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Ben Johnson | The Washington Stand
Dozens of congressmen and pro-life organizations have demanded the Biden administration stop facilitating lawlessness, and officials in the nation’s capital hold an abortionist accountable for allegedly killing nearly full-term babies through illegal means.
In March 2022, members of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) uncovered a box containing the remains of 115 aborted babies outside the Washington Surgi-Clinic, an abortion business operated in the District of Columbia by Dr. Cesare Santangelo. Five of those babies — known as the “D.C. Five” — appeared to have been nearly full-term and to have either suffered partial-birth abortion or to have been delivered alive and killed outside the womb. “Pulling these broken bodies from that box was the most viscerally heartbreaking experience that I have ever had,” said Terrisa Bukovinac of PAAU at a press conference on Wednesday. Advocates named the aborted babies Harriet, Holly, Christopher X, Phoenix, and Angel. Their recovery proved that “five babies were murdered in the nation’s capital, and their murderer continues,” she said.
That suspicion is compounded by the fact that Live Action caught Santangelo admitting “we would not help” a baby born alive due to a botched abortion, a violation of federal law, in a 2013 undercover video. Yet the Biden administration’s Justice Department reportedly instructed officials in Washington, D.C., to discard the babies’ remains and not to investigate whether Santangelo broke one or more federal laws.
More than three dozen House Republicans, and a U.S. senator, have written to officials at the federal and district level to preserve the bodies and enforce the law. On Wednesday, Republican Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Bob Good (R-Va.), Pat Fallon (R-Texas), and Chris Smith (R-N.J.) joined with pro-life organizations in demanding justice for the D.C. Five.
“These five precious lives deserve to be respected,” said Roy. “We’re all created in the image of God,” added Biggs. “Biden’s Justice Department chose to ignore any potential crime for two years,” he said. “The DOJ’s efforts to dispose of these bodies without conducting an investigation is simply malpractice, and it is wrong.”
D.C. investigators should conduct autopsies to determine whether any of the five children suffered from partial-birth abortion, “or perhaps they were born alive and just abandoned to die,” said Good.
Two Republican pro-life leaders — Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) — demanded that D.C. officials make that ruling. Last Friday, the two wrote a letter to Dr. Francisco J. Diaz, the District’s chief medical examiner, noting that the abortions may have violated the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 (18 U.S. Code § 1531) and the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (1 U.S.C. § 8). “Dr. Kendra Kolb, a neonatologist, estimated at the time that this baby girl was ‘somewhere between 28-30 weeks gestational age, with evidence of deep lacerations to the posterior neck which presumably correlates to the method of abortion used to end her life,’” they wrote.
“Killing a child, let alone five, through partial-birth abortion is a crime under federal law,” noted Biggs on Wednesday. “These bodies must be preserved, answers must be had, further protections must be invoked.” Instead, “the very law enforcement tasked with protecting the most vulnerable in our society has become complicit in covering up the cold-blooded murder of these precious lives.”
The pro-life congressmen said the Biden administration’s efforts to quell the investigation raise questions of their own. “Are we a country that has a rule of law or not? Does the Justice Department actually dispense justice?” asked Fallon. “Why has the Biden DOJ refused to investigate? What are they hiding? Who are they protecting?”
That question was posed by 44 House Republicans, including Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland last Wednesday (February 7). “We demand that you immediately halt plans to dispose of these children, as they may well be evidence of a crime,” they wrote. “We further demand you stop stonewalling and finally conduct a thorough investigation into the deaths of these children to determine what really happened, and to hold any lawbreakers or murderers accountable. At the end of this investigation, we encourage a respectful burial of the babies.”
“If the DOJ is not going to fulfill its duty to investigate potential federal crimes committed against these child victims, then Congress should immediately take up its own investigation,” said Smith on Wednesday. “Justice must be tenaciously pursued.”
“Enough with the stonewalling!” added Fallon, who called the potential destruction of evidence “another act of deception from Merrick Garland’s Justice Department.”
As Good spoke, a lone anti-life protester shouted, “Abortion forever, you fascist piece of [expletive]!”
“Where is the compassion? Where is the outrage? Where is the empathy for five precious children who were slaughtered by abortion?” asked Smith, a decades-long champion of the pro-life cause. “Where is the justice? Why the cover-up?”
He likened the murders to Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia-area abortionist who delivered babies alive, then snipped their spines with scissors outside the womb. “He butchered babies and warehoused them, and was found guilty in 2013 and he went to jail. There are Kermit Gosnells all over America: predators, child abusers, exploiters of women,” said the congressman.
“These are the faces of reproductive freedom,” said Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s Legislative Director Jamie Dangers. “Their blood is crying out, and we’re giving voice to them today.”
“The D.C. Five babies show how gruesome abortion is and can be. This case demonstrates the lengths to which the Biden administration will go to promote abortion above all, even ignoring potential violations of federal law and thereby allowing even the most barbaric abortions to take place through all nine months of pregnancy. We call on Congress to intervene and fight for justice for these five precious children,” said Dangers.
Pro-life groups around the nation fear similarly grisly scenes will soon be multiplied in their own states. “With Ohio’s loss of Issue 1 in November, the Buckeye state could be facing the fact that mothers may make this same decision of demise for their full-term babies,” said Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand. “We must remain a strong, prayerful voice for the injustice committed against all pre-born children. We must pray this type of atrocity does not become the standard in Ohio. The evil of Ohio abortions through 22 weeks is enough of a tragedy on the beautiful Buckeye state.”
Rather than seek justice, the DOJ has prosecuted members of PAAU for protesting abortion. “Lauren Handy, who was there at that moment, shockingly, was arrested under” the so-called Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE, Act “and sentenced to 11 years in prison,” said Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America.
As a first step to prevent Democratic administrations from persecuting pro-life opponents, last fall Roy introduced a bill to repeal the FACE Act. “We’ve got to stop weaponizing FACE” and hold abortionists accountable for far more gruesome crimes, said Nance.
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON STAND
Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
