Federal appeals court restores Indiana law requiring humane burial of aborted children

On Monday, a federal appeals court reinstated an Indiana law requiring the humane burial or cremation of aborted children. The law, which was adopted in 2016, was blocked in September by an Indiana judge who ruled that it violates the religious freedom and free speech of people who do not believe that a preborn child has the same rights as a born person.

In its ruling, the court overruled the previous judge’s determination that the law violates freedom of religion.

“Indiana does not require any woman who has obtained an abortion to violate any belief, religious or secular,” the court’s opinion states. “The cremate-or-bury directive applies only to hospitals and clinics.”

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The court went on to state that “a moral objection to one potential implication of the way medical providers handle fetal remains is some distance from a contention that the state compels any woman to violate her own religious tenets.”

In 2020, the law was challenged in a lawsuit brought by the Women’s Med abortion facility in Indianapolis. According to the Associated Press, the lawsuit “argued Indiana’s requirements caused both abortion and miscarriage patients ‘shame, stigma, anguish, and anger’ because they ‘send the unmistakable message that someone who has had an abortion or miscarriage is responsible for the death of a person’.”

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Rupali Sharma, said, “We are currently exploring all options with plaintiffs to ensure abortion patients can get the care they need with the dignity they deserve.”

Despite Sharma’s statement, the law ensuring that aborted children are given a proper burial or are cremated does not interfere with an abortion in any way. Undercover investigations have previously exposed the horrific ways in which abortion businesses dispose of their preborn victims, such as throwing the bodies into dumpsters, landfills, and sewers.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita praised the court’s decision. “The bodies of unborn babies are more than mere medical waste to be tossed out with trash,” he said in a statement. “They are human beings who deserve the dignity of cremation or burial. The appellate court’s decision is a win for basic decency.”