AUSTIN — When Ele Chupik posted a Facebook message last month urging women to send used feminine hygiene products to Gov. Greg Abbott in protest of his order to require burials for the fetal remains of abortions, she wasn't sure how many would take such an unusually graphic step.

The message went viral on Facebook and Twitter, with hundreds of women urging one another to send the governor their soiled tampons, pads and panty liners. Over the month of December, 17 women made good on the message and mailed their bloodstained refuse to Abbott's office, records obtained by The Dallas Morning News show.

"I hoped that it would be taken as an insult," Chupik said. "The same way we feel insulted."

Last summer, just after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Texas law that would have severely curtailed access to abortion, Abbott ordered the state health department to create a rule that would require fetal tissue from abortions and miscarriages to be buried or cremated.

Abbott and other supporters say the new rule shows respect for the lives lost in abortion and miscarriage. But the move generated another round of outrage from reproductive rights groups, who argued that it would add unnecessary cost and shame for women who are already going through a painfully traumatic experience.

Some were so upset they were evidently willing to risk breaking the law by sending biological material through the U.S. Postal Service.

"Sending unprotected human bodily waste is a health hazard," said Michael Sullivan, a postal inspector in Austin. "We don't see a whole lot of that."

Time to mail our menstrual updates, bloody tampons and pads to Gov #Abbott.#PeriodsForAbbott — shlomo7 (@lisajaneKY) December 11, 2016

Abbott's office didn't report the feminine hygiene products to the postal inspector's office, and it wouldn't comment for this story. Records show the staffers just threw away the packages, though they made digital copies of some of the items and noted the comments included before disposing of them.

"Unsure about fertilized status of these panty liners," one anonymous sender wrote.

Another dedicated anonymous protester wrote, "I am enclosing my tampons and sanitary pads as long as the law stands."

"Bury this!" wrote a succinct sender from Spokane, Wash.

Finding used tampons and sanitary pads in the mail is unusual, Sullivan said, but it's not the weirdest contraband he's seen. He listed off a few of the oddities: rat heads, bat heads, scorpions, snakes, spiders.

"People are limited only by their creativity," he said. "It is a wild world out there."

Investigators like Sullivan, though, are limited by the information the senders provide. It's hard to track down and prosecute postal scofflaws when they don't include a return address.

"Most people who send that stuff don't put a return address," he said.

Unfortunately for Abbott's mail openers, the women who've committed to sending him their biological waste until the controversial burial rule is reversed will probably have a few more cycles before a final decision on the rule's legality is made.

A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the burial rule has stalled its implementation as the state and reproductive rights groups fight in court. State lawyers argue current methods of disposing of tissue from abortions and miscarriages in an incinerator like other human tissue don't adequately respect human life. Reproductive rights groups contend the rule's intent is to curb access to abortion.

Anger over what some women view as repeated attacks on their rights to access reproductive services is what provoked them to package their panty liners and pads, said Heather Busby, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas.

"They're seeing it for the shaming tactic that it is, and that's deeply offensive to people," she said.

Emily Horne, spokeswoman for Texas Right to Life, called the protest effort "rather odd." It shows a clear misunderstanding of the rule, which doesn't apply to miscarriages that happen at home, she said. The new rule is meant to affirm life, and she said it only applies to facilities where women have procedures.

"It's a little bit off-topic and not exactly fact-based," Horne said of the mail-in campaign.

Chupik said she decided not to mail in her own feminine hygiene products — she thought about dipping some tampons in red paint and sending them but changed her mind. And she's not hopeful that the mail-in effort will have any effect on Abbott's support for the new rule. But she's glad some women did it anyway.

"Sending in the tampons felt like it was more for us," she said, "just a catharsis."