Deploying fetal death: “Fetal burial” laws and the necropolitics of reproduction in Indiana

While abortion foes in the United States rhetorically promote “life,” discursive invocations of death are foundational to antiabortion advocacy. Pro-life strategists have made gains mandating mourning aborted fetuses through fetal burial bills, which require providers cremate or bury tissue from procedures. Fetal bills inextricably tied biopolitical regimes that make and manage grievable life. Drawing on cultural anthropology, feminist social science, critical race theory, long-term research white evangelicalism, this article examines government documents (e.g., Indiana statutes, court rulings, health reports, legislative activity, state prosecutions) provide a critique Indiana's law. Constructions as human life formations personhood they undergird what anthropologist Leith Mullings called necropolitics reproduction—a framework explaining how reproduction is constitutive political use systemic violence determine who (or what) lives dies. Legal conceptions hyper-value subjects entwine with racism, Christian ideology, anti-environmentalism diminish Black Brown bodies environments their futures depend. This case bellwether for broader dynamics anti-abortion policy activism post-Roe era.