Marines Say They Were Misled on Fetus Burial Role

The Marine Corps was tricked into sending a color guard to participate in an anti-abortion service by the organizer of the service, who told Marines that they would be helping bury a Vietnam combat veteran, a Marine Corps spokesman said Monday. The organizer of the service denied the accusation.

“They lied to us,” said Marine Warrant Officer Chuck Henry, a public affairs officer for the Los Angeles area.

The three-man color guard took part in a graveside service Sunday for more than 16,000 fetuses, which were the subject of a three-year court battle over whether they should be given a religious burial or disposed of as human waste tissue.

The service, held at the Odd Fellows Cemetery in East Los Angeles, was organized by Americans Committed to Loving the Unwanted, an anti-abortion organization. It included hymns, prayers by Roman Catholic and Protestant clergymen and two hours of speeches against the legalization of abortion, including a supportive message from President Reagan.

“This organization used the false pretense of the burial of a veteran to mislead our Marines into attending this event,” Henry said. The Marines would not have taken part if they had known the true nature of the service ahead of time, he said. “It is Marine Corps policy not to involve ourselves in strictly political matters.”

Jeanette Dreisbach of Palm Springs, coordinator of the service, said the Marine accusation “is not true.”

“We did not say that,” she said. “We told them that it was a funeral for babies, unnamed babies. . . . We told them all along that we represented this committee.”

“We understand she has a different story,” Henry said, “but at this point we have sworn statements from all three Marines that she talked to, and we take sworn statements very seriously in the Marine Corps.”

He said the Marine Corps reserve training center in Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles got the first telephone call from Dreisbach last week, “asking for a burial detail for a man who had been missing in action.” The Marines understood that the service was for the recently recovered remains of a Vietnam combat veteran, Henry said.

Follow-up Phone Call

A sergeant major from the center, which is staffed by active-duty Marines who conduct training programs for reservists, made a follow-up call, Henry said, “and he was told that it was going to be a funeral for an unnamed veteran and there would be a number of dignitaries present.”

There are no written records of the request, Henry said, because it is the Marines’ policy to send color guards to the funerals of former Marines and sometimes to funerals of veterans of other branches of the military service based on telephone requests from survivors.

“We don’t require written requests because it is our policy not to trouble the bereaved families,” he said.

Henry said the sergeant in charge of the detail realized what the service involved after the Marines arrived. However, Henry said, the sergeant decided that “since they had already been seen by the media, it would make more of a scene to walk out” and it would be better “to do as little as they could and depart quietly.”

The Marines placed a flag on one of the six coffin-like wooden boxes containing the fetuses and stood at attention during the two-hour service.

The fetuses, the products of legal abortions at a Westside hospital, 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.

Anti-abortion groups wanted to give them a religious burial as deceased human beings. The American Civil Liberties Union 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.

County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who played a leading role in the service and read Reagan’s message, said after the service that he felt it complied with the court order because the county did not arrange the service. The county, which had possession of the fetuses, merely saw to it that they were buried, Antonovich said. The burial was the climax of the privately organized service.