Disposal of foetuses

The disposal of a foetus can be a particularly difficult issue that requires care in compliance with the wishes of the mother, and with the increasingly complex legal framework.

But it can, and does go wrong:

Following the Lanarkshire incident, investigations conducted on behalf of the Scottish Government reveals that 37,235 foetuses 24 weeks old or younger were cremated in the UK, but there were 130,000 abortions, miscarriages and stillbirths in the same year. The numbers simply don’t add up, by a vast margin.

Tim Morris of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management (ICCM) sits on the Scottish Government’s panel being set up to review the ‘scandal’ which has seen the ashes of cremated babies scattered without parents’ consent in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Mr Morris said: “Some of the 90,000 unaccounted for will be buried but there is no real way of quantifying that. “There are more than 14,000 burial grounds in the UK. But they won’t cover the 90,000 missing foetuses which may end up in clinical waste, or missed with outgoing soiled laundry.

“It’s legitimate to ask what happened to these foetuses” says Tim Morris. The emotive viewpoint suggests the need for concern and compassion, though the harsh reality is that many hundreds of thousands of pre-24 week foetuses do go directly to clinical waste, legitimately. The early terminations may appear as little more that a clump of cells of some apparently disorganised tissue fragments in a suction canister of bloodstained fluid; nearer 24 weeks, the tissue fragments will be larger but in law the foetus was not capable of independent life and once aborted has no legal status. There is thus need framework to dictate the approach to disposal.

Despite much fuss predicated in the Human Tissue Act and other regulation, there is clearly a huge issue here.

 

 

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