SW News: Lawmakers in the US have urged the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate the allegedly illicit abortions of five babies whose bodies were recovered from an apartment in Washington, DC. They were being preserved there by members of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) after suspecting an illicit abortion procedure. As many as 69 lawmakers on Friday, April 8, wrote a letter seeking a broad investigation into whether a local abortion provider broke the federal law following the discovery of the fetal remains.

Senator Mike Lee and Congressman Chris Smith sent a letter inked by both senators and Congress members to Attorney general Merrick Garland demanding an investigation by the Department of Justice into the deaths of unborn babies.

The Senators stated, “We are gravely concerned by allegations brought forward that suggest a preborn baby underwent a partial-birth abortion at the Washington Surgi-Clinic in Washington, D.C. We demand that you conduct a comprehensive investigation on the circumstances surrounding the deaths of each preborn baby.”

They further requested to “direct appropriate personnel at the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate whether these preborn babies were aborted in violation of federal law, specifically the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.”

The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 prohibits partial-birth abortion-a procedure in which an intact fetus is removed from the uterus. As per the act, any physician will be punished, who knowingly conducts such an abortion “or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, knowingly performs a partial-birth abortion and thereby kills a human fetus shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

On March 30, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) discovered five fetuses in a DC apartment where they were being preserved by anti-abortion activists Lauren Handy and Terrisa Bukovinac of PAAU. According to PAAU, the babies’ bodies came from the Washington Surgi-Clinic and were somehow obtained by the activists. They say that the bodies show signs of partial-birth abortion, which is illegal in the District of Columbia.

Members of the PAAU claim to have discovered the bodies after intercepting a box containing dismembered babies on its way to a medical waste facility. According to PAAU, the package comprised the remains of 110 unborn children murdered in the first trimester and a few babies slain in late-term abortions.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, 22 members of Congress led by Smith wrote a letter to DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Police Chief Robert Contee, demanding autopsies on the preborn babies, to which the authorities have not yet responded.