Warning: graphic descriptions below.
Most of us shared a collective gasp when news broke that aborted babies in the UK were incinerated and, in some cases, used to heat hospitals. Mike McNally wrote,
It’s emerged that several National Health Service (NHS) trusts in the UK have been routinely burning the bodies of aborted babies as “clinical waste,” and that in at least two cases the remains were used to heat hospitals – an example of ruthless efficiency if ever there was one. This is what happens when the progressive left’s culture of death meets the heartless bureaucracy of socialized healthcare.
This, of course, has led many to wonder what happens to American babies after they’re aborted. Is the way they are treated upon their demise in the United States any less gruesome than the way they are disposed of across the pond?
Sadly, in our country, aborted babies are treated like trash—medical waste—and they are commonly incinerated. In some cases, the remains are dumped in landfills with other “solid waste” or ground up and dumped into sanitary sewers.
Laws vary by state. California requires that “pathology waste,” which includes recognizable anatomical parts or human tissue specimens, “must be treated by incineration.” New Mexico requires either incineration or interment. In Ohio the law simply says that “products of conception…shall be disposed of in a humane manner,” whatever that means, since “humane” is not defined in the statute.
Texas offers several options for disposal of “tissues or fetuses” (not for the squeamish):
1 Incineration followed by deposition of the residue in a sanitary landfill;
2. Grinding and discharging to a sanitary sewer system;
3. Interment;
4. Steam disinfection followed by interment;
5. Moist heat disinfection followed by deposition in a sanitary landfill;
6. Chlorine disinfection/maceration followed by deposition in a sanitary landfill; or
7. An approved alternate treatment process, provided that the process renders the item as unrecognizable, followed by deposition in a sanitary landfill.
Dear God, what kind of country have we become? Surely we have lost our national soul when our laws can speak in such sanitary and pragmatic terms about the bodies of tiny human beings using words like “grinding,” “maceration” and rendering them “unrecognizable” so they can be deposited into a “sanitary landfill.”
Because the evidence of these dark deeds must be destroyed and the bodies must be hidden, our nation has created laws and regulations and procedures and incinerators to helpfully assure us that there is “nothing to see here.”
Most abortion clinics use secondary “waste removal” companies to dispose of the snuffed-out little lives they’ve destroyed. One major hauler (that services many Planned Parenthood clinics around the country) is Stericycle, a global company with revenues of $1.9 billion in 2012. Stericycle provides “disposal services for medical and biohazardous waste” across the United States and in several other countries, including the United Kingdom. The company’s “services” came to national attention when the grand jury in the 2008 investigation of the diabolical Kermit Gosnell discovered that the late-term abortionist had a contract with Stericycle in Philadelphia. When he neglected to pay his bills the company stopped picking up the “pathological waste,” forcing Gosnell to store the remains of the aborted children in freezers at the clinic.
The Campaign to Stop Stericycle (CSS) has a recording of a phone call placed to Stericycle inquiring about their services related to the disposal of abortion remains. “Mara,” who says she previously managed the accounts of Planned Parenthood centers across the country, shared the sickening details of how this repulsive business works.
Mara told a caller (who was posing as a potential Stericycle customer) that the abortion clinic would be provided with two boxes—one for regulated medical wastes such as blood-soaked items and sharps containers (RMW) and a big box for their “path” (pathological waste). She said that when the haulers arrive once a week “we’re going to take two fifty pound boxes from them and leave two big tubs or boxes for them, with liners.” The “path box” was for “the tissues and organs and things,” Mara explained.
When asked if first and second trimester fetuses would need to be separated (or if they all just go into the bag together), Mara responds, “They just go into the bag because it’s, you know, tissues and things and human parts and…um…yeah, they’re just going to put it right into the bag and the bag is in the box.”
Asked if the “path waste” would need to be refrigerated until Stericycle made a pickup, she said it depended on the state regulations but added, “If we’re coming there once a week and you still need to refrigerate because there’s odor … then we’re not coming out there enough. We need to come out there more.” And the body count rises.
The caller was told that the clinic would receive stickers to mark the bins “incinerate only.” She said, “It will be incinerated, so it will be hauled over to Haw River.” According to CSS, Stericycle hauls medical waste, including the bodies of aborted babies, from twenty states along the East Coast to their incineration facility in Haw River, North Carolina. The employee stated that as long as facilities are following state laws and regulation, Stericycle will pick up whatever is placed in the “path box.”
In 2011, Stericycle in Texas was cited for improperly disposing of fetuses that were treated with steam disinfection, called autoclaving, which is an alternative disposal method in that state. However, interment is required for fetal remains that have been disinfected with this method (the remains are not pulverized in this process). At its Austin facility, Stericycle was caught simply combining the fetal remains with the rest of the medical waste and hauling it out to the landfill after it had been disinfected.
CSS has government documents from Planned Parenthood clinics across the country that demonstrate their abominable arrangements with Stericycle. Planned Parenthood of Milwaukee disposed of 1259 lbs. of waste in 2009. The Madison, Wisconsin location reported 759 lbs. that same year, while an abortion clinic in Greenville, North Carolina, reported shipping out 52 lbs. per month in 2008. Consider that at a gestational age of four months (just into the second trimester) a baby only weighs 5-8 ounces. One-thousand two hundred fifty-nine pounds of “waste” comes to a sickening 20,144 ounces of little arms, legs, and hearts stuffed into “path bags” that are later hauled off and burned. And that’s just one clinic.
God, forgive us for not ending this barbaric disregard for the lives and the liberty of those babies who never had the opportunity to take that first breath. At least we have the consolation that those precious little ones are safe and happy in heaven. But the loss to this world is incalculable. Would that child in the Madison, Wisconsin, “path box” have grown up to be a doctor who cures cancer? Would that baby dumped into the landfill in North Carolina have been a statesman or a teacher or a faithful pastor? What a tragic, appalling loss—destruction—of humanity when we consider the millions of children, created in the image of God, who are missing from our world.
And how long will it be until the euphemistically labeled “medical waste” will be used to heat hospitals in our country? Or our homes? It doesn’t seem like much of a jump to go from grinding up babies and sending them into the sewers to appropriating them for utilitarian purposes.
Moreover, how long can a nation endure when multiple generations of Americans have so much innocent blood on their hands?
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