ACLU Protests Release of Fetuses for Burial

SAN BERNARDINO —  The release of 54 fetuses by the county coroner’s office to an ecumenical group that planned to bury them Sunday was protested Friday as a violation of the separation of church and state.

The American Civil Liberties Union argued that the coroner had no right to release the fetuses “for the express purpose of holding religious services.”

The fetuses were found abandoned alongside California 71 in Chino Hills last year. They were linked to an abortion clinic in Los Angeles, and the man who dumped them in cardboard boxes was later convicted for illegally discarding medical waste.

The ACLU’s threat of a lawsuit did not stop the coroner’s office Friday from releasing the fetuses to an Ontario mortuary, where they were to be held until Sunday’s planned burial by a group called Cradles of Love.

Randy Emon, spokesman for the coroner’s office, said he would not respond to the ACLU’s charges. Bob Shelly, one of the organizers of Cradles of Love, said the group’s actions were no different than when any individual claims a body from the coroner’s office for burial.

“The ACLU becomes very irate when the truth of the humanity of the babies is raised to a public level,” Shelly said. “They’d prefer that the messy killing of abortion be kept silent, and that people not think about it or see the results of it.”

The ACLU, in a letter Friday to San Bernardino County Coroner Brian McCormick, noted that the state Court of Appeal blocked a similar religious burial of 16,500 fetuses in 1984 that had been proposed by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. The court found that the public release of fetuses, specifically for a religious burial, was a violation of the 1st Amendment.

ACLU attorney Elizabeth Schroeder said that aside from issues involving separation of church and state, state law dictates only one proper way for disposing of fetuses--incineration.

Cradles of Love planned prayer services for Friday night and Saturday, and said the burial would occur at 3 p.m. Sunday at Crestlawn Memorial Park in Riverside.