The state of Texas continues its war on safe and legal abortion with a new and deeply disturbing regulation: Starting December 19, the state will begin enforcing a new rule that requires the cremation or burial of fetal remains.Under the new rule, hospitals, abortion clinics, and other health care facilities are prohibited from disposing of fetal remains in sanitary landfills. Instead, they must finance cremation or burial of the remains.As the Texas Tribune notes, the wave of opposition from both the medical community and reproductive rights supporters did not deter officials from the Texas Department of Health and Human Services (DSHS) from adopting the new requirements — though DSHS later clarified that the rules would not apply to abortions or miscarriages that took place at home, in response to privacy concerns.“Hospitals and clinics already follow the state’s standards for safe disposal of medical tissue. The addition of non-medical ritual to current clinical practice only serves to further interfere with a patient’s autonomy and decision making in their own medical care,” Heather Busby, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, said in a statement. “Instead of passing laws that further complicate a patient’s experience and force them to consider burial services, we should focus on making sure that patients are supported, respected, and empowered in their decision.”Texas is not the first state to flirt with such a provision. In fact, it was Vice-President-elect Mike Pence who signed the nation’s first fetal burial provision into law earlier this year as Governor of Indiana. The law, which not only required health care facilities to inter or cremate fetal remains but also banned fetal tissue donation, has since been blocked by a federal judge.Laws like this may seem ridiculous, even silly, on the surface, but they have a deliberate effect: They are a source of intimidation for abortion clinics and yet another cruel and punishing way of stigmatizing those who have abortions.Over the past six years, hundreds of abortion restrictions have sailed through state legislatures. Many of these laws directly targeted abortion clinics, mandating medically unnecessary, onerous, and exorbitantly expensive regulations that were designed to close clinics — laws that are known as Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers, or TRAP laws. Texas led the charge, requiring abortion clinics to meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers and requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at local hospitals — provisions that left the entire state of Texas with only a handful of safe clinics.