Igros Moshe (YD II #150 ) There are very strange questions resulting from the terrible decrees in the hospitals of Israel concerning the autopsy of the dead by the irreligious and the wicked among us. They are very difficult to solve because they can not be evaluated calmly and dispassionately because of the great suffering and grief involved in this. Nevertheless I will try to write what needs to be done in reality out of necessity since it is critical to know immediately and G-d should help us not to fail in the halacha. And there is obviously the issue of honoring the dead resulting from the delay in time until burial of what remains occurs. This is not an issue of the remains that a cohen becomes impure from in the case of meis mitzva which is the head and the majority of the body. And it is logical that means not even without the head that a priest can be made impure. The obligation is to bury even parts of the corpse and this is viewed as honoring the dead as if he buried the entire corpse. So when the corpse is intact there is an obligation of burial and even if there are only parts left there is still an obligation to bury them and this is viewed as honoring the dead and it should be done with a rabbi and eulogy as well as levaya (funeral) and it is also allowed to delay burial in order to assenble people for the funeral.[ to be continued]
Reading some of the history makes my head spin. Today there's no way an autopsy would proceed without the family's permission unless it was an emergency case that allowed government override. But the attitude in Israel back in the 50's and 60's seemed to be "We'll do it and if they don't like it, too bad!"
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