The Texas Legislature passed the law in 2017. It would have required hospitals, abortion clinics and other providers to arrange for the burial or cremation of fetal remains, regardless of a patient’s personal wishes or religious beliefs, and regardless of whether the remains were from an abortion or miscarriage.

In some ways, the case was a sequel to Texas’ most significant courtroom battle on abortion — the three-year fight over what had been one of the toughest anti-abortion laws in the country, a battle that ended in 2016 when the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out two of the law’s main provisions. One required clinic doctors performing abortions to obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, and the other mandated that all clinics meet the same standards as hospital-style surgical centers.

The fetal burial law could provide new fodder for the national legal fight over abortion rights if, as expected, the case makes its way through the appellate courts.

“Make no mistake, these restrictions were designed to shame and stigmatize patients and health care providers,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller of Whole Woman’s Health, which operates abortion clinics in Texas and was the lead plaintiff in both the fetal-remains case and the case decided by the Supreme Court in 2016.

In the past, Texas health care facilities could dispose of fetal tissue using a variety of methods, including grinding and discharging it into a sewer system, incineration, and placement in a landfill. The 2017 law required health care facilities that provide care to pregnant women to dispose of fetal remains by burial, cremation, incineration followed by burial, or steam disinfection followed by burial.

The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, and other supporters of the law have cast it as an issue involving “the humane disposition of fetal remains.”

Paxton suggested that Texas would appeal Ezra’s ruling.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Manny Fernandez © 2018 The New York Times