According to reports, on Wednesday (Eastern Daylight Time), Police in Washington DC discovered five fetuses at the house of Lauren Handy, an anti-abortion activist, in the Capitol Hill area.
Police officers arrived at Handy’s house in the 400 block of 6th Street to investigate a complaint regarding suspected bio-hazard items on the premises. Once inside, they discovered five fetuses, which were subsequently retrieved by the DC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
In a separate inquiry, a federal grand jury found Handy and nine others guilty on Wednesday (EDT). She was charged with criminal conspiracy against liberty, in connection with the blockade of a DC abortion clinic in October 2020.
Ashan M. Benedict, the DC Police Executive Assistant Chief of Police, told reporters on Thursday that the foetuses seemed to have been terminated in line with DC law. “Except for how they got into that residence,” Benedict said, “there doesn’t appear to be anything unlawful about it.” The inquiry that led detectives to Handy’s house was independent of the federal probe that led to her indictment on Wednesday, Benedict clarified.
Handy works for Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, an organisation that claims to mobilise grassroots anti-abortion activists for direct action. It claims to educate the public about the exploitative influence of the Abortion Industrial Complex, advocate for pregnant people, and connect abortion-vulnerable communities with life-saving resources.
Lauren Handy has a long history of legal troubles
Handy, who created the anti-abortion nonprofit Mercy Missions, hasn’t restricted her anti-abortion efforts to Washington DC. Criminal proceedings were initiated against her for resisting arrest at an abortion clinic in Michigan in 2019.
Handy has a history of legal troubles due to her anti-abortion activism, according to DC Superior Court documents, as reported by WUSA90. In December 2015, a DC charter school filed a legal lawsuit against her for trespassing. She had been arrested for illegal assembly outside the school earlier that year, as well as for unlawful entry and obstructing an entrance at several sites in 2019 January. Only one of those incidents resulted in a fine. That case originated from an arrest in March 2019 at the Washington Surgi-Clinic, which is also the location of the indictment against Handy. The charge was withdrawn in July 2019 due to a lack of evidence.
