The Facelessness of Abortion

Aborted fetuses have no identity, promoting a fetal
body-parts industry--legislation must correct this

by James Horsley

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge... Hosea 4:6

We the citizens of this nation do not know where the individual cadavers of aborted fetuses go. We do not know, because no documentation is required that tracks aborted fetuses from their death to their final destination.

Specifically, we do not know if they are flushed down a toilet, washed down a drain, buried, thrown in a dumpster, or incinerated. We have no legal way in place to identify or trace if an individual aborted fetus is used in medical experiments or in scientific research.

Nor do we know if abortion clinics are disposing of fetal cadavers according to law, for no public agencies regulate or inspect such clinics for compliance.

We do not know if they are sold against state and federals laws prohibiting the sale of fetal cadavers and their body parts. We do not know, because no records are required to be kept or filed with any governmental agency, other than statistical information.

This means that today there is no adequate way to police the abortion industry, most importantly regarding whether its practitioners are abiding with state law concerning the disposal of nonviable fetal tissue and with state and federal laws making it illegal to sell body parts.

On the other hand, for a person who dies other than by abortion--depending on the state, usually from the age of 20-weeks gestation up--documentation is required in the form of a death certificate, which must be filed with the county and the state, and a burial transit permit, which must accompany the remains to its final disposition, usually burial or cremation, then filed either with the cemetery or with the county.

Without adequate oversight and without adequate regulations, we have created a potential for a vast trade in fetal body parts.

What will be traced here is one of America's most shocking absences of law, encouraging a dark world of science and profiteering at the expense of human life. I will focus specifically on the states of North Dakota and Minnesota, but the problem is nation-wide.

It all began with a comment to myself by Anita Hardmeyer, a former member of the board of LIFE Coalition, Fargo, North Dakota. She mentioned that a green dumpster near the back of the Red River Women's Clinic, an abortion clinic, may be where the products of abortion, that is, fetal cadavers, are disposed. I became curious. I asked myself, are, indeed, fetuses discarded here? And if so, where are they taken? Do they end up in a burial plot? A land fill? Or incinerated? Is there some site on the plains where plumes of smoke rise up a chimney as the result of the incineration of aborted fetal bodies? Are these fetal cadavers being sold for what their flesh is worth? Does America have an underground auction of aborted babies, that is, a clandestine trade in fetal body parts?

The answer to these questions is this: It is a secret. The public does not know. Only a few do: personnel at certain waste disposal sites, members of abortions clinics and members of research and medical facilities. We have built a legal and regulatory system that keeps us, the people, from knowing, that shrouds such practices in secrecy, that prohibits finding out because of loopholes in the existing laws and because no laws are in place that track where aborted cadavers go. Our elected officials, our government administrators and we, ourselves, look the other way on a legal environment that opens the door for a form of slave trafficking, where the slaves are sold or exchanged for what their bodies are worth--their dead fetal bodies.

Why is this?

Products of abortion are deemed by the Supreme Court Decision of Roe v. Wade not to be persons. Because of that decision, if a mother decides that the product of conception inside her womb is not worthy of being a human being, her decision prevails absolutely. Intent defines humanity, that is, the intent of the mother. Her intent, her mere decision to abort puts the person inside her into the category of a sub-human. She can have her unborn child killed surgically with impunity. The death may be recorded for statistical purposes, but you don't need a formal death certificate or a burial permit for the demise of something that has the status of an animal or a body part. That is the status of aborted cadavers.

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, of the 62 million American women of reproductive age who became pregnant in 2000, 6.3 million became pregnant, with 64 percent resulting in live births, 21 percent in abortions and the remaining 15 percent in miscarriages. Of the 1.1 million women of reproductive age in Minnesota in 2000, 96,000 became pregnant, with 70 percent resulting in live births and 14 percent in induced abortions.

This latter figure is particularly alarming when you consider that the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that the state Constitution holds that the state must fund abortion costs if it already funds childbirth and related costs. This means that women in Minnesota may have their abortions covered by Medicaid, unlike women in other states who may only receive public funding in cases of rape, incest, or the endangerment of the woman's life.

