The rules, which were introduced by the Department of State Health Services, would require all medical facilities, hospitals and clinics to cremate or bury fetal remains, no matter the period of gestation. 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. "The rules target physicians that provide abortions and the hospitals that care for patients for no reason other than to make it harder to get a safe, legal abortion in Texas," said Blake Rocap, legislative counsel for NARAL Pro-Choice Texas. “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. Department spokeswoman Carrie Williams said the agency found that cost shouldn't be a concern for hospitals and abortion providers. “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.” 
 
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 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. "It creates an undue burden on women who either have an abortion or a miscarriage," Mongold said. Because the rules fall under the rulemaking authority of the state health department, they do not need legislative approval. AUSTIN — Abortion rights advocates made a final push Wednesday against proposed state rules that would require abortion providers to cremate or bury fetal remains.
– 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.