Your Placenta Rights under US State Laws

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The table below this article is a state-by-state guide to placenta regulations for US parents. Although placenta regulations are theoretically made at the state level, in practice individual hospitals control placenta decisions inside their facility. Very often the state does not have an official law, and the reality boils down to how hospitals in the state behave. As of Dec. 2024, the states in which you can definitely or probably take home your placenta are: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Texas.

History of Parents and Placentas

There have always been parents that want to take home their baby’s placenta, either for cultural reasons, or to consume it as a nutrition supplement^1-3. In recent years, more and more parents are being asked if they want to donate their placenta to biotech companies that provide placenta products for the treatment of patients with diabetic wounds, cornea damage, and other conditions^4-5. Many family cord blood banks are now telling parents that they can privately “bank the placenta”, although what most banks are storing is a few small pieces of placenta tissue, the same as how they bank umbilical cord tissue. In spring 2024, a video went viral on TikTok which claimed that parents could sell their placenta for $50,000. That was total fake news: it is illegal to sell your placenta⁶. Also, there is no “black market” for placentas retrieved from the trash, because a placenta that was removed from a sterile environment no longer has any value to a biotech company. Between the genuine medical applications of the placenta, as well as the hyped claims about the placenta, a lot more parents today are taking an interest in their placenta and are requesting to take it home.

State Laws on Medical Waste

In theory, regulations on the disposal of the placenta are made at the state level. This is because medical regulations consider the placenta to be biohazardous medical waste, and each state has its own laws about the disposal of medical waste^6,7. If parents do not somehow donate, privately bank, or take home their placenta, it will be treated as medical waste and incinerated. In many states, the ability of parents to take home their placenta is governed by the specific language of the state regulations on medical waste. Do the regulations include an exemption for placentas? Do the regulations only consider human tissue to be waste if it is discarded? Do the next of kin have a right to retrieve remains for burial? Ironically, those states which have very restrictive rules about abortion often have laws which allow a mother to take home a deceased fetus, but the same states usually have no laws for taking home a delivered placenta after a healthy birth.

Placenta Pathology

Even a well-crafted plan to take home your placenta can go off course if there are complications during your pregnancy, or your labor, or the delivery. After birth, some placentas are sent to the hospital’s pathology laboratory to be examined for more information about the health of the mother and/or the baby. For example, if mom had high blood pressure (preeclampsia) during pregnancy, then her placenta will be sent to pathology. There has been a great deal of discussion in the obstetrics community about the role of placenta pathology and whether it is being over-used^8-10. Depending on the individual hospital, the fraction of placentas that are sent to pathology ranges from 20% to 47%, or even higher⁸. The Perinatal Committee of the Society for Pediatric Pathology has published a guidance document for managing family requests to release the placenta¹⁰. According to the committee, it is the responsibility of the obstetrician to serve as a bridge between the family and the pathology dept. The guidance instructions say that a released placenta should always be placed in a biohazard bag, inside a leak-proof container, and kept refrigerated¹⁰.

Hidden Placenta Laws

In her notable article, “The Law of Placenta”, Law Professor Mathilde Cohen writes that huge variations in hospital policies constitute a hidden form of placenta law. Different hospitals located within the same state may have very divergent approaches to the placenta: is it automatically sent to pathology, is it kept sterile in pathology, is the hospital willing to let parents take it, what documents do parents have to sign, which staff member supervises this process, and what are the procedures? Any of these options can vary among hospitals within the same state, especially between rural hospitals versus research hospitals in urban areas. Moreover, the hospital policies are rarely published on the hospital website, which is why these are hidden laws.