In Minnesota, state taxpayers paid more than $1 million for 3,808 abortions in 2002, according to Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life. The Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) reported in 2002 that taxpayers had up to then funded 28,174 abortions at a cost of $7.16 million.

Since no one can track where this resultant fetal tissue goes, in effect no controls exist to determine if these public funds are being properly spent or whether the public is, indeed, funding a fetal body-parts trade. It is a fiscal and moral travesty.

The impact of abortion in this country is astounding. Nationally, one out of every five pregnant women abort their child, with a total of 1.5 million abortions performed every year in the United States.

Approximately 43 percent of women in the United States will have a voluntary abortion during their lifetime, according to the July 20, 2000, New England Journal of Medicine (http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/343/3/227-b)

Do we have any idea, specifically, where aborted bodies go or what is their fate?

Rumors abound, as well as anecdotal accounts. Some are reported to have been processed by hand meat grinders at abortion clinics to the consistency of tooth paste and washed down the drain. Others are put in metal pails and later incinerated. Others, according to reports, have been surgically dissected, some cut apart while their hearts are still beating, and their organs and bodily members sold for research purposes. Legally, dissecting a live fetus may even be permissible, for an aborted fetus has no status as a person and can be treated as a medical specimen whether alive or dead.

Ever since President Clinton signed the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993, fetal-tissue research has expanded into a federally subsidized multi-million dollar industry of selling human spare parts salvaged from abortions, according to a November 12, 1999 posting by WorldNetDaily.com (www.wnd.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=17245)

For example, the NIH budgeted $21 million in fiscal year 1999 for grants and awards for fetal tissue research. At the University of Washington, the NIH subsidizes the central laboratory for human embryology. According to a lab notice obtained by WorldNetDaily, it "can supply tissue from normal or abnormal embryos and fetuses of desired gestational ages between 40 days to term. Specimens are obtained within minutes of passage, and tissues are aseptically identified, staged, and immediately processed according to the requirements of individual investigators." The notice was signed by Alan G. Fantel of the department of pediatrics.

According to the international business consulting firm of Frost and Sullivan, "the worldwide market for cell lines and tissue cultures brought in nearly $428 million in corporate revenues in 1996." It is estimated this market will grow at an annual rate of 13.5 percent and by 2002 will be worth nearly $1 billion, WorldNetDaily noted.

A three-month "20/20" hidden-camera investigation aired by ABC March 8, 2000, revealed that tissue and organs from aborted fetuses were being marketed for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars per fetal-part.

Federal law permits the donation of tissue from aborted fetuses for scientific purposes. However, according to a March 6 ABC news release, the law says companies that transport fetal tissue to medical research labs may charge a reasonable fee to recover costs of collecting and shipping human tissue. The "20/20" investigation found some companies are charging high fees--fees that critics say are not based on recovering costs.

How are these prices determined? One "20/20" producer went undercover as a potential investor, meeting with Dr. Miles Jones, a Missouri pathologist whose company, Opening Lines, obtains fetal tissue from abortion clinics and ships it to research labs. "It's market force," Dr. Jones told the producer about how he sets his prices. "It's what you can sell it for."

According to ABC, "for example, the price list for one company, Opening Lines, includes listings of $325 for a spinal cord, $550 for a reproductive organ, $999 for a brain."

Coincidentally, the day following the "20/20" expose (add accent), The House Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Health and the Environment held a hearing on the subject, "Fetal Tissue: Is It Being Bought and Sold in Violation of Federal Law?"

One of the key witnesses was a whistleblower, Dean Alberty of Lee's Summit, Mo., who had worked from 1995 to 1997 as a "tissue procurement technician" for a company called Anatomic Gift Foundation of Laurel, Md., "harvesting" fetal body parts in a room rented at an abortion clinic at the Mayfair Women's Clinic in Aurora, Colorado. The company acted as a middleman between the abortion clinic and the scientist wanting the tissue.

