GOP Lawmakers Demand D.C., DOJ Investigate Bodies Of Aborted Babies Uncovered By Pro-Life Activists
April 5, 2022
By Mary Margaret Olohan
WASHINGTON — U.S. lawmakers are calling on Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Department of Justice to investigate the abortions of five babies whose bodies were allegedly recovered by pro-life activists from an abortion clinic.
In a letter, exclusively obtained by The Daily Wire, Republican lawmakers remind Bowser and Attorney General Merrick Garland that the babies “deserve to have their deaths investigated to ensure that no D.C. or federal laws were broken.” The bodies were allegedly recovered by members of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), who said they intercepted a box with dismembered babies before it was sent to a medical waste center.
“In light of this, we demand that a thorough investigation is conducted into the death of each child,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, which will be sent Tuesday night. They note that “in order to accomplish such [an] investigation, we request and fully expect the city to preserve all of the children’s remains as evidence and conduct autopsies.”
The letter is led by James Lankford of Oklahoma and Jim Jordan of Ohio and signed by Steve Daines of Montana, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, James Risch of Idaho, Mike Braun of Indiana, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Mike Lee of Utah, John Boozman of Arkansas, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, and Mike Crapo of Idaho. It is supported by Catholic Vote and other groups, including Live Action, Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee, March for Life, Students for Life Action, the Susan B. Anthony List and Americans United for Life.
PAAU says the box contained 110 mostly pulverized babies who were aborted in the first trimester as well as several babies killed through late-term abortions. That box was from Washington Surgi Center, an abortion clinic in downtown D.C., and covered in Curtis Bay Medical Waste Center labels, the activists say. PAAU photos show boxes on a dolly fitting this description.
Curtis Bay Medical Waste Services denied that any of their boxes were taken and denied that they dispose of fetal remains in a Tuesday morning statement and phone call with The Daily Wire. “At no time did the Curtis Bay employee hand over any of these packages to the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising or other third party, and any allegations made otherwise are false,” the statement said. The company said that a Curtis Bay employee took custody of three packages from Washington Surgi Clinic on March 25 and delivered all of these packages to Curtis Bay’s incineration facility.
Washington Surgi Center, which did not respond to The Daily Wire’s requests for comment, is a “facility operated by the late-term abortionist Dr. Cesare Santangelo,” the lawmakers noted.
“Instead of ensuring that the horrific deaths of these children were properly investigated, Metropolitan Police made the assumption that each child died as the result of a legal abortion,” the letter said. “It is our understanding that this assumption was made without conducting any medical evaluations. We also understand from press reports that the D.C. medical examiner does not plan to perform autopsies on the children. This is completely unacceptable.”
The lawmakers noted that “killing a child through a partial-birth abortion is a crime under federal law,” citing both the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 and the Born Alive Infants Protection Act.
The lawmakers wrote:
While other horrific methods of abortion unfortunately remain legal for the time being, killing a child through a partial-birth abortion is a crime under federal law. Under the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, a partial-birth abortion occurs when a physician partially delivers a living child for the purpose of performing an overt act that intentionally takes the life of the child.The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the federal ban on partial-birth abortions in Gonzales v. Carhart in 2007[2].
Additionally, Congress passed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act to provide equal protections for children who are born alive during an abortion. If the bodies of other babies who were not aborted were recovered in a similar fashion, it would be hard to imagine Metropolitan Police declining to conduct a thorough investigation into the deaths of each child.
All five of the babies whose bodies PAAU obtained appear to have “developed well past the point of viability” and likely suffered excruciating abortions, the lawmakers wrote, citing “evidence collected at the time of recovery and photos that have been publicly shared.” But the lawmakers noted that without an autopsy, they cannot determine how “each child died.”
“For example, one baby girl has significant damage to her head, with deep lacerations at the back of the neck, and may have been victim of an illegal partial birth abortion,” they wrote. “Another baby was found in its amniotic sac and could have been born alive.”
The lawmakers ask Bowser to address, by April 6, how police reached the conclusion that the babies were legally aborted. They also ask her to commit to investigating the abortion of each baby, to preserving the baby’s remains as evidence, and to direct the city medical examiner and — then an independent, licensed pathologist — to perform an autopsy on each child.
“If any autopsy suggests any of the children were victims of criminal activity, will you immediately refer the evidence to both the Department of Justice and the Attorney General for the District of Columbia for criminal prosecution,” the lawmakers asked.
Pro-life activists have expressed concerns to The Daily Wire that the baby bodies will be destroyed before proper autopsies have been done. It is not immediately clear whether the baby bodies have been disposed of.
D.C. police have said that the babies were aborted legally. D.C. does not have any specific law that bans abortion at any point, effectively allowing abortions through nine months of pregnancy.