Why do hospital rules vary so much? There is an old saying, "there's no reason for it, it’s just our policy". Hospitals in general are paranoid about liability, and how they manage that concern can vary. The placenta is literally a human organ that is dripping blood, and in the eyes of hospital staff anything covered in blood is potentially infectious. Also, placentas may carry certain pathogens that were present during the pregnancy, and the placenta protects the baby by absorbing toxins³. It is reasonable for a hospital to be cautious about the handling and storage of a placenta. Some hospitals are more sensitive to the placenta traditions of the indigenous cultures in their community. The level of training and awareness among hospital staff regarding the handling of placentas is also variable. Hospitals that have training programs, for example hospitals that consent mothers for placenta donations, are more likely to have standardized protocols in place.

It is not true that parents just need to download a standard statewide letter that will enable them to take home their placenta.

Despite the theory that placenta regulations are a state-level issue, in practice it is a hospital-level issue. The only state that currently has a standard form for releasing the placenta is Texas.

Advice for Parents

The best way to insure that you can take home your placenta after birth is to start talking to your health care provider and the authorities at your hospital well in advance of your due date. Not only do you want to learn about the hospital policies in advance, but you can find out who is the responsible person to contact, get a copy of the paperwork, and check what type of container you will need to bring. Even if you are not interested in eating your placenta, you might find that companies offering placenta encapsulation services in your area are a good source of information. Their business depends upon taking placentas out of your local hospitals, so they should know how to do it.

The typical procedure for releasing a placenta follows the guidance of the Society for Pediatric Pathology: the placenta is placed in a biohazard bag and kept refrigerated. When it is released, the bag is placed inside a leak-proof container, such as a cooler. Hospitals usually want parents to remove the placenta from their premises shortly after they receive it.

Once you have taken your placenta home, you cannot change your mind and try to sell it or donate it to research. Selling it is still illegal, and biotech companies will only take a donated placenta that they have procured from the hospital, with a full pedigree of maternal history, maternal consent, and a sterile chain of custody⁶. The only donation that you can make with a placenta that is not sterile is to give it to a local organization that trains search and recovery dogs. The handlers of these K9 dogs rely on human placentas for training because they smell like human flesh¹¹.

In the table below, we have done our best to summarize placenta regulations by state. For most states this was a null result, so we had to try multiple types of searches before giving up and concluding there are no placenta regulations in that state. What we found very helpful is to look up the largest birthing centers in a state, and then check if they have posted guidelines. Always remember the Rule of Law concept, which says that anything which is not expressly prohibited is allowed¹². Thus, in any hospital where they do not forbid giving parents their placenta, it should be possible to get your placenta, provided your doctor did not send it to pathology for testing. Some hospitals will even release placentas after pathology testing, but that situation has to be explored on a case-by-case basis.

If anyone can offer corrected information for this table, please write to us via the Contact form.

References

Cohen, M. The Law of Placenta. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 2020; 31(2):337-409.
Ben-Senior L. Honoring the Placenta in Different Cultures. Parent's Guide to Cord Blood Foundation Newsletter Published 2021-01
Verter F, Ben Senior L. Placentophagy: Eating Your Placenta. Parent's Guide to Cord Blood Foundation Newsletter Published 2021-08
Verter F. It’s the morning before your C-section, and someone wants you to donate your placenta. Parent's Guide to Cord Blood Foundation Newsletter Published 2021-01
Tibbot T, Verter F. What do they do with all those placenta donations? Parent's Guide to Cord Blood Foundation Newsletter Published 2023-12
Tibbot T, Frazier G. Can You Sell Your Baby’s Placenta? Parent's Guide to Cord Blood Foundation Newsletter Published 2022-12
Healthcare Environmental Resource Center. State-by-state Regulated Medical Waste Resource Locator. HERCenter.org Copyright 2015.
Polnaszek BE, Clark SL, Rouse DJ. Pathologic Assessment of the Placenta. Evidence Compared With Tradition. Obstetrics & Gynecology 2022; 139(4):660-667.
Redline RW, Roberts DJ, Parast MM, ... Stone J. Placental pathology is necessary to understand common pregnancy complications and achieve an improved taxonomy of obstetric disease. American J Obstetrics & Gynecology 2022; 228(2):187–202.
Carreon CK, Ravishankar S, Parast MM, … Roberts DJ. Releasing Placentas to Families: A Unified Recommendation From the Perinatal Committee of the Society for Pediatric Pathology. Archives Pathology & Lab Med 2023; 147(5):515–517.
Earnshaw R. How cadaver dogs are trained to help authorities locate human remains. Chicago Tribune. Published 2019-05-15
Waldron J. "The Rule of Law", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.)