Mona Charen, a Washinton, D.C. syndicated columnist and political analyst, and a former speechwriter for Nancy Reagan, reported that Alberty, identified under the pseudonym "Kelly" in her story, said he dissected "specimens" that would be delivered completely intact. "Sometimes the fetus appeared to be dead, but when we opened up the chest cavity, the heart was still beating." (http://www.csamerican.com/linkFrame.asp?p=a&k=61)

As background, such organizations can operate due to a loophole in existing laws. The National Organ Transplant Act was amended in 1988 to specifically prohibit the sale of fetal tissue and organs. It states, "It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human organ for valuable consideration for use in human transplantation if the transfer affects interstate commerce." The Fetal Tissue Act also prohibits women from aborting their infants to donate the tissue for financial gain, or to benefit a relative or friend. The law is designed to remove any personal benefit from aborting an infant.

However, Anatomic Gift Foundation and other similar companies circumvent the violation of these laws by having the abortion clinic donate the organs to them, who then donate the fetal tissue to the research facility, which in turn donates a sum for the cost of retrieval according to a price list per part. In order to compensate the abortion clinic for its services, the procurement company will pay a "site fee," renting space in the clinic's laboratory for its own personnel to harvest the baby body parts.

Nearly 75 percent of the women who choose abortion agree to donate the fetal tissue, Brenda Bardsley, vice president of the Anatomic Gift Foundation, in 1999 told Insight, New World Communication (http://www.nrlc.org/Baby_Parts/omeara.html).

At the House Commerce Committee's hearing, Alberty said that what drove him to come forward about the body-parts trade was the abortion of two infant twins, brought to him alive on a pan for dissection. He said that the twins, who were between 26 and 30 weeks old, were "cuddling each other" and "gasping for breath."

However, in a deposition just prior to the federal hearing, Alberty said under oath that he had "no personal knowledge" of whether Anatomic Gift Foundation ever sold fetal tissue in violation of the law. This was brought out at the hearing and played a large part in discrediting his testimony. The hearing resulted in concluding that no violation of federal law was being committed by these companies. Part of the reason for no violations being found is that the committee relied primarily on witnesses. Several witnesses did not show up. Further, because existing laws do not require tracking of fetal tissue, it is virtually impossible to document violations.

One of the reasons for the hearing stemmed from the efforts the year before of pro-life Senator Bob Smith (R-NH), who offered an amendment to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act requiring detailed reporting on transactions involving the body parts of babies killed by abortion. On October 20 and 21, Smith gave two speeches before the Senate regarding his amendment, detailing allegations of trafficking in baby body parts, displaying various order forms and price lists.

"I want to try to paint you a picture of what happens," Smith said. "A girl walks into a clinic and sits down to wait. A fax comes in, and the fax contains a list of what body parts are needed for that day. . . . He [the abortionist] looks out into the waiting room and stares at her stomach, and knows this [tissue order] is [for] the very same child who is very much alive now, perhaps even moving and kicking. He knows that child will be dead in a few moments, and they already have the work order...After her abortion, in a matter of 10 minutes...that baby can be shipped to researchers across the country--just like going into a supermarket and buying a piece of meat."

The amendment would have required anyone receiving such fetal tissue to disclose what abortion procedure was used, how old the fetus was, how the tissue would be used, the names of all those involved in the transfer and whether money was exchanged in the transfer. The amendment failed on a close vote, 46-51.

Following the hearing, on March 15, Rep. Tom Coburn (R-OK) introduced the "Human Fetal Tissue Reporting and Disclosure Act of 2000" HR. 3980. The bill would require "any entity that is to receive fetal tissue for any purpose...shall file with the Secretary a disclosure statement that meets [several] requirements." Those receiving the tissue must report the "names, addresses, and telephone numbers of each entity that has obtained possession of the human fetal tissue involved prior to its possession by the filing entity, including any entity used solely to transport the fetal tissue and the tracking number used to identify the packaging of such tissue." They must also verify that the tissue was obtained properly.

