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Group Explains Origins of 5 Fetuses Found in Home

Anti-abortion group claims they were part of larger group of 115 fetuses
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 6, 2022 2:14 PM CDT
Group Explains Origins of 5 Fetuses Found in Home
Anti-abortion activists Lauren Handy, front, with Terrisa Bukovinac, from left, Jonathan Darnell, and Randall Terry, speak during a news conference in Washington, Tuesday, April 5, 2022.   (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

An anti-abortion group on Tuesday gave an explanation for the five fetuses found last week in a member's home: They say they were medical waste being disposed of by a Washington, DC, abortion clinic—and part of a larger group of 115 fetuses. Their group is the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, and members Terrisa Bukovinac and Lauren Handy—Handy had the fetuses—told WUSA9 they visited the Washington Surgi-Clinic on March 25 and spotted a Curtis Bay Medical Waste Services parked at the building. They said they had a conversation with the truck driver about the possibility the boxes he was retrieving from the clinic contained fetal remains, and that he allowed them to take a waist-high box.

They say 115 aborted fetuses were in plastic containers inside. The women claim 110 of them were buried, but the five that appeared to be the most late-stage were withheld in hopes they could be autopsied to confirm whether the clinic was conducting late-stage abortions in violation of the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Act (third-trimester abortions are legal in DC, notes the AP). They say that after being unable to find an independent pathologist willing to conduct the autopsies, they contacted the Metropolitan Police Department last week to pick up the fetuses from Handy's home. Police did so a day after Handy and eight others were charged with blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic in 2020.

The DC medical examiner's office has, so far, declined to perform any autopsies on the fetuses. Ashan Benedict, MPD's executive assistant chief of police, told reporters last week that the fetuses appeared to have been aborted "in accordance with DC law." Curtis Bay Medical Waste Services tells WUSA9 that under company policy it does not handle the transport of fetal remains and denies giving the women any box under its care. "Any allegations made otherwise are false," the company said in a statement.

(More fetus stories.)

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