Recently in Dallas, Texas, a school custodian found what authorities referred to as a “deceased fetus” in a high school bathroom stall. Now, just a few days after that grisly discovery, in a sewage treatment plant is Stamford, Connecticut, two halves of a human fetus were found by plant workers.
At this particular sewage plant, larger pieces are separated from the smaller ones and the bigger items are sent through a tube directly into a dumpster. To “the top of the debris” in the trash bin designated to “obtain significant things” is precisely where this dead baby was headed when the plant workers recognized the tiny corpse.
As a result, authorities are working together with the medical examiner’s office to try and determine the identity of the dead baby’s mother. Those investigating the case said that the fetus was about six months along, in two pieces, and swaddled in toilet paper. Authorities concluded that the baby had been flushed down the toilet within 24 hours of when it was found.
Stamford Police Lt. Diedrich Hohn said that “At this point, we can’t tell if it was male or female.”
In East Dallas, the baby found in the toilet bowl is no longer considered a criminal case because investigators with the Dallas Police Department have “spoken to all involved” and concluded that the tiny baby left in a Woodrow Wilson High School bathroom stall was left there after a miscarriage.
Similar to what happened in Dallas, the office of Stamford’s chief medical examiner has already determined in an autopsy that the dead baby found in the sewage plant was likely also the result of a miscarriage. The main concern now is to find the woman who flushed her child to reassure her that she will not face criminal charges and to ensure that she received medical follow-up after her miscarriage.
Either way, relegating one’s own flesh and blood to a toilet bowl or a dumpster by way of a sewage plant, regardless of whether or not the child was dead at birth, shows a deep disregard for the holiness and dignity of all life.
One can’t help but wonder if the child was in two pieces because at five- to six months gestation it was impossible for the baby to be flushed down the toilet.
Stamford resident English Drakeford summed it up perfectly when he told a local Southern Connecticut news station, “Just to flush them down the toilet, put them in the sewage system. That’s barbaric.” According to Drakeford, “It’s very heartbreaking.”
Indeed it is. The Bible tells us in Jeremiah 1:4-5 that while we were being formed in the womb, God knew us and consecrated us unto Himself.
Regardless of the reason, to give birth to what God has ordained, whether dead or alive, directly into a cold toilet bowl only to be flushed away is a sad example of our society’s growing indifference toward the sanctity of God-given life.