This bill was fought vigorously by the scientific community. The American Society for Cell Biology issued a position paper on the bill (http://www.ascb.org/publicpolicy/fetaltissue.html). The comment, under the heading "Fetal Tissue Research," stated that:

"This bill is quite concerning in that it would have a chilling effect on fetal tissue research... These requirements focus not on the suppliers as one would suspect from the hearing, but on the researchers... We are very concerned that if HR 3980 passes scientists will not conduct research with fetal tissue for fear of beginning attacked or protested by those who oppose such work. Given that fetal tissue is used throughout the biomedical enterprise this bill would have wide and pervasive impact on research. There are already tough laws on the books to penalize anyone who would attempt to make a profit from the sale of fetal tissue and there is currently no evidence that any one has broken these laws."

The reason that the society can claim that "there is currently no evidence that anyone has broken these laws" is because no legal documentation exists that would enable regulatory authorities to trace whether, indeed, such laws had been violated. Further, abortion clinics are not regulated with regard to how they dispose of their medical waste, including fetal cadavers.

What follows is a substantiation of that above statement based on numerous conversations with personnel in government and private industry. Each person contacted was told by myself that I was the communications director of LIFE Coalition, Fargo, and that I was doing an article for a pro-life newsletter.

On August 30, I talked with Doug Sensen, registered sanitarian, Fargo-Cass Public Health. I asked him who regulated medical waste.

"I really don't know who regulates organ waste. I don't know what happens to it. Possibly the state does. I am really at a loss about who does this. We inspect restaurants, food services at hospitals, body-art establishments, hotels, motels and swimming pools. We do not inspect clinics, medical facilities or nursing homes."

That same day, I talked with Steve Tillotson, assistant director of Waste Management, Department of Health, North Dakota Department of Health. I mentioned that according to the North Dakota statutes there are certain requirement for disposing of medical waste, that the Red River Women's Clinic is an abortion clinic in Fargo, apparently the only one in the state, and that near the back of their building was a dumpster that had on the outside printed "Waste Management."

He said, "Yes, that is a well-known waste hauling company."

According to state law, of greatest public concern is waste that may contain pathogens that could cause an infectious disease. Specifically, it is called "infectious waste." Human blood and pathological waste are considered "infectious waste" and are regulated. A dead fetus would come under the category of pathological waste.

State law governing the humane disposal of nonviable fetuses specifies that such disposal must be by incineration, burial or cremation. Infectious waste must first be separated from other waste and placed in containers which do not leak and which contain obvious markings, such as red or orange plastic bags or containers affixed with the biohazard label.

I asked him if there was any way to determine if the clinic was complying with the regulations related to disposing of medical waste, such as fetal material.

"We do not do on-site inspection of businesses, any more than we would walk into a home and see if people are disposing of their waste in a proper manner," he said. "There is no public record of what businesses dispose of."

"I don't think, however, that Waste Management disposes of medical waste for the clinic. That is normally handled by Health Care Incinerators or Sure-Way of Valley City. Waste Management is probably just handling normal refuse from the clinic.

"If the clinic was throwing away fetuses in a dumpster, that would probably go to a landfill, and we have operators there who have been trained in identifying such improper usage," he said. "I am on a first name bases with these people, and they would tell me if they saw something unusual, like a red bag out in the land fill. They are very sensitive to such things, and it would spook them, because they don't like waste like that, and they would call me."

"Other than that, then how do you know if they are complying with the law?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said. "I am assuming they are inspected at times. If we had a complaint, we would investigate that."

"So, your agency is limited to taking action only if there is a complaint, and you have no other way of taking action to see if compliance is being met?"

"That is right," he said. "Why don't you call the Division of Health Facilities? They inspect hospitals and nursing facilities for compliance."

So I did. I spoke with Deb Arnold, women's health coordinator, Division of Family Health. I told her who I was and asked her if there was any way that her division could determine if fetal material was being disposed by Red River Women's Clinic in accordance with the law.

