Fetuses Buried--With Hymns, Prayers

More than 16,000 aborted fetuses, the object of a heated court battle over their disposal, were buried Sunday after a graveside service that included hymns, prayers by five clergymen including a Roman Catholic bishop, a supportive message from President Reagan and a U.S. Marine Corps color guard.

A three-year court battle, going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, had barred Los Angeles County from conducting a religious burial for the fetuses because, the courts said, to do so would lend the weight of a government body to one side of the abortion argument.

Ceremony Organizers

County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who took a leading role in the ceremony, told reporters he did not believe the service violated the court order. The county government did not organize the ceremony, Antonovich said, only the actual burial.

The ceremony was organized by Americans Committed to Loving the Unwanted, an anti-abortion group.

Antonovich, asked whether the burial and ceremony were the same as they would have been had there been no court battle or ruling, answered, “I think so.” It was never the county’s intention to carry out a religious ceremony itself, he said.

About 250 people, many carrying placards and banners with anti-abortion slogans and grisly pictures of dismembered fetuses, attended the two-hour ceremony at the Odd Fellows Cemetery in East Los Angeles.

They heard a message from Reagan, read by Antonovich, which recalled Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

“Just as the terrible toll of Gettysburg can be traced to a tragic decision of a divided Supreme Court, so also can these deaths we mourn,” Reagan said, comparing the U.S. Supreme Court decisions legalizing abortion to pre-Civil War decisions that upheld slavery. “Once again a whole category of human beings has been ruled outside the protection of the law by a court ruling which clashed with our deepest moral convictions.”

Also taking part in the ceremony were Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) and representatives of state Sens. David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) and Joseph Montoya (D-Whittier).

Clergymen presiding over the burial prayers included Catholic Auxiliary Bishop John J. Ward, the Rev. Charles Mims Jr. of the Tabernacle of Faith Baptist Church in Watts, Dr. Rodney S. Brooks of the Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle of downtown Los Angles and Pastor Al Howard of the Confirmed Word Church.

White crosses stood at the foot of each of six coffin-like wooden boxes containing the fetuses. A three-man Marine Corps color guard, who said they had been assigned the duty at the organizers’ request, placed a U.S. flag on the end box and stood at attention during the service.

The fetuses were found in a large steel container repossessed from the Woodland Hills home of a medical laboratory owner. They had been in the possession of county health authorities.

Blocked by ACLU

Anti-abortion groups originally asked to give the fetuses burial services as deceased human beings. John Van de Kamp, then Los Angeles County district attorney, sought court permission for the burial, but was blocked by the American Civil Liberties Union, which went to court demanding that the fetuses be incinerated as waste human tissue.

The case was fought up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to review a state appellate court finding that the county could not organize a burial service because it would “enlist the prestige and power of the state” on the side of the argument that abortion is murder.