Washington Police Discover Five Stolen Fetuses
Last week police in Washington, D.C., discovered the bodies of five fetuses at the home of an anti-abortion activist who claimed to have taken at least 110 more.
The five fetuses were discovered in the home of Lauren Handy, but founder and director of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) Terrisa Bukovinac claimed they had taken 115 fetuses after they occupied a Washington Surgi-Clinic on March 25. Handy is a self-proclaimed “Catholic anarchist” who said she’d taken the bodies to provide them with a Catholic burial.
Handy and Bukovinac obtained the bodies from the Curtis Bay Medical Waste Services truck driver, who gave them access to the remains. At a press conference on Tuesday, activists from PAAU showed a video of members cutting into a Curtis Bay Energy box with a biohazard label, where they discovered the 115 fetuses, most were in the earliest stages of gestation.
Curtis Bay waste management lists fetal remains as “unacceptable waste,” and any fetal remains must be “segregated from the medical waste stream and buried or cremated.”
Curtis Bay countered PAAU’s claims in a statement, “On March 25, a Curtis Bay employee took custody of three packages from the Washington Surgery Center (Washington Surgi Clinic) and delivered all of them to Curtis Bay’s incineration facility. At no time did the Curtis Bay employee hand over any of these packages to the PAAU or other third party, and any allegations made otherwise are false.”
“As stated in client agreements and company policy, customers like Washington Surgi Clinic are prohibited from disposing of fetuses and human remains via Curtis Bay’s services. Curtis Bay provides its clients with medical waste bags and boxes to use in a manner that complies with applicable law, client agreements and company policy. Curtis Bay continues to fully cooperate with law enforcement.”
Police took the five fetuses which were in the later stages of gestation and could potentially be used as proof that the Washington Surgi-Clinic violated both the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Act and the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act.
The case is currently an ongoing investigation, but executive assistant Chief of Police Ashan Benedict said, “there doesn’t seem to be anything criminal in nature about the fetuses except for how they got into this house.”