"We do not licenser clinics, so we would not inspect clinics, and therefore our agency would not know if they are in compliance," she said.

I said that that was supremely logical, but wondered what good a law was when no public agency was responsible for determining if compliance was being met.

"I will ask around and see if some division of the Department of Health is responsible for monitoring abortion clinics," she said.

Her later email reply confirmed that no division existed at the department that regulated clinics, including abortion clinics. She added that "investigation and prosecution would fall under local jurisdiction, i.e., county sheriff, city police and states attorney as would any violation of state law unless otherwise specified. Any concern regarding whether an abortion facility is following the stipulations of the statute and the rule should be reported to the local jurisdiction."

I subsequently received on Sept. 16 an email from Bruce Pritschet, director, division of health facilities, ND Department of Health, which further answered specific questions I had. My questions and his answers follow:

1. What types of facilities do you inspect?

"We certify facilities that choose to receive money from Medicare and Medicaid. These programs include long term care facilities (nursing homes), hospitals both acute and critical access; home health agencies, hospice, ambulatory surgical centers, end stage renal dialysis units. Our division also licenses and surveys basic care facilities. We do not have the statutory authority to license clinics."

2. Under what policy or statute does your mandate to inspect or regulate these facilities fall? In other words, why do you inspect what you inspect?

"Our division has a contract with the federal government (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) to inspect the Medicare and Medicaid providers. We use the Code of Federal regulations for the different facility types in our state."

3. Don't you inspect hospitals and nursing homes?

"Yes we do...we license and certify them."

4. Do you inspect or regulate hospitals for infectious waste, such as non-viable fetuses? Why or why not?

"The regulations we use to license and certify a hospital do not contain regulations pertaining to non-viable fetuses. The division of Waste Management under the Environmental Health Section regulates infectious waste using NDAC 33-03-02.05."

5. Since you don't inspect clinics, who does?

"As indicated earlier we do survey Rural Health Clinics under the Medicare requirements. The physician services provided in all clinics are subject to the Board of Medical Examiners for the doctor's quality of services provided. You may want to contact the Board of Medical Examiners for further information."

6. And why don't you inspect clinics? That is, how are they different than hospitals?

"From our perspective we do not have authority through the state statute to survey physician clinics and our contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services only provides for the certification of Rural Health Clinics."

I contacted the Board of Medical Examiners by email, saying that I have been informed by the Department of Health that they do not regulate the disposal of fetal waste from abortion clinics and that such issues, a spokesmen there suggested, may be under their jurisdiction. I said I was most interested in any oversight regarding the disposal and/or sale of non-viable fetal material from abortion clinics.

I received the following email Nov. 1 from Rolf P. Sletten, executive secretary:

"I'm not sure why you were referred to this office. The Board of Medical Examiners has no regulatory control over any health care institution. Sorry we cannot be of any help."

I then called Sletten and asked him to clarify his statement. "So, therefore, you don't regulate abortion clinics?" I asked.

"That is right," he said.

Commercial facilities allowed to accept medical waste are limited to two in North Dakota: Health Care Incinerators, Inc., 1420 40th St. NW, Fargo, and Sure-Way Systems, Inc., Valley City.

I called Health Care Incinerators Nov. l, asking the woman who answered the phone if they accepted fetal waste at their site. There was a long silence.

"Yes," she finally said.

"Do you service any abortion clinics in North Dakota?" I asked.

"Not that I am aware of," she said.

"When you do get fetal waste, how do you dispose of it?" I asked.

"We incinerate it in Fargo," she said.

"I see," I said. "Where is that incinerator located?"

She paused. "I am going to let you speak with my supervisor," she said. She eventually got back on the phone.

"He is just leaving for a meeting, but what I told you is about it, and we can't add any more," she said.

"And your name is what?" I asked.

"What do you want this information for?" she asked.

"I am going to publish your remarks in the newsletter I mentioned."

