Last fall, the remains of 2,411 aborted fetuses were discovered in the home of deceased abortion provider Ulrich Klopfer. On Wednesday, Indiana Attorney General Chris Hill presided over a memorial service for these unborn children.
“The shocking discovery of 2,411 medically preserved fetal remains in Illinois, left in a garage and in a trunk of car was horrifying to anyone with normal sensibilities,” said Hill during the service in South Bend, Indiana. “Regrettably, there is no shortage of depravity in our world today, including due regard for the most vulnerable among us.”
The Chicago Tribune reports that “a couple hundred” people attended the burial, which featured remarks from pastors and anti-abortion advocates, as well as praying, singing, and a moment of silence. All of the remains were buried in the same plot, donated by Palmer Funeral Home. Ulrich Klopfer performed abortions in the cities of Fort Wayne, South Bend, and Gary, Indiana, and Hill explained that it would have been desirable to return the fetal remains to their respective cities.
However, it was not possible to tell which city each of the remains belonged to due to how much they had decayed and to the unreliability of the medical records. Instead, said Hill, “We have gathered here at this site because it is both fitting and proper that these 2,411 unborn, even at this late date, receive their final resting place as would be expected and appropriate for any human being.”
The ‘Shocking Discovery’ That Followed Ulrich Klopfer’s Passing
Former abortion provider Ulrich Kloper passed away on September 3, 2019, at age 79. The Chicago Tribune reports that his wife discovered the fetal remains when cleaning out the garage following her husband’s death. The home was located in Crete Township in Will County, Illinois. According to attorney Kevin Bolger, Klopfer’s wife never used the garage, which was filled “floor to ceiling.” There, investigators found 2,246 decaying fetal remains in “molding boxes and old (foam plastic) coolers containing large red medical waste bags.”
Will County Sheriff Mike Kelley said, “There were hundreds and hundreds of boxes that we had to go through to make sure there were no more of these remains in that residence. I can tell you that in the 31 years that I’ve been doing this job, I’ve never seen anything like this, ever.” Later that October, authorities found an additional 165 fetal remains in one of Klopfer’s vehicles.
USA Today reports that the remains were preserved with a chemical called formalin. According to Hill, it was hard to determine the gestation age of the remains of the unborn children, although he said, “There certainly were some indications that some of the remains would have been outside of the appropriate standard of when it would be appropriate for someone to seek an abortion or qualify for an abortion…beyond the first trimester.” Soon after the initial discovery in Kloper’s garage, officials found thousands of abandoned medical records in Klopfer’s abortion clinics in Indiana.
Authorities were able to use records attached to the fetal remains to date them to abortions Klopfer conducted between 2000 and 2002. Hill said his office has been receiving calls from mothers whose children were aborted in the early 2000s and who want to inquire about the remains. Indiana legislators have also been contacting Hill to determine if all of the remains of the unborn children had ties to Indiana, even though they were found at Klopfer’s home in Illinois. So far the answer seems to be yes.
Background Info on Ulrich Klopfer
Calling Ulrich Klopfer “one of the Midwest’s most prolific abortion doctors,” USA Today says he was the only abortion provider in the three cities where he practiced, and he conducted “tens of thousands of abortions over 40 years.” According to the South Bend Tribune, Klopfer began performing abortions in 1973 after the passing of Roe v. Wade. In 2016, however, the Indiana Medical Licensing Board revoked his license “for failing to exercise reasonable care and violating several notice and documentation requirements.”
Among the most notable incidents the board took issue with was Klopfer’s failure to follow procedures for reporting abortions he performed on two girls under the age of 14. The board also seemed particularly troubled by the offhand way Klopfer recounted performing an abortion on a 10-year-old girl who was raped by her uncle. Klopfer (along with the girl’s parents) failed to report the incident to authorities.
The state of Indiana currently requires fetal remains be buried or cremated following an abortion. But this requirement only went into effect in May 2019 after the Supreme Court upheld a 2016 law signed by then-Governor Mike Pence.
Why would someone save the remains of thousands of aborted children? Father Frank Pavone, the National Director of Priests for Life, works with many former abortionists. He says, “Most people do not realize how traumatized and deeply damaged these men and women are because they are killing babies. To do that day after day? It requires a betrayal of one’s own humanity and a colossal distortion of mind, heart and emotions.”
Pavone argues that the inhumanity of what abortion providers are doing leads them to act in “bizarre” ways, including saving fetal body parts. Notably, notorious abortion provider Kermit Gosnell also preserved the remains of children.
One of the attendees at Wednesday’s memorial service was a woman named Serena Dyksen, whose parents took her to get an abortion from Klopfer after she was raped as a teenager. “Coming here today was just another layer of the healing process,” she said. “As post-abortive men and women, sometimes we think we shouldn’t be able to mourn the loss of our children, but it was a loss of life. It doesn’t matter the situation, the age, I still had a mother’s heart.”
“There are so many hurting women in our community because of this,” Dyksen went on to say. “We don’t want to forget what happened.”
