A Maryland medical waste company denied that one of its workers gave anti-abortion activists a box filled with fetal remains outside a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic.
Washington Surgi-Clinic rejected Lauren Handy’s and Terrisa Bukovinac’s claims that they were protesting outside the clinic when they approached a driver from Curtis Bay Medical Waste Services and obtained a box filled with fetuses that he was loading onto the truck. But all three packages the company picked up were delivered to Curtis Bay’s incineration facility, the company argued.
“At no time did the Curtis Bay employee hand over any of these packers to the [Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising] or another third party, and any allegations made otherwise are false,” the clinic said in a statement.
The activists said they arranged for the Metropolitan Police Department homicide unit to collect the fetuses on Friday, with 110 fetuses appearing to have been aborted early in the gestational process and another five that appeared to be late-term abortions, according to Handy and Bukovinac. Before turning the remains over to police, the group posted photos on social media with the boxes containing labels with the Curtis Bay logo, prompting the company to respond.
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Transporting fetal remains is against company policy, a spokesperson for the medical waste service said, listing it as “unacceptable waste” in its customer’s guide on its website.
“Customers like Washington Surgi-Clinic are prohibited from disposing of fetuses and human remains via Curtis Bay’s services,” the company said. “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.”
Handy and Bukovinac have called on local law enforcement to investigate the fetal remains of the five fetuses that appear to have been aborted in the late term and in violation of federal law. Although Washington does not ban late-term abortions, federal law restricts the methods that can be used and requires medical professionals to attempt lifesaving care for infants born after failed procedures.
The fetuses appeared to be about 28-32 gestational weeks, with some of the bodies remaining intact, according to the photos that circulated on social media. At least one may have experienced a partial-birth abortion, meaning the fetus is partially delivered before being aborted, in violation of federal law, the group claimed. Another fetus was apparently born alive before the abortion procedure, which would make abortion in that case a violation of federal law, the activists argued.
A group of Republican lawmakers also called on the district government to conduct autopsies of the remains, citing the same possible violations of federal law.
“Based on evidence collected at the time of recovery … all five of these children appear to have developed well past the point of viability and likely suffered severely painful abortion procedures,” the group wrote. “Though without an autopsy, it is not known how each child died.”
However, city officials said they are not looking into the activists’ claims at this time.
The fetuses “were aborted in accordance with D.C. law, so we are not investigating this incident along those lines,” said Ashan Benedict, the executive assistant chief of police, at a news conference on Thursday.
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Police are investigating how the activist group obtained the remains, and officials declined to comment further.
The MPD referred the Washington Examiner to the Office of the Medical Examiner for comment on the condition and origin of the fetuses. The office said media inquiries for the investigation were under the purview of the Mayor’s Office, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
