The more than 2,400 fetuses found on an Indiana abortion doctor’s property are set to be buried five months after they were first discovered.
Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill, a Republican up for reelection, will preside over the ceremony intended to memorialize the fetuses in South Bend, Indiana, on Wednesday.
“I’m so grateful that, finally, the bodies of these little boys and girls will be treated with the dignity they deserved,” Cathie Humbarger, leader of Right to Life in northeast Indiana, told the Washington Post.
The remains were found in 2019 on abortion doctor Urlich Klopfer’s Illinois property by relatives following his death at 79 last September.
Klopfer was one of the most prolific abortion doctors in the Midwest, having performed tens of thousands of abortions over 40 years. He operated now-defunct abortion clinics in South Bend, Gary, and Fort Wayne. The doctor’s family initially found around 2,000 fetuses stacked to the ceiling of his home’s garage. Police were then called, and an additional 165 fetuses were found in Klopfer’s car trunk the next month.
Investigators said in December that the remains were in “various states of decay,” making it impossible for them to identify them.
“The remains were mostly found inside molding boxes and old Styrofoam coolers containing large medical waste bags,” their report said. “It appeared as though each remain had been placed in a small clear plastic specimen bag for purposes of being medically preserved in a chemical suspected to be formalin, a formaldehyde derivative.”
It added, “However, many of the bags had degraded over time and/or suffered damage, resulting in leakage from the individual bags into the outer bag, box, or cooler.”
Klopfer’s medical license was suspended in 2016 following a history of complaints, including one that he performed an abortion on a 10-year-old girl after she was reportedly raped by her uncle.
Hill’s office said the burial plot for the mass grave was donated by the Palmer Funeral Home. He will speak at the ceremony and provide an update on the investigation into the situation.