State	Placenta Regulations
Alabama	Alabama does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. East Alabama Health hospital runs a placenta donation program. On 2/16/2024, Alabama became the first state to rule that IVF embryos should be treated like children. When it became clear this would force IVF clinics to stop practicing in Alabama, another law was passed 3/6/2024 to give clinics a liability shield, but the practice of IVF in Alabama remains uncertain. This demonstrates a great deal of legislative concern for the fetus, while sat the same time ignoring the placenta.
Alaska	Alaska does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Alaska is the leading US state for births outside of hospitals, with midwives attending the majority of community births. Alaska provides board certification for midwives. The Inuit tradition is to give birth with a midwife. Alaska recognizes that medical waste may originate in the home setting, but there is no provision for handling placentas. Alaska laws are “relatively silent” on the burial of human remains on private property.
Arizona	Arizona does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Celebration Stem Cell Centre in Phoenix collects cord blood and placenta donations. Donor Network of Arizona accepts placenta donations from C-sections only. The Navaho tradition is to bury the placenta. The tradition of the Havasupai people is also to bury the placenta. Arizona law requires health care professionals to educate expectant moms about the banking of cord blood, including the blood that remains in the placenta after birth. The Arizona Dept. of Health Services collects cord blood donations, which are banked in Texas.
Arkansas	Arkansas automatically allows parents to take home their placenta. This is covered under regulations about the disposition of human tissue. After scientific examination, a physician may return human tissue to the patient or someone acting on the patient’s behalf, if there is a written request, and subject to the safety rules from the State Board of Health. This regulation explicitly defines human tissue to include the placenta.
California	California does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Kaiser Permanente, the largest health plan and private employer in California, automatically allows parents to take home their placenta as part of their birth plan. Their instructions tell parents to bring a cooler to the hospital and remove the placenta within two hours after birth. The California regulations on Informed Consent say that when a mother is asked to donate her placenta to research, she must give informed consent.
Colorado	Colorado does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. In Colorado, the regulations on disposition of fetal tissue say that the mother makes the final decision on the disposition of remains after the “expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of human conception”. Although this was written to describe the fetus, it could be liberally interpreted to cover the placenta.
Connecticut	Connecticut automatically allows parents to take home a “delivered placenta”. This is combined with the right to burial of a stillborn baby. Connecticut regulations allow for the placenta to be divided, with part of it going to pathology and the rest going to the parents. The parents must first be educated about blood-borne disease, certify that the placenta is for personal use, and sign a form releasing the hospital of liability. There is a 2006 law on the Connecticut books to establish a public cord blood bank, and the wording of the law includes collecting the placenta in order to extract blood from it. However, no funding was ever allocated to this effort, so the bank was never established.
Delaware	Delaware does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Christiana Care is the largest birthing center in Delaware and their birth plan automatically allows parents to take home their placenta after filling out a consent form. Nemours hospital birth plan automatically allows parents to keep the placenta.
District of Columbia	Washington, D.C., does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. The municipal regulations for maternity centers do not contain the keyword “placenta”.
Florida	Florida does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. In Florida, under the Stephanie Saboor Grieving Parents Act, the mother may retrieve fetal remains from a miscarriage. However, fetal remains from an abortion must be treated as medical waste. The Florida Department of Health definition of biomedical waste does not have any exception for placentas. The American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB) has accredited 67 organizations to collect and process birth tissues in the United States. Florida ranks 2^nd in birth tissue accredited labs, with 9 (183%) as of Dec. 2024. Florida has a statute on umbilical cord blood awareness, but there is no comparable law about birth tissues such as the placenta.