"I never gave you permission to interview me," she said. "If we find our company mentioned in your publication, there will be a problem."

I called Sure-Way Systems, asking to speak with Mr. Dudley Chilcott. I explained to him that I was interested in knowing what happened to the products of abortion coming out of the Red River Women's Clinic. I mentioned that some people thought that they might be ending up in the dumpster that was in back of the facility.

"Fetal waste would not go there. Waste from a dumpster goes into an landfill, and infectious waste can not go into a land fill by law. It is usually incinerated. We don't service that clinic. It is probably being handled by Health Care Incinerators."

"I called them, and they said they did not service the abortion clinic," I said.

"Huh," he said.

"Do you accept any fetal material as waste?" I asked.

"No," he said. "As I said, those are normally an incinerated item. We autoclave our waste. If we were to get that type of waste, we would bring it to Health Care Incinerators."

With regard to regulation of abortion clinics in Minnesota, David Giese, Director of Survey and Compliance, Minnesota Department of Health, in an email Sept. 29 to myself, stated:

"Minnesota does not regulate abortion clinics.

"Minnesota Statutes Section 145.1621 governs the "disposition of aborted or miscarried fetuses." It states, in part, that: "Hospitals, clinics, and medical facilities in which abortions are induced or occur spontaneously or accidentally and laboratories to which the remains of human fetuses are delivered must provide for the disposal of the remains by cremation...(or) interment by burial.

"Minnesota Statutes Sections 116.75-116.83 govern the handling and disposition of "infections wastes." This section of law is under the regulatory jurisdiction of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency."

In general, this means that the state concern for the disposing of a fetus is that it not cause infection or pollution.

Next I called Wright Funeral Home and talked with the owner, Steve Wright. He explained that there was a definite system for tracking a deceased person from place of death to eventual burial site. He said that a death certificate is required for all person who die, which is sent to the clerk of courts in the county of death, and which is forwarded to the state after a month in North Dakota. In Minnesota, it is done electronically, and the county records it and immediately sends it to the state. In addition, a burial transit permit must accompany the remains to destination.

Upon burial or cremation, the sexton or other person in charge of the cemetery or crematory must enter into the permit the section, lot and grave number were the body was buried as well as the date of burial. The permit must be signed by the cemetery or crematory authority and is supposed to be returned within ten days to the local registrar, that is, the clerk of the district court of the county in which the burial took place.

If a body is donated to a research institution, such as a medical school, for anatomical purposes, such as a class for dissection, or if organs are donated, then similar documentation is required.

In the case of a whole body donation, a death certificate and a burial transit permit are required, according to a Dr. Edward Carlson, director, deceased body program, at the Department of Anatomy, University of North Dakota. In the case of organ donations, the organ donated is entered in the record of the patient from which the organ was removed as well as in the record of the patient who received the transplant, with an index being kept by case number as a cross-reference at the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS), according to Mike Burakowski, funeral director and medical examiner liaison for Lifesource, St. Paul.

Under contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, UNOS maintains a centralized computer network linking all organ procurement organizations and transplant centers for the purpose of matching donated organs to recipients. It monitors compliance, including on-site audits, and when a problem is detected, on site reviews.

About 15 percent of their funding comes from the federal government. The rest comes from charitable contributions, membership fees, project grants from foundations and corporations, according to their web site (http://www.unos.org/).

My last call was to the Red River Women's Clinic, North Dakota's only abortion provider. Possibly, I reasoned, the clinic disposes of fetal cadavers on-site. On-site incineration is recommended as the preferred method of fetal disposal, according to the clinical policy guidelines of the National Abortion Federation, a professional organization of members from about 400 facilities that provide abortion services. (http://www.prochoice.org)

I asked the woman who answered the phone, "What happens to the fetal material generated at your clinic? How do you dispose of it?" She said she would ask the director to get back to me. She never returned my call.

Gradually, I began to see that the aborted fetus, unlike the non-aborted, are a faceless entity, subject to the whim of those who possess it and not under the jurisdiction of any governmental body.

