Pro-life House members are calling for an investigation into whether five babies were victims of partial-birth abortions.
Partial-birth abortion, banned nationally under federal law, is a procedure in which a doctor partially delivers a baby only to kill him or her by either crushing the skull or removing the brain by suction.
The remains of the five babies, referred to as the "D.C. Five," were found by pro-life activists in Washington, D.C.
GOP House members want the Department of Justice to determine whether the babies were killed through partial-birth abortion.
"We're talking about precious life that was just callously disregarded, discarded, just thrown away like refuse, that's just unconscionable," Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said during a Wednesday news conference in front of the Capitol, Catholic News Agency (CNA) reported.
"We need to go seek the truth. We need to know what's going to happen next. We need the Department of Justice … to look into this."
So far, the Biden administration has announced no plans to take action.
"This is about murder and yet nothing's been done," Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., said at the news conference, CNA reported. "No autopsy. No investigation. You have to ask yourself: 'Why?' Are we a country that has a rule of law or not? Does the Justice Department actually dispense justice? Those are very fair questions.
"It's high time Congress conduct its own investigation because the DOJ, if they won't seek justice, then Congress, I think, is compelled to."
The pro-life group Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) originally obtained the remains of the aborted babies in March 2022. PAAU said it acquired them from the Washington Surgi-Clinic run by Dr. Cesare Santangelo, an OB-GYN and well-known abortionist in D.C.
The five babies were discovered with major lacerations, torn limbs, and crushed skulls, all consistent with methods used in partial-birth abortions, CNA reported.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, last week demanded the remains of five babies not be discarded before an autopsy is done.
"To be clear, the remains of these five children are critical evidence in the congressional oversight that the Subcommittee on the Constitution will conduct in the imminent future," Cruz said in a Feb. 8 letter to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, D.C. Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Francisco Diaz, and D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith, National Catholic Register reported.
"Should the D.C. medical examiner's office decide not to conduct timely autopsies, or preserve the bodies of these babies for outside examination, the Senate Judiciary Committee will have no choice but to expand this issue into a full hearing featuring the Department of Justice and the Office of the D.C. Medical Examiner as witnesses before the American public."
PAAU earlier this month said the D.C. medical examiner's office had expressed its intent to cremate the babies' remains at the behest of the DOJ.
Roy and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., then wrote a letter to the DOJ and said that "without an independent examination for the purposes of countering the argument of 'lawful abortions' it is not known how each child died."
The D.C. medical examiner reportedly has postponed plans to cremate the babies' remains, though no plans have been announced for an autopsy, according to the American Center for Law and Justice.
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Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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