Sponsors (13)
This bill gives patients explicit disposal choices and increases federal reporting and oversight of fetal tissue disposition, but couples those changes with new reporting, recordkeeping, and criminal/civil penalties that raise privacy risks, legal and financial burdens for providers, and the potential to reduce access to abortion services.
Women and patients are explicitly given the option to take possession of fetal tissue for interment or cremation, allowing disposal consistent with personal or religious preferences.
Providers who accept released tissue must ensure interment or cremation within seven days, creating a predictable timeline for final disposition and reducing uncertainty about handling of tissue.
Aggregate reporting to HHS and Congress could improve federal oversight and generate data on abortion procedures and disposal practices, which may inform policy and public health responses.
Women in some areas and the providers who serve them could lose access to abortion care because a federal disposal mandate combined with enforcement risks may prompt facilities to stop offering services or relocate.
Healthcare providers face increased legal and financial risk—criminal penalties up to five years, civil fines up to $50,000, and strict record-retention requirements—raising operating costs and compliance burdens.
Mandatory reporting to HHS of gestational age, procedure type, and disposal method, plus retention of signed consent forms, creates patient privacy risks that could deter some people from seeking care.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Introduced January 24, 2025 by John Peter Ricketts · Last progress January 24, 2025
Requires abortion providers to offer patients a written informed-consent choice to either take possession of fetal tissue after an abortion for interment/cremation or to release the tissue to the provider. If the patient releases the tissue, the provider must arrange interment or cremation consistent with State law within seven days, keep the signed consent in the medical record, and report annual aggregated counts to HHS. The bill creates civil penalties for failure to retain consent forms and criminal penalties for providers who fail to ensure required final disposition, and directs the HHS Secretary to report aggregated state-level data to Congress.