Senators Tim Scott (R-SC) and Mike Braun (R-IN) speak to the press at during a break in Washington, January 29, 2020. (Amanda Voisard/Reuters)

Senator Mike Braun (R., Ind.) requested unanimous consent on the Senate floor yesterday afternoon for his legislation, the “Dignity for Aborted Children Act.” The bill doesn’t limit or regulate abortion procedures but requires abortionists to dispose of the remains of unborn children as they would any other human remains or release the remains to the family.


Braun introduced the bill last September, after the fetal remains of more than 2,000 aborted children were found in the Illinois home of deceased former abortionist Dr. Ulrich George Klopfer. Though Klopfer’s home was in Illinois, he spent several decades performing abortions in northern Indiana, making the issue particularly relevant to Braun.

Though the attorneys general in Illinois and Indiana launched an investigation to determine why Klopfer had hoarded those fetal remains, they have not released any further information. In a ceremony last month, the remains were interred at a cemetery in South Bend, Ind., the former site of one of Klopfer’s abortion facilities.

At the burial, Indiana attorney general Curtis Hill told those gathered, “The best evidence of the ‘why’ certainly died with Dr. Klopfer in September. . . . There’s no answer for that, and I don’t know that we ever will get an answer for that.”


Braun’s legislation is aimed at preventing similar abuses, as well as a general lack of respect for aborted children. “Fetal remains deserve to be treated with respect, not as medical waste,” Braun said in his floor remarks yesterday afternoon, before asking unanimous consent on the bill.


Democratic senator Patty Murray of Washington blocked Braun’s request, citing concerns about the coronavirus. “Instead of discussing this harmful bill that will gut reproductive rights and put unnecessary restrictions on medical providers and undermine medical research, which is an absolute non-starter and the absolute last thing we should be doing right now,” Murray said, “I think we should be focused on what families actually need us to be focused on, which is the coronavirus outbreak.”

Murray’s use of the phrase “gut reproductive rights” is inexplicable in this context, as the bill merely requires that fetal remains be disposed humanely or released to mothers or families. Is the senator suggesting that it is a “reproductive right” to have the remains of one’s unborn child treated as medical waste?


Her comment about “undermining medical research,” meanwhile, is a veiled reference to the fact that abortionists often transfer the fetal tissue of aborted babies to medical-research institutions to be used in experimentation. This practice was at the heart of the controversy over the Center for Medical Progress videos from the summer of 2015, which contained footage of Planned Parenthood affiliates engaging in these transfers and receiving illegal profit for doing so.


After Murray’s remarks on the floor, Braun fired back, noting that women’s health care is not mutually exclusive with care for unborn human beings. He also referenced the fact that, last week, Senate Democrats blocked a bill sponsored by Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.), which would’ve required doctors to give standard medical care to infants who are born alive after a failed abortion procedure.

Murray’s choice to block this bill on behalf of Senate Democrats is yet another example of how abortion supporters are forced to argue against any policy, even those that don’t restrict abortion in any way, if they recognize or expose the humanity of the unborn.