San Antonio Express News

“We are not convinced there are enough votes on the Supreme Court at the moment to repeal Roe v. Wade or even scale back Roe v. Wade,” said Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, referring to the landmark ruling that originated in Texas that found women have a constitutional right to the procedure.

He’s urging the Legislature to pass less sweeping bills, such as banning cities, counties and other municipalities from doing business with abortion providers like Planned Parenthood and their affiliates.

Pojman said he is not advising lawmakers to pass a bill to ban abortions of fetuses with diagnosed abnormalities after 20 weeks gestation because he does not believe it could survive a court challenge.

This battle of burial is different from many past abortion fights because it focuses debate on the dignity of the fetus instead of the health regulations of abortion clinics. State officials say their goals are to keep fetal and embryonic remains out of sanitary landfills where other medical tissue is disposed of, and banning an outdated procedure of grinding and flushing the remains into a sanitary sewer.

“This is not going to make abortion unavailable. Abortion is readily available in Texas, that will continue,” said Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life. “This is merely about assuring that the remains of babies who die from miscarriage and abortion are handled in a dignified manner.”

The law is easy for abortion clinics and hospitals to comply with, he said. To help defray the costs, the state built a registry of participating funeral homes and cemeteries willing to provide free or low-cost burials. Private nonprofit groups, too, can sign up on the registry to signal their willingness to help pay other related costs.