal remains. South Dakota made it illegal to use aborted fetal tissue in research. In Idaho and Alabama it is illegal to buy, sell, donate or experiment on such remains. 
 
 A law in Indiana, among other things, also called for abortion providers to bury or cremate fetal tissue. Additionally, it would have prohibited abortions sought solely because a fetus had been potentially diagnosed with a disability such as Down syndrome. But in June, a federal judge suspended the law from going into effect, finding that it violated U.S. Supreme Court precedents protecting a woman’s right to choose an abortion and the right to privacy in making that decision, the Indianapolis Star reported. 
 
 [A Catholic priest put an aborted fetus on the altar in an appeal for Donald Trump] 
 
 As Emma Green wrote in the Atlantic, legal guidelines for organ and tissue use are somewhat of a murky area. Tanya Marsh, a law professor at Wake Forest University, said, “The question of what we own of ourselves — what is the legal status of biological material that’s been removed from us — there’s very little law about that, except to say that it’s not ours.” 
 
 And for fetuses, such questions become even more complex, she added. 
 
 “That’s an area in between people born alive and a part of a person that had no capability of independent existence,” Marsh said. “These are deep philosophical, religious, and legal questions that we’ve punted.” 
 
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 Pooping in deep space has NASA stumped. The ‘Space Poop Challenge’ is your way to help. ||||| Texas Women Fight Rule for Burial of Miscarriages AUSTIN, Texas (CN) — As Hillary Clinton gave her concession speech Wednesday, women in Texas pleaded with state officials to stop proposed rules that would require embryonic and fetal tissue to be buried or cremated after an abortion, miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy. 
 
 Women said Texas' proposed rules would restrict access to abortion and inflict further pain and suffering on women who have lost a baby during pregnancy. 
 
 It was the Texas Department of Health Services' second public hearing on rules that would require embryonic and fetal tissue to be buried or cremated after an abortion, miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy. 
 
 Texas officials say that all fetal remains, regardless of the period of gestation, deserve "a dignified interment," while opponents say the measure is just another in a series of unconstitutional attempts to restrict abortion access in Texas. 
 
 "These proposed rules are not meant to protect people's health and safety," said Yvonne Gutierrez, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes. "They are just another attempt to restrict access to care that's deeply needed and shame and hurt women in the process. 
 
 "The department has not provided any shred of evidence that Texas's current rules have not protected health and safety." Some spoke on behalf of groups such as the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) or Jane's Due Process, some on their own behalf. Many shared painful stories of their miscarriages or abortions, and said that having arrange a funeral for fetal remains would have made these experiences even worse. 
 
 There also are concerns about how the rules will be implemented. 
 
 The Texas Medical Association asked the Department of Health Services in August whether a death certificate will be required all fetal tissues interred, which raises privacy issues. 
 
 The Medical Association also expressed concerns about the costs of this, echoing concerns the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Texas raised in July. 
 
 Ashley Blinkhorn, who cried as she testified about the two miscarriages she suffered before she was 25, said the rules would affect "so many people in so many ways that people aren't considering." 
 
 "You're monkeying around with people's lives here," Blinkhorn said. 
 
 Texas Health Commission spokesman Bryan Black told the Texas Tribune in July, after the new rules were quietly published in the Texas Register, that they were developed to "ensure Texas law maintains the highest standards of human dignity." 
 
 Gov. Greg Abbott asked the department and the Texas Health and Human Services Commission in January to review the rules on disposition of "special waste" from healthcare facilities. 
 
 The rules today still allow for fetal tissue to be incinerated or ground and flushed or disposed of at a sanitary landfill. 
 
 Abbott wrote in a July fund-raising letter for his anti-abortion initiative that the rule changes were designed to "reflect our respect for the sanctity of life" and that the groups protesting the rules "simply refuse to acknowledge any rights of the unborn." 
 
 Representatives from the Texas Alliance for Life and Texas Right to Life made similar arguments at the Wednesday hearing. 
 
 "It is unconscionable that anyone would defend the grinding and flushing of the bodies of unborn babies who are victims of abortion down the drain and into a city sewer system as if they were mere medical waste," said John Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life. "That method of the disposition of the remains should be banned, as the proposed rules do." 
 
 Blake Rocap, legislative director for NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, said the state should concentrate on ensuring that patients are "supported and respected and empowered in their health care decision," instead of "passing laws that force government intrusion on a patient's access to health care." 
 
 "This rule provides no public health benefit, just like the state's abortion restrictions that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in June," Rocap said in a statement Wednesday. 
 
 He referred to Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, in which the court rejected by 5-3 vote a 2013 Texas law that required abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles, and required the clinics to meet the same minimum standards as ambulatory surgical centers. 
 
 The court found that neither provision provided any medical benefits that would justify the undue burdens imposed upon women seeking abortions. 
 
 Opponents to the new fetal burial rules believe that even if they do go into effect, they will be struck down by the courts on the basis of Hellerstedt. 
 
 However, they also are concerned that president-elect Donald Trump may appoint a justice to the truncated court that may help overturn Hellerstedt, and even Roe v. Wade. 
 
 The Center for Reproductive Rights said in a statement Wednesday that the country "strands perilously close to a return to the dark days when women were forced to put their own lives at risk to get safe and legal abortion care." 
 
 "It is 2016, and our leaders should build on the historic advancements we've made for women's health and rights, not threaten to undo them," the center said. 
 
 It's clear that a fight is coming in Texas. 
 
 "I'm sure that after last night's results many people feel emboldened to continue their attacks on women," said Sheila Sorvari, who testified Wednesday. "But if you thought we were going to pull up the covers and cry and go away, you're wrong." 
 
 The Texas Department of Health Services will incorporate comments from the hearing with previous comments from the public consultation period in August. 
 
 It is unclear whether any changes will be made to the proposed rules. No date has been set for the rules to go into effect.
– Texas women came forward earlier this month to tell their miscarriage and abortion stories to fend off proposed new funerary rules for embryonic and fetal tissue, but sharing their experiences apparently fell short of the mark. Per state health officials, starting Dec. 19, hospitals, abortion clinics, and other facilities will be banned from disposing of fetal remains in sanitary landfills, the Texas Tribune reports. Instead, they'll be required to bury or cremate the remains, no matter the gestational age—a move spurring "intense outcry" from reproductive rights advocates, as well as from medical providers. "The state [Health and Human Services Commission] has once again ignored the concerns of the medical community and thousands of Texans by playing politics with people's private health-care decisions," Heather Busby, director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, says in a statement. But health officials say they've addressed the major concerns brought up during what the Washington Post calls "months of controversy" since the initial July proposal. In terms of privacy, birth or death certificates aren't required, and miscarriages or abortions at home don't have to comply. As for the costs, the medical care facilities will pay, with costs "offset by the elimination of some current methods of disposition," per the health department. The commission notes the rules will lead to "enhanced protection of the health and safety of the public," but women's rights advocates say it's nothing more than a veiled attempt to restrict abortion access, per the Dallas Morning News. "These new restrictions reveal the callous indifference that Texas politicians have toward women," a Center for Reproductive Rights lawyer says, adding the rules will "almost certainly trigger costly litigation," per the Tribune.