Abortion-Keep Legal, Yes or No?

D.C. Medical Examiner has no plans to autopsy fetuses removed from antiabortion activist’s home, officials say  https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/04/01/lauren-handy-dc-abortion-fetuses/ 

By Michelle Boorstein and Peter Hermann
April 01 at 10:11 PM ET
The city medical examiner does not plan at this time to perform autopsies on the five fetuses police removed from a Capitol Hill rowhouse earlier this week, according to two D.C. officials with knowledge of the case, even though the group involved in their discovery claims the fetuses were all late-term abortions performed illegally.
The fetuses were found in a basement apartment occupied by Lauren Handy, a well-known local antiabortion protester and director of activism for Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising.
PAAU said in a statement Thursday evening that it received the fetuses from a “whistleblower” who worked at Washington Surgi-Clinic, a D.C. abortion clinic, and had arranged for police to pick them up because they believe the fetuses were aborted illegally.
The clinic declined to comment, but its website says it performs abortions up to 27 weeks of pregnancy, which is at the very end of the second trimester.
Handy and other members of her group scheduled a news conference Tuesday where they said they would share details.
Ashan Benedict, D.C. police’s executive assistant chief of police, told reporters Thursday that the fetuses appeared to have been aborted “in accordance with D.C. law [and] there doesn’t seem to be anything criminal in nature about that except for how they got into this house.”
On Friday, D.C. police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck said the matter “remains an ongoing investigation.” He said, “While there are still a number of questions, we can’t provide details at this point.” He said the origin of the fetuses also remains part of that inquiry. Sternbeck said D.C. police have not filed any charges or made any arrests in regards to the found fetuses.
Officials with the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner declined to comment about the case.
Two D.C. officials with knowledge of the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity since they are not permitted to discuss an ongoing investigation, said the decision not to perform autopsies could change if they receive additional information.
Randall Terry, a longtime national antiabortion leader working with Handy’s group, said the activists don’t know the circumstances of the pregnancies that ended in abortions, but he said that graphic images of fetuses circulating on social media Friday night were the remains taken from Washington Surgi-Clinic. D.C. police and other officials declined to comment on whether the pictures on social media are of the fetuses taken from the residence.
D.C. and seven states do not have specific laws prohibiting abortion after a certain point in pregnancy. Terry said the activists want an investigation of whether the clinic violated federal law, which restricts when a procedure known as “intact dilation and extraction” can be performed and extends legal rights to fetuses that survive abortions.
Plain-clothed officers discovered the fetuses Wednesday when they entered a rowhouse on 6th Street SE to investigate what police described as “a tip regarding potential biohazard material at the location.”
[5 fetuses found in D.C. home of woman charged in abortion clinic blockade]
Around the same time that police were swarming the quiet residential side street, federal authorities announced the indictment of Handy and eight other people in a 2020 blockade of an abortion clinic with chain and rope. They face federal civil rights counts connected with the incident at the Washington Surgi-Clinic. Included in the statement PAAU released Thursday was a March 30 letter from a California attorney to D.C. officials, saying “an entity” had “come into possession” of fetuses — the number in the statement was blacked out — and wanted “to advise appropriate authorities … and request an investigation and forensic examinations.”

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