A group of 20 congressional Republicans is asking D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to order autopsies of five fetuses turned over last week to District authorities, adding to a chorus of pro-life advocates who say the abortions may have violated federal partial-birth laws.
In a letter sent Tuesday to the mayor and Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee IIII, the 15 senators and five representatives objected to the police department’s “assumption that each child died as the result of a legal abortion” and to press reports that the District’s medical examiner “does not plan to perform autopsies on the children.”
Citing images of the fetuses that pro-life activists have publicized over the past week, the GOP legislators said the abortions could violate the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act and Born Alive Infants Protection Act.
“Based on evidence collected at the time of recovery and photos that have been publicly shared, all five of these children appear to have developed well past the point of viability, and likely suffered severely painful abortion procedures, though without an autopsy, it is not known how each child died,” the lawmakers wrote.
Montana Sen. Steve Daines, chairman of the Senate’s pro-life caucus, was one of the letter’s signatories.
Other senators included Indiana’s Mike Braun, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, Iowa’s Joni Ernst, Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn, Missouri’s Josh Hawley, Texas’ Ted Cruz, both of Idaho’s senators and both of Oklahoma’s senators.
Representatives who signed the letter included Chris Smith of New Jersey, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Vicky Hartzler of Missouri and Debbie Lesko of Arizona.
The mayor’s office did not respond on Wednesday to a request for comment.
Rep. Madison Cawthorn, North Carolina Republican, did not sign the letter. But he pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra during a congressional committee hearing Wednesday about the “five fetuses beyond the threshold of viability on the doorstep of Washington, D.C.” without receiving an answer.
Police recovered the five fetuses from an apartment in Southeast Washington last Thursday.
While an assistant police chief initially told local reporters that the abortions did not appear to violate any District laws, an MPD spokesperson told The Washington Times in an email on Tuesday that the department could not comment further since the investigation remains active.
Activists from the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising claim that on March 25, a driver for a regional medical waste services firm gave them boxes containing 115 fetuses. They said they buried 110 early-term fetuses in a Catholic funeral mass.
Terrisa Bukovinac and Lauren Handy, who lives in the apartment where the fetuses were stored, told reporters Tuesday that they received the remains from the driver outside the Washington Surgi-Clinic on F Street.
Unable to arrange an independent medical examination, they said they turned the five late-term fetuses over to police last week in hopes that authorities would conduct autopsies.
In their letter on Tuesday, Republican lawmakers joined a growing crowd of pro-life organizations calling on the city to perform the autopsies.
Pro-life organizations Students for Life of America, the Susan B. Anthony List and Live Action have all launched campaigns this week to demand autopsies of the fetuses, which they estimate to have died at 24 to 32 weeks of gestation.
Neonatologist Dr. Robin Pierucci, an associate scholar with the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, told pro-life Live Action News: “I can say with confidence that these babies died at an age when they were viable, premature people.”
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