Texas Woman: I Was Forced to Consent to Bury Fetal Remains After Miscarriage in “Horrific” Ordeal

Last week, a U.S. appeals court declared unconstitutional an Indiana law signed by then-Governor, now Vice President, Mike Pence, that requires fetuses to be buried or cremated. This comes as Texas passed a law last year saying all fetal remains had to be buried or cremated, and also banned donation of that tissue for research purposes. In January, U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra temporarily halted the fetal remains law, but Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has vowed to continue fighting for it. For more, we speak with Blake Norton, who had a miscarriage in 2015 at the Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas, and was forced to choose whether she would let the hospital bury the remains in a shared grave, or arrange for a "private burial" at her own expense. We're also joined by Texas Observer reporter Sophie Novack, whose cover story about Blake Norton is headlined "Indoctrinated: A Catholic hospital in Austin forces patients who miscarry to consent to fetal burials. For one woman, that made a painful loss even worse-and she worries it could soon become routine across Texas."