By Catholic News Service • Posted September 23, 2019

JOLIET, ILL. (CNS) — The discovery of the remains of over 2,200 aborted babies at the rural Illinois home of a deceased abortionist “tears off the mask of ‘choice’ and reveals the inhumanity of abortion to all of us,” said Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League.

“Even the most ardent defenders of abortion admit how disturbing it is to contemplate this kind of stockpiling of fetal remains,” he said after a prayer vigil outside of the Will County Coroner’s Office in Joliet Sept. 19.

“Let this be a moment for all of us to reflect on the violence and injustice of abortion, and commit ourselves to finding better solutions to our personal and societal challenges than to tolerate violence against the most innocent and vulnerable of our brothers and sisters,” Scheidler said.

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The fetal remains were found Sept. 13 at the home of Dr. Ulrich “George” Klopfer, who died Sept. 3. He had performed abortions in three clinics in Indiana — Gary, Fort Wayne and South Bend — since the 1970s but had his medical license revoked in 2016 after innumerable infractions over the years. His home was in Will County, Illinois.

Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill Jr. and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul are working together as Hill’s office coordinates an investigation.

The Joliet prayer vigil, coordinated by Scheidler, drew a crowd of more than 80 people from throughout the Chicago area.

Prayers were led by Alexandra Kurator from the Diocese of Joliet; Susan Walker of Rest in His Arms, an organization that provides Christian funerals and burials for abandoned babies; Sarah Minnich of Students for Life of America; Joe Scheidler, founder and president of the Pro-Life Action League; and Deacon Joe Verdico from Ss. Peter and Paul Church in Naperville.

After the prayer vigil, Eric Scheidler went to the Will County Sherriff’s Department for a news conference about this. He said local authorities announced the babies had been aborted in Indiana between 2000 and 2002. Their remains are being transferred to the custody of the Indiana attorney general for further investigation.

“(These) 2,246 bodies … represent just a little less than the daily body count of the U.S. abortion industry,” he said in his statement at the news conference. “The shocking reality here is not that Ulrich Klopfer failed to hand these bodies over to a medical waste company to be burned up and forgotten, but that our society allowed him to kill these children in the first place.”

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“When I first heard about these grisly revelations, I was in the midst of preparing for the National Day of Remembrance for Aborted Children, coordinating nearly 200 prayer vigils at memorial sites dedicated to the unborn victims of abortion, including 44 gravesites where a tiny fraction of these children have been solemnly laid to rest,” he said.

“My first thought was that these poor children must be given a proper burial, and I’m counting on the Will County authorities to ensure that this justice is done for them,” he added.

In Indianapolis at a news conference Sept. 20, Indiana’s attorney general called Klopfer “one of the most notorious abortionists in the history of Indiana.”

From medical records found in close proximity to the remains, Hill said, “we’ve been able to ascertain that (they) are pertaining to a period of time from 2000 to 2002,” confirming what Will County authorities said.

He summarized the investigation moving forward as “trying to determine how this happened, who was involved and what, if anything, we can do about it, and what we can do going forward to prevent this from happening in the future.”

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Contributing to this story was Natalie Hoefer in Indianapolis.