A proper burial for babies in Ohio

On a sunny morning last October, a large white van with an Indiana license plate pulled up behind the Planned Parenthood facility in Columbus, Ohio. A bald man in a blue uniform brought red trashcan-sized bins out of the facility on a dolly and loaded them into the van. A pro-life volunteer outside the Planned Parenthood recorded some of the short pickup on her phone. She knew the location on East Main Street was the last remaining surgical abortion facility in the city, and those red bins marked with the biohazard symbol likely contained the bodies of aborted babies.

She sent the video to Beth Vanderkooi, the executive director of Greater Columbus Right to Life. Vanderkooi has received many similar videos from local pro-life volunteers over the years. “Sometimes when we talk about abortion, it can seem theoretical,” she said. But she called seeing the bins carrying babies’ dead bodies a “very somber and powerful moment.”

At the time of the October pickup, state law only required abortion facilities to dispose of aborted baby body parts in a “humane manner”—an undefined phrase that did little to ensure respectful treatment of the state’s aborted babies. Following pro-life efforts, a bill passed the state legislature in December that now requires the burial or cremation of babies’ remains. But abortion groups took the law to court, and the fight is ongoing.

Following the 2015 release of the Center for Medical Progress videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s alleged fetal tissue trafficking, Ohio’s then–Attorney General Mike DeWine launched an investigation of the state’s abortion facilities. The probe uncovered no evidence of trafficking but revealed the companies that pick up aborted baby remains from Planned Parenthood facilities dispose of the bodies in landfills. Legislators and pro-life groups in Ohio began drafting legislation to clarify what “humane” treatment should look like.

Jessica Warner, director of legislative affairs for Ohio Right to Life, helped draft the version of the bill that passed in December. She remembers in 2015 that she was grateful she didn’t have to watch more than a few minutes of the Center for Medical Progress videos, which showed people discussing the buying and selling of aborted babies’ body parts. They made her nauseated. But now, having joined the staff of the pro-life organization, she’s seen them so often they blur together in her mind.

“I can’t turn a blind eye. I can’t say, ‘Hey, this is too much for me,’” Warner said. “I have to sit in those hard places and watch those videos and see what is really going on so I can be effective in my job.”

To craft the fetal remains bill, that meant thinking a lot about the dead bodies of aborted babies. Warner and the other writers focused on language barring mass incinerations. They looked for ways to document burials and cremations while respecting the privacy of women. One senator contacted a funeral homes association to find out whether facilities could cremate babies as small as a few weeks of gestation. In legislature committee hearings for the bill, Warner heard disturbing stories of people finding baby remains in trash bins.

After two previous attempts, the bill finally passed in the 2019-2020 legislative session. It requires a woman to sign a form for each of the babies aborted in the procedure and allows her to choose burial or cremation. Abortion facilities must do one or the other even if she does not state a preference.

Ohio abortion groups sued over a portion giving the state Department of Health 90 days from the bill’s effective date to create the necessary rules and forms. The law is set to take effect in April, meaning those details wouldn’t be available until June. Ohio abortion providers complained that compliance with the law is “impossible” until the department releases the rules and said the state’s history of “aggressive enforcement” against abortion facilities meant they could face penalties for not complying in the interim.

But Warner sees this complaint as a delay tactic. In 2019, the Supreme Court upheld a similar Indiana law, finding that states have a “legitimate interest in the proper disposal of fetal remains.” That leaves abortion providers with little to nitpick in the legislation.

Warner said there’s a chance a judge could rule in favor of the abortion groups and block the law until the Ohio Department of Health produces the forms. “Planned Parenthood, ACLU … they really cherry-pick who they bring these challenges to,” she said. “They know certain judges that will often give them favorable rulings.”

But even then, that Supreme Court precedent suggests that the days of Ohio babies ending up in trash heaps are numbered.