WASHINGTON — Amid repeated media inquiries and calls for investigations and autopsies from Republican lawmakers and pro-life activists, Washington, D.C. officials are failing to address whether they will perform autopsies on the five preemie-sized aborted babies discovered in the nation’s capital.
“It is unconscionable that DC authorities refuse to investigate the gruesome deaths of five late term aborted babies discovered in our nation’s capital,” Mallory Caroll, Vice President of Communications at the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, said in a statement to The Daily Wire. “Their deaths, which have garnered national media attention, may well have involved the commission of federal crimes. Conducting an immediate, thorough autopsy is the least we can do to honor these children and the law.”
Lawmakers have repeatedly asked that DC authorities determine how the babies died and whether the abortionist who ended their lives violated federal law by performing partial-birth abortions while the babies were still alive or by allowing the babies to die after they were born alive.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser finally weighed in on the matter late Friday in a response to Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, but the mayor did not address calls for investigations or autopsies.
Instead, she singled out Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising activist Lauren Handy, one of the women who has said they intercepted the fetal remains at Washington Surgi Clinic on March 25.
Handy has been charged and indicted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a separate October 2020 incident wherein she pushed her way into an abortion clinic. Bowser called this “extremist anti-abortion activity.”
“The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) is in consultation with the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia on both matters,” the mayor said, calling the October 2020 incident and Handy’s involvement in finding the fetal remains “potentially, serious violations of federal law.”
She has not responded to The Daily Wire’s requests for comment regarding the requested autopsies. The DC Medical Examiner directed The Daily Wire to her office when asked for comment, and the Metropolitan Police Department has steadily refused to divulge information citing an ongoing investigation into the matter.
“DC officials do not care about federal laws protecting our most vulnerable, and their silence only confirms it,” Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy told The Daily Wire on Wednesday. “Performing an autopsy and acknowledging the mere possibility that abortionist Cesare Santangelo broke the law would require Mayor Bowser and her radically pro-abortion cronies to concede that these are indeed human beings worthy of protection.”
“Biden’s Department of Justice should investigate these horrific acts, rather than put the administration’s pro-abortion ideology above the lives of these children,” he added. “That’s what a serious and functional DOJ would do. Given its record, however, I won’t hold my breath.”
Staff at the clinic have refused to discuss the aborted baby bodies with The Daily Wire, directing press inquiries to the National Abortion Federation, which has not responded to requests for comment.
Dr. Cesare Santangelo, who operates out of Washington Surgi Clinic and was recorded allegedly saying in 2012 that he would allow babies to die if they were born alive in his abortions, has also not responded to requests for comment.
PAAU members told The Daily Wire that the box they intercepted was filled with 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 and covered in Curtis Bay Medical Waste facility labels, the activists say.
Photographs reviewed by The Daily Wire show the boxes, covered in Curtis Bay Medical Waste facility labels as well as labeling from Washington Surgi Clinic, sitting on a dolly outside the abortion clinic. More photos show Curtis Bay boxes sitting in the back of a Curtis Bay truck, though it is unclear whether the boxes in the truck are from Washington Surgi Clinic.
Videos reviewed by The Daily Wire show the activists opening a box covered in Curtis Bay Medical Waste facility labeling. Inside the box, the video shows, there are many small blue boxes that the activists said contain the pulverized remains of the 1st-trimester aborted baby bodies.
But Curtis Bay Medical Waste Services repeatedly denied to The Daily Wire that any of their boxes were taken and denied that they dispose of fetal remains
In its customer guide, the waste facility states that it “is explicitly prohibited under its operating permit, issued by the State, from processing certain types of waste at our controlled treatment facilities,” including fetal remains and human bodies.
The company told The Daily Wire last week 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.
“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 company statement to The Daily Wire said.
Curtis Bay has since refused to answer many requests for comment, declining to comment on the photographs showing Curtis Bay labeling on the boxes outside the clinic.