The District of Columbia has refused to provide answers to Congress on the deaths of five premie-sized babies recovered from a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic, Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy said in a Thursday letter — including whether or not they’ve preserved the baby bodies as evidence.
In a letter first obtained by The Daily Wire, Roy accuses Attorney General Merrick Garland, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, and Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith of a “lackluster investigation into the five aborted children, also know as the DC Five, whose remains were discovered at the Washington Surgi-Clinic in March 2022 by pro-life advocates.” The babies were reportedly aborted by D.C. abortionist Cesare Santangelo, and their bodies have been in the medical examiner’s possession for over two years.
Pro-life groups believe that the babies were aborted in violation of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act or the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act. Thus far, authorities have shown no interest in investigating the babies’ deaths, and since there are no laws restricting abortions in the nation’s capitol, D.C. authorities have previously said that the babies were aborted in accordance with D.C. law.
“As the Subcommittee continues to conduct its investigation into the District of Columbia’s and the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) enforcement of the Partial-Birth Abortion Act and the Born Alive Infants Protection Act,” Roy wrote in the letter, “serious concerns remain surrounding the deaths of these children.”
In February, Roy requested that the mayor and MPD confirm that the remains would not be disposed of. Neither the mayor nor MPD have informed Roy on whether they have preserved the baby bodies as evidence, he said.
This is the abortionist currently under fire for the mangled baby bodies recovered right here in DC. Live Action recorded him saying years ago that he would let babies die if they were accidentally delivered during abortions. pic.twitter.com/Lqb9cOYdwE
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) April 5, 2022
“Future congressional investigations into potential violations and the sufficiency of existing law will undoubtedly be hampered if these remains and any related evidence are destroyed,” Roy wrote. “These children deserve justice, regardless of which administration is in power.”
Roy, who is Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government of the Committee on the Judiciary, renewed the subcommittee’s previous requests to preserve the baby bodies as evidence as “part of our oversight of potential violations of federal law and the DOJ’s directives to the D.C. Medical Examiner’s office.”
The Texas congressman called upon Garland, Bowser, and Smith to provide confirmation by October 24 that they would not destroy any evidence related to the five babies.
In February, after lawmakers and pro-life groups called on D.C. officials to stop the disposal of the baby remains, the D.C. Medical Examiner told the American Center for Law & Justice that it would not be disposing of the baby bodies on February 9, as pro-life activists and conservative lawmakers had feared. Their fears were based on a Daily Signal report in which Thomas More Society attorney Martin Cannon said that the medical examiner had informed him that the DOJ had given him the green light to dispose of the babies.
Cannon represents Lauren Handy, who is currently in jail for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act when she sought to stop women from aborting their unborn babies. Handy has said that the babies represented important evidence in defending her from the Justice Department’s charges.
As The Daily Wire’s Leif Le Mahieu reported, Handy was sentenced to 57 months in prison and three years of supervised release in May 2024 after she was convicted on the FACE charges as well as conspiracy against rights related to her sit-in at the D.C.-based Washington Surgi-Clinic late-term abortion facility.
“There was only one thing around which Ms. Handy and her co-defendants were unified, and that was nonviolence,” Cannon said when Handy was sentenced. “They conspired to be peaceful. Yet, today, the Court granted the Biden Department of Justice its wish by sentencing Ms. Handy to 57 months — nearly 5 years in prison. For her efforts to peacefully protect the lives of innocent pre-born human beings, Ms. Handy deserves thanks, not a gut-wrenching prison sentence.”
Garland, Bowser, and MPD did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this story.