Georgia	Georgia does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Northside Hospital in Atlanta delivers more babies per year than any other community hospital in the country. Their labor preferences worksheet does not mention taking the placenta home. Georgia has a law named after Keone Penn, the first person cured of sickle cell disease by a cord blood transplant. Keone’s Law, from 2008, calls upon Georgia to establish a network of postnatal tissue and fluid banks in partnership with existing public or private organizations. To this day, Georgia does not have such a bank.
Hawaii	Hawaii automatically allows parents to take home their placenta. Hawaii was the first state, in 2006, to develop a placenta release policy, in recognition of the native Hawaiian tradition to bury the placenta and plant a tree over it. The Hawaii regulations exempt the placenta from the category of infectious waste. The regulations do require that the mother test negative for infectious disease and require a written procedure for the transport of the placenta. The release form must be signed by the mother, the doctor, and an authority at the healthcare facility.
Idaho	Idaho does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth.
Illinois	Illinois does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Illinois has a state-sponsored website on pregnancy rights, but it does not mention releasing the placenta to parents after birth. In July 2024, Illinois approved state Medicaid expansion to provide better coverage for post-partum mothers. Licensed midwives can apply to participate in insurance coverage. Northwestern hospital in Chicago automatically allows parents to take home their placenta. The placenta must be removed from the labor and delivery unit in a cooler and cannot travel to the mother-baby unit. Illinois has a 2006 law directing the state to educate the public about cord blood and establish a network of public cord blood banks; there is no such network to this day. Cord blood is collected from both the umbilical cord and the placenta.
Indiana	Indiana does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Indiana has more hospitals collecting placenta along with cord blood for transplant banks than any other state, thanks to Life Line Stem Cell. Indiana has a fetal disposition law which requires that fetal remains cannot be treated as infectious waste and must be sent to a funeral home for burial or cremation. This law was temporarily on hold until the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the law in 2023. Unfortunately, the law only covers the fetus and says nothing about a mother’s right to claim her baby’s placenta. Indiana K9 Search & Recovery is a charity that accepts donated placentas to train cadaver dogs.
Iowa	Iowa does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Researchers at Iowa State University have developed a "placenta-on-a-chip" to study how caffeine is transported from a mother to her fetus.
Kansas	Kansas does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Kansas has a 2023 statute regarding disposition of fetal organs and tissue which gives parents the right to take the fetal remains, but not explicitly including the placenta as a fetal tissue.
Kentucky	Kentucky does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Kentucky has passed the Unborn Infants Dignity Act. This law ensures that the mother of a miscarried, stillborn, or aborted fetus has the right to retrieve and bury the remains. Unfortunately, the law only covers the fetus and says nothing about a mother’s right to claim her baby’s placenta.
Louisiana	Louisiana does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Louisiana has a law regarding disposition of fetal remains which requires the health facility to give the parents notice of their right to arrange for disposition of the remains. The facility has 24 hours to give the parents notice and the parents have 48 hours to respond. Moreover, under Louisiana administrative code the placenta is considered to be part of the products of conception. Unfortunately, Louisiana law says nothing about a mother’s right to claim her baby’s placenta when the child has not died.
Maine	Maine does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth.
Maryland	Maryland automatically allows parents to take home their placenta, by exempting it from the definition of special medical waste. However, there is no standard form for the release of the placenta. This is a bit surprising, considering that Maryland regulates home births, but they do not regulate the release of placentas yet.
Massachusetts	Massachusetts automatically allows parents to take home their placenta, by stating that only “discarded” materials meet the definition medical waste; if the placenta is not discarded then it is not waste. The state recommends that each hospital develop procedures to educate parents about blood borne pathogens and obtain written consent from the mother. In Massachusetts, Mark9 is a charity that accepts donated placentas to train search and rescue dogs.
Michigan	Michigan does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Gift of Life Michigan collects placenta donations from three hospitals.
