Abortion Specimens

This news story, Church to Bury Aborted Fetal Remains, has appeared on the MSM a few times and has also been making the rounds in the blogosphere. Basically the story is that a doctor who performs late term abortions is objecting to what happens to the abortion "specimens" (his word, from a television news story) after they are discarded by his clinic.

"A Roman Catholic church will bury the ashes of up to 1,000 aborted fetuses in its cemetery this weekend, despite accusations from the clinic that performed the operations that it is collaborating in a 'macabre' and political ritual. Dr. Warren Hern of the Boulder Abortion Clinic said his contract with Crist Mortuary required it to bury the ashes in its own plot. Instead, he learned this week that for nearly a decade, a mortuary officer has been giving the remains to the Sacred Heart of Mary Church. The ashes are buried near a statue of Jesus and a memorial wall with plaques carrying messages from people wanting to memorialize their fetus. 'A lot of my patients come in with desired pregnancies, deeply saddened they have a desired pregnancy which is medically complicated or threatening their life,' said Hern, one of a handful of doctors in the country who perform abortions late in pregnancy. 'I'm appalled that the Catholic Church will exploit women's private grief and misery for their own political purposes,' he said."

What can be added to this? The late Senator Patrick Moynihan condemned partial birth abortion ("dilation and extraction") as "barbarism" which seems almost understated. I find it difficult to form commentary without lapsing into cliche, which might lead some to conclude that insufficient thought has been devoted to the issue. It might also be a case of whatever CAN be said, HAS been said. But this story represents a case where those who, somehow, defend abortion on demand, have been unexpectedly, well, caught and publicly shamed. I am genuinely surprised at their simulated outrage. His immediate accusation of "The Catholic Church," instead of Sacred Heart of Mary parish smacks of the last acceptable prejudice, which, I have no doubt, animates him and his coreligionists. Why on earth does Hern object to what happens to his medical waste? Pathetic.