Government officials in Marion County, Oregon, have put an abrupt halt to the burning of aborted babies in a local waste incineration facility, following revelations that the bodies of the pre-born babies were part of shipments of human “tissue” coming from Canada, and that the bodies were being incinerated as fuel to produce electricity for Oregon residents.
The British Columbia Health Ministry admitted that it had shipped the remains of babies aborted in that province to Oregon, with most of the bodies likely ending up in Marion County’s Covanta Marion waste-to-energy incineration facility near Salem, Oregon, the only facility in the state that uses waste to create electrical power for Oregon residents.
LifeSiteNews.com reported that the facility, located in the community of Brooks, “burns waste in two massive boilers at a temperature of about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat transfers into water tubes, which creates steam to drive turbines. The turbines generate electricity.”
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The BC Health Ministry was forced to admit its involvement after a report in the BC Catholic, a Canadian Catholic newspaper, revealed that the British Columbia government had been sending shipments of waste tissue — including the bodies of aborted babies — to Oregon, and the story gained traction in the United States among pro-life groups.
The Associated Press reported that the Marion County Commission quickly met on the issue and put a stop to the shipments and the burning of medical waste until procedures are in place to sort out what will actually be allowed at the facility. While officials emphasized that no laws were broken in incinerating the bodies of aborted babies, there were “ethical” concerns — which county officials made a point of expressing publicly.
“We are outraged and disgusted that this material could be included in medical waste received at the facility,” announced Marion County Commissioner Janet Carlson in a statement April 23. “We did not know this practice was occurring until today. We are taking immediate action and initiating discussions with Covanta Marion to make certain that this type of medical waste is not accepted in the future.” Carlson added that “we’re going to get the bottom” of the issue. “I want to know who knew, when they knew, how long they had known this was going on.”
While expressing her outrage and disgust at the incineration of aborted babies in her county, Carlson expressed no similar outrage for the actual killing of the babies in the first place.
As for prior knowledge, according to Portland’s KOIN television news, a former worker at the incineration facility said that the practice had been going on for years, and that government officials had to have known about it. “Bud Waterman, a former temp worker at Covanta Marion, Inc., said two to three times a week, 53-foot tractor trailers carrying biohazards dropped off loads at the facility in Brooks,” reported KOIN. Waterman told KOIN that “it would make you sick, especially if you had to clean it up or have to pull a box off the trailer.”
The report added that “Waterman said he believes fetuses have been incinerated at the Marion County facility for years and used for energy, a practice that the Canadian government will not do. ‘They knew it, they had to. I don’t see how they could not know it,’ said Waterman.”
The Associated Press reported that the “fetal material” from British Columbia had come through a contract with an Illinois waste management firm called Stericycle, which deals with biomedical waste including tissue from aborted babies, cancerous tissue, and amputated limbs.
“Jeff Bickford, environmental services division manager in Marion County, said the facility there has been taking material from British Columbia for five to seven years,” reported AP. “He said clinical waste providers such as Stericycle bring in medical waste ranging from syringes and body parts to laboratory cultures and bodily fluids after hospitals and clinics place it into red bags and sealed containers.”
County Commissioner Janet Carlson insisted that she was “horrified” by the revelation that babies were among the shipments. “There are not enough strong words to describe my feelings,” she said, promising that “this will not continue.”
The troubling news comes on the heels of similar revelations several weeks ago, published in The New American, that government-run hospitals in the U.K. had burned up thousands of aborted and miscarried babies in incinerators used to heat the medical facilities. According to The Telegraph newspaper (U.K.), the remains of at least 15,500 aborted and miscarried infants were incinerated “as clinical waste, with some even used to heat hospitals.” Ten hospitals connected with the British government’s National Health Service (NHS) “admitted burning fetal remains alongside other rubbish, while two others used the bodies in ‘waste-to-energy’ plants which generate power for heat,” reported The Telegraph.
Following the revelation, Britain’s Department of Health quickly banned the practice, with U.K. Health Minister Dr. Dan Poulter announcing that it was “totally unacceptable.” Predictably, Poulter made no comment on the killing of the babies through abortion, confining his comments to the “unacceptable” practice of incinerating their bodies as fuel to heat the country’s medical facilities.
