Members of Congress are demanding an investigation into the “horrific deaths” of five babies, whose bodies were recovered from a Washington, D.C., abortion mill. U.S. Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) and U.S. Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), along with 21 of their congressional colleagues, signed an April 5 letter to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and metropolitan police chief Robert J. Contee about the remains.
Pro-life activists discovered the discarded bodies of the pre-born infants on March 25 outside the Washington Surgi-Clinic in the district’s northwest section. They accuse the abortionist, Dr. Cesare Santangelo, of performing illegal late-term and live-birth abortions there.
They turned the bodies over to the D.C. medical examiner, who Lankford and his colleagues say decided not to conduct autopsies, simply assuming without medical evaluation that the children died in legal abortion procedures. The lawmakers charge, “This is completely unacceptable.”
The legislators cite the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which requires doctors to help a baby who survives abortion to live. One of the children was still in the amniotic sac, indicating that it “may have been born alive.” They also cite video evidence that one of the infants fell victim to an “illegal partial birth abortion.”
“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,” reads the letter.
The signatories request an answer from Bowser and Contee by late Wednesday to seven demands, including commitments to “properly and respectfully burying each child” after thorough investigations of each corpse to determine if federal laws were violated in their slayings.
