Supervisors Order Burial of 16,500 Aborted Fetuses

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday ordered the burial of 16,500 aborted fetuses found in Woodland Hills, which the county has held for three years while both sides of the abortion controversy debated whether they should receive burial rites.

Supervisors, with little discussion, voted Tuesday to turn over the fetuses to the Guerra-Gutierrez-Alexander Mortuary of Los Angeles for burial, said Toby Milligan, a spokeswoman for the county Department of Health Services.

Under a court order, there will be no religious services.

It had not been determined Tuesday where the fetuses will be buried or whether they will be buried in a single grave or in several, Milligan said. However, she noted that the fetuses have been kept in “five pine boxes” while the debate went on over their disposal.

The fetuses were confiscated by the county after they were found in a shipping container at the Woodland Hills home of a man who operated a Santa Monica medical laboratory.

Religious and other anti-abortion groups sought permission to hold funeral services for the fetuses to underscore their argument that abortion is wrong, because fetuses are human.

The Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union brought a court challenge on behalf of the Feminist Women’s Health Center, demanding that the fetuses be incinerated, on the grounds that they were unwanted biological tissue, not humans.

The ACLU argued that it was wrong for the county to help set up burial services, because it would lend government support to anti-abortion groups, violating the separation of church and state. The county argued that it would have nothing to do with any services and that burial itself was not a religious symbol.

In a ruling last month, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert O’Brien held that the county could authorize a burial, as long as there was no religious ceremony.

County officials have assured the ACLU that any identifying marks on canisters containing the fetuses have been destroyed. ACLU attorneys said they will attempt to verify that claim. If it is correct, they said, they will have no objection to plans for a secular burial.