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Federal court blocks Texas' fetal burial rule

A federal court has blocked Texas’s controversial fetal burial rule from going into effect.

As The Texas Tribune reports, U.S. District Court Judge Sam Sparks ruled last week that Texas cannot require health providers to bury or cremate fetuses, delivering another blow to state leaders in the reproductive rights debate.

In his ruling Friday, Sparks wrote that the Texas Department of State Health rule’s vagueness, undue burden and potential for irreparable harm were factors in his decision.

“The lack of clarity in the Amendments inviting such interpretation allows DSHS to exercise arbitrary, and potentially discriminatory, enforcement on an issue connected to abortion and therefore sensitive and hotly contested,” Sparks said.

In a news release, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said his office would appeal the decision.

“Texas has chosen to dignify the life of the unborn by requiring the humane disposition of fetal remains,” Paxton said. “These rules would simply prevent health care facilities from disposing of the remains of the unborn in sewers or landfills. Today’s ruling, however, reaffirms that the abortion lobby has grown so extreme that it will reject any and every regulation no matter how sensible. Indeed, no longer content with merely ending the life of the unborn, the radical left now objects to even the humane treatment of fetal remains. Texas stands committed to honoring the dignity of the unborn and my office is proud to continue fighting for these new rules.”

According to the news release, the rule would require clinics and health care providers to inter fetal tissue through burial, cremation, or the spreading of ashes. Current Texas rules allow fetal remains to be ground and discharged into a sewer system, incinerated, or sent to a landfill.

The attorney general’s office said in court that the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that states may express their respect for the unborn as long as they do not impose a substantial obstacle to a woman’s right to a pre-viability abortion, arguing that the proposed rule imposes no such obstacle and without disturbance of patients’ constitutional rights, the news release said.

As the Houston Chroniclereported in December, the Center for Reproductive Rights sued the state to block the rule on behalf of several abortion providers arguing that requiring burial or cremation of fetal remains would decrease access to abortion by driving up the cost.

Nancy Northrup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which in December, sued the state on behalf of several abortion providers to stop the rule, said in a news release that the ruling shows the law is “unnecessary, unconstitutionally vague, and manifestly insulting to women.”

She also said that the Constitution protects a woman’s right to access reproductive health care without unnecessary barriers.

The rule was set to go into effect last month.