In December of 2020, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed into law a bill mandating the burial or cremation of the remains of aborted children. But the ACLU is suing to have the law, which is set to go into effect in February, overturned.
Under the law, women who undergo abortions would choose either burial or cremation for their aborted child. If they opt not to choose, the abortion facility must choose for them. Any abortionist who doesn’t follow the law will face a first-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. The aborted child’s mother would not be penalized.
In an interview with WCPN, Freda Levenson of the ACLU of Ohio said they have filed their lawsuit on behalf of five abortion facilities. “The law and the implementing rules are extremely burdensome and expensive to comply with – impossible in many regards – and vague and unclear as to how to comply,” she said. “It’s very, very costly to provide cremation or burial for a small collection of cells. This law applies even to a blastocyte or to a small number of cells or to an embryo.”
The “blastocyte” or blastocyst stage of human development spans from 5 days to two weeks after fertilization. The embryonic stage ends at the eighth week of pregnancy, after which the human being has entered into the fetal stage. Regardless of the term used to refer to the developing organism, it is a human in every stage of development and growth.
Levenson further claimed that funeral directors aren’t willing to partner with abortion facilities. In another interview with the Ohio Capital Journal, she said the law would have a “devastating impact on the ability of patients to have autonomy over their own lives.”
Yet Ohio Right to Life President Mike Gonidakis said this lawsuit is simply an attempt for the abortion industry to try to use the courts to legislate over the will of the people. “SB 27 simply dignifies the life of a child who died because of an abortion and provides a proper burial for that child,” he told the Columbus Dispatch. “The ACLU will do everything in its power to sterilize abortion and attempt to hide the fact that a successful abortion leads to the death of an innocent child. Planned Parenthood would rather have all aborted babies carted off to landfills in metal containers. The inhumanity of the ACLU and Planned Parenthood knows no boundaries. Ohio Right to Life is confident that this compassionate law will withstand court scrutiny.”
READ: Ohio governor signs bill protecting infants born alive after abortion
In an e-mailed statement, Mark Harrington of Created Equal, said:
Laws requiring aborted babies to receive a dignified final disposition in some ways pose a bigger threat than many abortion bans do. Because abortionists are the dregs of medicine, they will be unable to comply with these new regulations. That is why the abortion industry is fighting so hard to challenge this law. The courts ought to uphold this law and the dignity of human life.
Undercover footage from the Center of Medical Progress previously exposed the abortion industry’s callous handling of the remains of aborted human beings. During a National Abortion Federation meeting, one abortion industry insider joked about getting kicked out of funeral homes due to their inhumane attitude:
When the bill got pa– well, actually, getting ready for this, I started visiting funeral homes, who ultimately started talking about how much a body weighs, before they could figure out how much it was gonna cost, and then we had to go from pounds to ounces, and they were like, “We don’t even know how to charge for this.” And they showed me a body bag, and I was like, “Dude, we need to go to like, a Tupperware container.” [audience laughter]
In which case, we started talking about the freezer jars we use, which really freaked them out, because all the fetal tissue was mixed together, after we do a POC check, and they were, they just wanted me to leave. And when a funeral home wants you to leave, it says a lot about the population you’re handling. You really [inaudible].
The abortion industry often claims that undercover videos like these are fake or have been “deceptively edited,” but other accounts support the validity of these videos. Abortion facilities throw the bodies of their victims into dumpsters, landfills, and sewers; others have stored them in freezers. Still others are burned or incinerated — in some cases, even used to create electricity.
It is widespread situations like these which prove why legislators pass bills regarding the humane and dignified disposal of the remains of aborted children.
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