Ohio Republicans want you to bury or cremate your zygote, but your grandma, well, she’s on her own. That’s the message of their latest move, which happened on Jan. 1, when they decided that the biggest problem facing the people of Ohio was not the 700,000 COVID cases and almost 9,000 deaths, but how they disposed of their fetal tissue.
Statehouse Republicans, who in November accused GOP Gov. Mike DeWine of trying to turn the state’s businesses into the “mask police,” don’t seem all that interested in protecting the lives of actual current humans. But they are deeply concerned about the condition of clumps of fetal tissue as small as the head of a pin.
In the middle of a pandemic that in the month of December alone killed more Americans than the Vietnam War did, Ohio Republicans passed Senate Bill 27. The bill, which will go into effect three months from now unless the courts stop it, requires that any “zygote, blastocyst, embryo or fetus” from a surgical abortion must be “buried or cremated.” It also states that “the pregnant woman is responsible for the costs related to the final disposition of the fetal remains at the chosen location.”