Nearly 70 Republican lawmakers, including two from Florida, are demanding that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland investigate the case of five aborted babies who may have been victims of a partial-birth abortion, which has been illegal under federal law since 2003.
The GOP lawmakers were responding to reports that pro-life activists recovered the remains of 115 aborted babies from a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic. The total included five who, the activists say, were killed during partial-birth abortions.
In their letter, dated Friday, the Republicans say they are “gravely concerned” about what happened at the Washington Surgi-Clinic, and demand that Garland “conduct a comprehensive investigation on the circumstances surrounding the deaths of each preborn baby.
Their letter included photos that were of the five infants in question.
According to the pro-live website LiveAction.org, the controversy erupted roughly two weeks ago when members of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising encountered a delivery driver from a medical-waste disposal company picking up boxes from the clinic. They claim the driver let them take one box to bury the remains – something the company denies.
The clinic operator, Dr. Cesare Santangelo, had a reputation for specializing in late-term abortions.
On March 29, the activists contacted the Metropolitan Police Department to arrange handing over the remains and request an investigation.
The next day, the FBI instead arrested nine of the activists under an 18-month-old indictment for interfering with others getting an abortion in 2020.
Last Tuesday, 23 Republicans wrote to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and MPD Chief Robert Contee noting that investigators dismissed the activists’ claims on “the assumption that each child died as the result of a legal abortion.”
Not only was MPD not investigating, the lawmakers noted, but the department did not even request an autopsy.
The letter asserted that two federal laws – the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act and the Born Alive Infants Protection Act – may have been broken.
“If the bodies of other babies who were not aborted were recovered in a similar fashion, it would be hard to imagine the Metropolitan Police declining to conduct a thorough investigation into the death of each child,” the letter stated.
“Without an autopsy, it is not known how each child died. … These five children, like all children, have inherent value and deserved better than abortion – they deserved life. But at a minimum, they deserve to have their deaths investigated to ensure that no D.C. or federal laws were broken.”
On Friday, 69 GOP lawmakers sent their letter to Garland.
Among them were Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Michael Waltz of St. Augustine.
Calling partial-birth abortion “a gruesome and inhumane procedure that is never medically necessary and should be prohibited,” the lawmakers added that they question the MPD’s stance as no “conclusion can be reasonably reached regarding the cause of death for each preborn baby until an official autopsy is performed.”
The lawmakers added that they “recognize that justice is indiscriminately due to the born and preborn, without regard to numbers, wealth, or rank. There is no compensatory reparation that may be provided to those injured by the abhorrent act of partial-birth abortion.”
“As such,” they conclude, “justice demands that at the very least, an investigation be conducted to ensure that anyone conducting these illegal, abhorrent acts against the most innocent among us may be prosecuted.”
The lawmakers gave Garland until Monday to respond to their letter. As of this writing, Garland seemingly had not replied.
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