Missouri bill would require women to bury or cremate fetal remains after abortion

As Missouri’s restrictive 2019 abortion law awaits its fate in the federal courts, state lawmakers are pursuing another proposal that would impose requirements after an abortion has been performed.

Legislation sponsored by Rep. Hannah Kelly, a Mountain Grove Republican, would require women who get abortions to bury or cremate the fetal remains. Doctors would have to provide options prior to the procedure, and a woman would have to choose one before it is performed.

Missouri requires a 72-hour waiting period for women to get an abortion.

Under the proposal, a woman could assign the right to choose to a family member, but not to the medical facility. She would also bear the cost of the burial or cremation, which the bill requires to be included in the cost of the procedure.

The bill passed out of two committees late this month and awaits debate on the House floor in the waning weeks of the legislative session.

“I’m one hundred percent pro-life,” Kelly said in an interview Monday. “Being pro-life isn’t just about ... endeavoring so that I can one day say Missouri has no more abortions. This is a great way to honor the life of the child.”

The chief medical officer of the state’s only abortion clinic, Planned Parenthood in St. Louis, slammed the measure in a statement as “a political weapon used to shame and stigmatize our patients who choose abortion”

“Forcing funeral rituals on our patients is morbid and dystopian, and has nothing to do with sound medical care,” said Dr. Colleen McNicholas of Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region.

Kelly said she took guidance from similar measures in other states. In Tennessee, the legislature sent a version to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk this month. In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Indiana version, signed into law by then-Gov. Mike Pence, that requires the medical facility to provide for the burial or cremation.

The Missouri bill also would prohibit the donation of fetal remains for research and create a felony crime of hoarding aborted fetuses.

Conservatives have pursued the measures around the country since 2016, after anti-abortion activists released undercover recordings of Planned Parenthood officials discussing the potential transfer of fetal tissue. The nonprofit apologized for the tone of one of its officials in the video, but multiple state investigations into the matter did not find evidence the organization was selling body parts.

Kelly said she wants to prevent “illegal profits” from being made off any abortions in Missouri. She said religious activists praying outside an unnamed abortion clinic raised concerns to her that fetal parts were being trafficked.

“I don’t have proof of that,” she said, but “prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Council of Jewish Women testified that the bill would impose a non-medical, religious act of a funeral or burial proceeding on those whose religions do not deem the aborted fetus a life. Representatives of the Missouri Catholic Conference and Missouri Right to Life argued the bill would allow grieving relatives closure.

Fifty abortions were performed at the St. Louis Planned Parenthood clinic the past year, a dramatic reduction from prior years. A spokeswoman for the clinic said many Missouri women sought abortions instead at its newer Illinois clinic, where 1,700 procedures were performed in the last year.

In 2019, the year lawmakers passed a ban on abortions after eight weeks gestation, more than 1,400 abortions were performed in Missouri, according to the state health department. The law is currently barred from being enforced because of litigation.

In the state Senate this year, an anti-abortion measure sponsored by Sen. Paul Wieland, an Imperial Republican, threatened to derail a key portion of funding for the state’s Medicaid program.

Wieland added an amendment to a routine hospital tax bill that would prohibit the health care program from covering “Any drug or device approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration that may cause the destruction of, or prevent the implantation of, an unborn child.” Some oral or implanted contraceptives could fit that description, and the bill has been tabled over concerns it could violate federal rules on coverage of birth control.

Federal and state law already prohibit Medicaid funds from going toward abortions. Since that amendment, another one sponsored by Sen. Bob Onder was added, that would block Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood.