A new report from the Charlotte Lozier Institute’s (CLI) American Reports series details “horrific abuses” in the abortion industry when it comes to disposing of the remains of a dead baby. The inhumanity of abortion takes on a new low in this report, Fetal Disposition: The Abuses and the Law, written by CLI’s Associate Scholar Kristi Burton Brown, J.D, who is also a writer and managing editor for Live Action News. Brown’s paper explores various United States laws as they relate to disposing of fetal remains. As CLI notes in its press release:
Brown’s research shows widespread violations of existing laws in some states and weak or inadequate laws in others, allowing abortion facilities to dispose of babies’ bodies in ways that offend common standards of decency and put the health of the communities where they operate at risk.
Some of the practices revealed in the report include:
- Disposing of aborted babies’ bodies down a garbage disposal emptying into the public sewer
- Dumping babies’ bodies in dumpsters and landfills
- Storing five months’ worth of bodies in a freezer
Reflecting on the discoveries of her research and reporting, Brown told Live Action News:
Fetal disposition laws not only stop unsanitary and dangerous conditions in abortion facilities, but they also serve to highlight exactly what’s going on behind the doors of abortion facilities. The only reason we’re talking about what to do with human body parts after abortion is because these same human body parts are considered medical or pathological waste. And what does that say about our society — that arms and legs and heads and torsos of tiny babies are ground up in garbage disposals, steamed in a machine, stored in a freezer for months, or sent across state lines to a landfill? It says that we have some very inhumane and violent activities going on. The act of abortion is what causes this literal pile-up of body parts, and that’s a fact we need to think about long and hard. What exactly is abortion, if the result of it is rooms and closets full of baby fingers and toes?
Chuck Donovan, president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute described the report as “heartbreaking”:
This heartbreaking report provides yet another sobering reminder of the brutality of abortion. It exposes an industry’s callous disregard not only for the humanity of the unborn, but also for the safety of the community in its pursuit of cheap solutions to the problem of thousands of bodies. The horrific abuses detailed in this report prove the industry puts its bottom line first and cannot be trusted to police itself. States must enact stronger laws and hold abortionists accountable for violating them.
And there’s much for which they need to be held accountable. Brown’s report found several disturbing situations in the abortion industry. They include:
- Troubling fetal disposition laws in multiple states
- Documented violations of state law by abortion facilities or waste disposal companies, including: “failure to disinfect containers and sending body parts down the sanitary sewer; disposal of fetal remains in a municipal solid waste landfill; and storage in a refrigerator.”
- Varying and/or “archaic” state laws that have resulted in disturbing fetal disposition methods, including: “flushing fetal body parts through the garbage disposal leading into the sewer system; dumping fetal remains into an auger along with medical waste and grinding them together; and having the fetal remains transported across state lines to another state’s dumpsters.”
The report also details revelations from the 2015 release of undercover footage from the Center for Medical Progress, including recordings from a National Abortion Federation (NAF) meeting featuring Michigan abortion chain owner, Renee Chelian, who “lamented that without a real solution for fetal disposal, clinics would no longer be able to operate.”
Chelian’s NAF address revealed the dilemma of abortion facilities in having to dispose of the leftover baby parts after the usable parts have been sold. Chelian explained the conflict of needing to keep their abortion business costs low, while having a viable solution for the masses of unused fetal tissue from the many abortions committed.
And therein lies much of the dilemma, Brown explains in the report:
While we know that universities and fetal parts buyers (such as Indiana University, New Mexico University, StemExpress, Novogenix, and Advanced Bioscience Resources) purchase or otherwise obtain fetal organs and body parts from abortion facilities, Chelian admitted that the researchers don’t want all of the tissue.
By and large, they may not be willing to bear the weight of disposing of unwanted fetal body parts and, instead, as documents released by The New York Times and the House Select Panel on Infant Lives demonstrate, would rather pick and choose the specific body parts they require.
It appears that disposal of the aborted babies’ bodies is such a burden to abortion providers that it’s fair game for sick jokes. In the NAF video, Chelian joked:
We were really tempted to give the fetus back. Um, we thought, we’ll give it to everybody in a gift bag – they can take it home, figure out what to do with it. It’s their pregnancy, and why is this our problem?”
Clearly, the abortion industry has a big problem on its hands, since it commits over one million abortions each year—all of which leave behind human fetal remains, which leads to the need for disposal of almost 3,000 baby bodies per day. “Because of this,” Brown writes, “clinics want disposal methods to be broad, cheap, and accessible. The state laws governing fetal disposition are often archaic and scattered throughout a variety of state codes, regulations, and statutes. In a number of states, the laws are so broad that it is legal to grind the bodies of aborted babies in the garbage disposal and send the remains through the sewage system or to incinerate entire containers of baby body parts at once.”
Brown’s report concludes with five recommendations to solve this fetal disposition problem, as CLI notes:
- Require the remains of every baby, at every age, to be individually buried or cremated
- Categorize fetal remains as “human being” or “human body” instead of medical waste
- Require abortion facilities to obtain the mother’s informed consent to choose cremation or burial
- Require regular state inspections of abortion facilities and stronger penalties for noncompliance
- Enact limits on the number of bodies that may be stored at an abortion facility, and for how long
The report also details some specific state violations, detailing babies tossed in dumpsters or landfills, as well as violations from the infamous medical waste disposal company, Stericyle.
The full report may be read here.
