Late-Term Abortionist Caught on Camera

The District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department is investigating notorious area abortionist Cesare Santangelo, whose involvement in late-term “terminations” inspired the activism for which a group of pro-lifers was convicted this week.

Brave pro-life activists Lauren Handy, John Hinshaw, William Goodman, Heather Idoni, and Herb Geraghty have stood trial over the past week for blocking access to Washington Surgi-Clinic in October 2020. On Tuesday, a D.C. jury found them guilty of conspiracy against rights and violating the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. They face more than a decade in prison, though their attorneys have vowed to appeal.

During the trial, Handy testified that she was inspired in part by viewing a 2013 undercover investigative video by the pro-life group Live Action, in which Santangelo explains that to prevent babies from moving after being removed from their mothers, “I try and sever the umbilical cord first, and we wait for that to stop pulsing, and this way the fetus is expired first, so it doesn’t […] usually at this point in your pregnancy, it is too early to survive. Usually, it will expire shortly after birth.” The jury was not allowed to see the video during the trial.

“My belief was that if a baby survived an abortion attempt, it would be left to die. My belief was that it had happened before,” Handy testified. Last year, Handy and her organization, Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), revealed that they had discovered “five recently discovered late-term aborted babies for forensic examination” outside of Santangelo’s Washington Surgi-Clinic. “Their late gestational ages as well as their apparent sustained injuries potentially show violations of the Partial Birth Abortion Act as well as the Born Alive Infants Protection Act which are federal crimes.” Handy was arrested at the time for her possession of those bodies.

On Tuesday, the Daily Signal reported that Metro Police have confirmed they are investigating the abortionist and his gruesome facility, although they did not share further details on the progress of that investigation.

“The mayor’s office has completely stonewalled questions about the babies,” the Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan says. “Even the office of the chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia directs queries to the mayor’s office — specifically, to Dora Taylor-Lowe, who refuses to answer The Daily Signal’s requests for comment. It remains unclear whether autopsies have been performed on the bodies of the five babies whose bodies were photographed by [Handy’s colleague Terrisa] Bukovinac.”

Whether anything comes of the investigation will present another test of whether and how pro-abortion biases interfere with equal application of the law. Last year, the Biden administration charged pro-life activist Mark Houck with a FACE Act violation over a years-old altercation with an irate pro-abortion activist yet has been far more lax about threats and vandalism against churches and pregnancy centers by pro-abortion zealots.