Minnesota	We could not find any Minnesota laws or regulations that specifically allow parents statewide to take home their placenta. However, hospitals in the state have liberal policies towards parents that request their placenta. Minnesota is home to a large community of Hmong people from Asia; in the Hmong tradition the placenta is buried. Allina Health hospitals automatically allow parents to take home their placenta. Allina Health is a nonprofit health care system that owns or operates more than 90 clinics and 12 hospitals in Minnesota and western Wisconsin. The Mayo Clinic, in Rochester Minnesota, acknowledges that "in some cultures, families bury the placenta in a special place" The University of Minnesota policy on procuring human body parts for research requires that their disposal must be in accordance with both environmental safety regulations as well as the wishes of the next-of-kin.
Mississippi	Mississippi does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. In 2016, a mom in Mississippi had to win a court order to force her hospital to agree in advance of the birth to release her placenta.
Missouri	Missouri does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. The Mercy Hospital network has a birth tissue donation program. The Missouri Dept. of Health educates about cord blood.
Montana	Montana does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth.
Nebraska	Nebraska does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth.
Nevada	Nevada does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Nevada does not require treatment of medical waste; it can be buried in landfills. In 2007, a mom in Nevada had to win a court order to force her hospital to return her placenta after birth. Nevada has a 2023 law which requires pregnant patients be educated about birth tissue donation and provided with a list of Nevada entities accredited by AATB.
New Hampshire	New Hampshire does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth.
New Jersey	New Jersey automatically allows parents to take home their placenta. This is not stated explicitly, but the definition of regulated medical waste excludes human “anatomical parts” that the family wants to keep (presumably to send to a funeral home). New Jersey has a 2023 regulation which requires hospitals to inform mothers of the option to donate cord blood and placenta. This regulation also requires hospitals to cooperate with mothers that want to privately bank cord blood and placenta.
New Mexico	New Mexico automatically allows parents to take home their placenta as part of their oversight regulations of freestanding birth centers. A birth center is defined as a facility that is not a hospital and is licensed to handle low-risk deliveries. Section 8.370.17.23(4) of the 2024 code requires birth centers to provide “safe handling of the placenta for families requesting to keep the placenta”. However, the New Mexico oversight regulations of births in acute care hospitals does not contain the keyword “placenta”.
New York	We could not find any New York laws or regulations that specifically exempt the placenta from being treated as regulated medical waste. However, New York regulations describe human pathological wastes as “discarded materials”. Presumably the placenta can be released in New York when it is not discarded. There are reports which claim that in 2010 the New York State Dept. of Health said “regulated hospitals and medical facilities may, at the request of a patient or patient's representative, return a healthy placenta for disposition by the patient without violating any NYS public health law or regulation.” However, this statement does not currently appear on the NYS Dept. of Health website, so it cannot be verified.
North Carolina	North Carolina does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. North Carolina law requires health care professionals to educate expectant moms about the banking of cord blood, including the blood that remains in the placenta after birth. North Carolina law requires staff to wait 7 days and try to obtain consent from the mother before disposing of “expelled or extracted” fetal remains; this law is intended to cover miscarriage and stillbirth.
North Dakota	North Dakota does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Sanford Health is the largest hospital chain in North and South Dakota, but we could not find information in their web pages about taking home the placenta.
Ohio	Ohio does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Ohio has a law requiring that final disposition of fetal remains shall be cremation or burial. While this exempts a deceased fetus from being treated as medical waste, unfortunately the law says nothing about a mother’s right to claim her baby’s placenta. The Cleveland Clinic has a web page about the placenta which describes both placental tissue banking and encapsulation but does not provide a release procedure.
Oklahoma	Oklahoma does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Oklahoma is home to the most reservations for Native Americans, covering 42% of the state. Legally, reservations are federal land under tribal jurisdiction and do not follow state law.