The Medical Examiners' and Coroners' Handbook on Death Registration and Fetal Death Reporting contains instructions for medical examiners and coroners on the registration of deaths and the reporting of fetal deaths. It was prepared by the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). These instructions pertain to the 2003 revisions of the U.S. Standard Certificate of Death and the U.S. Standard Report of Fetal Death and the 1992 revision of the Model State Vital Statistics Act and Regulations. The handbook is intended to serve as a model that can be adapted by any vital statistics registration area.

Nowhere in the handbook is there a mention of abortion being certified as a cause of death.

There is a reason for this. According to definitions adopted by the federal government, the unborn child that dies due to abortion can not be officially listed as a death, and thereby not by the states that have adopted the model code, which primarily are all states.

The federal Model State Vital Statistic Act and Regulations recommends the following definition for "fetal death." The definition is based on the definition promulgated by the World Health Organization in 1950 and revised in 1988 by a working group formed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/misc/mvsact92b.pdf.)

""Fetal death" means death prior to the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of human conception, irrespective of the duration of pregnancy and which is not an induced termination of pregnancy. The death is indicated by the fact that after such expulsion or extraction, the fetus does not breathe or show any other evidence of life, such as beating of the heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles."

Notice the exclusory clause: "and which is not an induced termination of pregnancy." If the fetus does not breathe or show any other evidence of life, such as beating of the heart, due to an abortionist removing it from its mother's womb, then the death of the fetus is not a death, that is, it is not the death of a person. Thus, its death does not merit certification.

Why? Because of Roe v. Wade, a fetus is not legally considered to be a person and because it is not a person, it does not have a human status at its death. While biologically, it lived and died, legally it did not. In short, the intent of the mother, namely, to abort, determines the humanity of her child. For that reason, its death will not be subject to the examination or certification of a medical examiner or a coroner. Its demise is only required to be reported as a statistic.

Nor is its cadaver or body parts subject to any type of government oversight or regulation. Nor are there any provisions in place, such as a death certificate or a burial transit permit, that tracks where it has gone. They simply have gone into the thin air.

On December 7, 1941, Hitler issued Nacht und Nebel, the Night and Fog Decree. Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel issued a letter explaining it:

"Efficient and enduring intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminals do not know the fate of the criminal. The prisoners are, in the future, to be transported to Germany secretly, and further treatment of the offenders will take place here; these measures will have a deterrent effect because--A. The prisoners will vanish without a trace. B. No information may be given as to their whereabouts or their fate."

We, as a nation, must rise above treating our unborn brothers and sisters as sub-humans. They deserve the dignity of at least being treated as human, with documentation comparable to a death certificate and a burial transit permit, and their identity and disposition recorded along the lines required in the various bills that have been proposed, but defeated.

Michigan is a pioneer in closing loopholes related to the abusive practices concerning aborted fetuses. Facilities that perform abortions are not allowed to sell or collect a fee for fetal tissue under legislation approved by the state House, according to the Associated Press May 13, 2004.

Rep. Matt Milosch said he introduced the bill to close a potential loophole in the state law. Violators would be charged with a felony that could bring up to five years in prison.

"This bill is needed to end the abhorrent business of buying and selling tissue and body parts from aborted children," Milosch said. "This is not a matter of pro-life or pro-choice. This is a matter of decency and respect for humanity."

Both North Dakota and Minnesota should enact legislation similar to the Michigan law prohibiting the sale or collection of a fee for fetal tissue, as well as legislation establishing a method of individual fetal-tissue tracking, such as the bills proposed by Sen. Smith and Rep. Coburn. Legislation should be enacted empowering the states' departments of health to inspect and regulate clinics.

At present, we--that is, those who love and care for the unborn--are being subjected to intimidation concerning the aborted. Our fallen brothers and sisters, those who have perished due to the induced termination of the pregnancy of their mother, deserve a fate better than disappearance into the night and fog.