Oregon	Oregon automatically allows parents to take home their placenta, under a 2013 state bill. The bill says that a placenta is exempted from the Oregon definitions of biological waste. The regulations from the Oregon Health Authority say that a placenta may be released to the woman from which it originated, or her designee, provided that the woman, her health care provider, and the health care facility will sign disclaimers about infectious diseases, and provision is made for safe management and transport of the placenta. Nothing in this rule shall prohibit the health care facility from having additional requirements.
Pennsylvania	Pennsylvania does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. As of July 2023, Westmoreland Hospital in Pittsburgh is participating in a placenta donation program. Pennsylvania educates about cord blood banking.
Rhode Island	Rhode Island does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. The birth plan of Women & Infants hospital in Rhode Island asks if the mother has “cultural, religious, or personal preferences” that are important.
South Carolina	South Carolina does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) has a center of excellence for treating the pregnancy complication placenta accreta. The South Carolina K9 Search Team (SCK9ST) is a charity that accepts donated placentas to train cadaver dogs.
South Dakota	South Dakota does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. The Lakota tradition is to bury the placenta. Sanford Health is the largest hospital chain in North and South Dakota, but we could not find information in their web pages about taking home the placenta. South Dakota currently has the highest birth rate in the United States.
Tennessee	Tennessee does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Tennessee has passed the Unborn Infants Dignity Act. This law ensures that the mother of a miscarried, stillborn, or aborted fetus has the right to retrieve and bury the remains. Unfortunately, the law only covers a deceased fetus and says nothing about a mother’s right to claim her baby’s placenta.
Texas	Texas automatically allows parents to take home their placenta, thanks to a 2015 state bill that amends the public health regulations. Texas provides a statewide form to consent for release of the placenta. Requirements: the mother must test negative for infectious disease, there is no need to send the placenta for pathology testing, and the parents acknowledge the placenta is for personal use and will not be sold. The American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB) has accredited 67 organizations to collect and process birth tissues in the United States. Texas has the most birth tissue accredited labs, with 12 (18%) as of Dec. 2024.
Utah	Utah does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. In March 2024 the Utah state legislature passed a Placental Tissue law which says health care providers in Utah can treat patients with placenta products that are not approved by the FDA. Given the lobbying effort that was invested to pass this law, one would suspect that biotech companies must be collecting a lot of placenta donations in Utah. Yet the Utah code on anatomical gifts only describes deceased donors, and no Utah regulations could be found that covered informed consent for placenta donations. Utah used to have the highest birth rate in the United States and is still one of the top states for births per woman.
Vermont	Vermont does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Vermont regulated medical waste definition of pathological waste includes tissues removed during obstetrical procedures.
Virginia	Virginia does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. The Virginia regulations on medical waste do not have an exception for the placenta. Some INOVA hospitals in Virginia will return the placenta to parents, but until it is released it is stored in the pathology dept.
Washington	Washington does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Washington state has regulations on childbirth centers which handle low-risk deliveries. They have a client bill of rights, but they do not mention the placenta. Washington state requires that the placenta be sent to pathology in the event of a maternal mortality during or within 42 days after pregnancy.
West Virginia	West Virginia does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. West Virginia definition of infectious medical waste does not have a provision for exempting a placenta
Wisconsin	Wisconsin does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Wisconsin distinguishes between health waste that is or is not infectious. For example, teeth may be taken home from the dentist. But there is no explicit provision to take a placenta home. The Medical College of Wisconsin recruits moms to donate to their Maternal Research Placenta & Cord Blood Bank. This is a pathology research program to better understand health issues during pregnancy. Wisconsin’s largest birth center is Meriter Hospital in Madison, and their Birth Preferences form automatically allows parents to take their placenta home.
Wyoming	Wyoming does not have any laws or regulations that specifically address releasing the placenta to parents after birth. Banner Health is the largest hospital network in Wyoming; their birth plan includes the option of cord blood banking and cultural “practices that should be respected”.

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Your Placenta Rights under US State Laws