Frank Pavone Talks Back, and I Have More Questions

Here I’m indebted to a flood of information that has been sent to me by my readers, some of whom asked to remain anonymous, but you can read the news articles they sent in yourself. I want there to be citations for what I say, instead of just mentioning “a colleague” and not providing evidence.

On July 20th, 2006, Pavone gave a public funeral for a female aborted baby named Rebecca. Rebecca was said to be in a jar of formaldehyde and it was claimed that  he buried her afterward. In 2007 Pavone was carrying a fetus preserved in formaldehyde to show funerals all over the country, which doesn’t sound anything like any Catholic procedure for the remains of  the dead that I’ve ever heard of. Yes, we have a tradition of displaying relics, but those are relics of canonized saints and there’s still a great deal of supervision involved.  The author of this article, who is not pro-life and whom I’m sure I wouldn’t agree with on much, suggests that these fetuses are all the same person, since they’re all given female names and are said to be about the same gestational age. Pavone himself has stated that ““It is not often that we have the bodies of aborted babies. Unfortunately, the act by which their lives are dishonored and their bodies dismembered takes those bodies and discards the with the medical waste.” And yet he appears to have lots of them, and the majority seem to be girls of about the same gestational age, some with the same black markings on the skin when the bodies are photographed. This raises a great many questions as to how long he keeps each fetus without burial. If people really do entrust him with fetal remains for burial, he has a responsibility to get them buried quickly and respectfully, without using them for photo ops first.

Some years later 2012, the Catholic Herald ran an article all about “Baby Choice,” a victim of a saline abortion who is depicted here on pages two and three, and I do issue a strong content warning for that link because there is a photograph of a dead naked baby. I myself am a mother, and the picture of that baby gave me panic and nightmares after I looked at it and read the article. May God rest her soul and console her family.  In rest of the article, a few pages in, this child is described to be the victim of a second-trimester saline abortion with characteristic black splotches all over her skin caused by saline burns. Yet again, we only have Pavone’s word on how the baby died and how he obtained the body, and I don’t know that he’s not telling the truth. He just says he got it from “a colleague” this time. We are told that it’s evident that she’s been aborted by saline abortion because black splotches cover her entire body, and you can see they cover her except for the buttocks– quite similar, dare I say almost identical, to the remains Pavone appeared with in his December 2016 video– and you can google that to find pictures, but for obvious reasons I’m not going to post a photo here. Pavone says that the identical black splotches covering Baby Ryan are evidence of a prostaglandin abortion, and Doctor Conway says they look like purpurae from a stillborn baby. For all I know, most aborted babies have black burns or bruises all over them in the same pattern except for the buttocks, but I’ve never heard of such a thing before. I’m just pointing out my observation.

The article goes on:  Organizers insisted that they treat the baby’s remains with dignity and respect as part of their fight to end abortion.
Dr. Patricia McEwen – whom the Priests for Life office referred inquiries to about “Baby Choice” and now serves with Operation Save America, Life Coalition International and Doctors for Life International – said she first met “Baby Choice” in 1991, and that the baby regularly travels around the country in anti-abortion demonstrations. The baby is the victim of “a very old saline abortion,” McEwen said, and is kept in formaldehyde when not being used in demonstrations.
“We’ve gotten attached to this little one. She’s the evidence of our sins, of our crimes against the little ones,” said evangelist Rusty Lee Thomas of Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, who said he once carried “Baby Choice” on a six-month walk across America in 2004. “It’s not like we want to exploit her or anything like that…”

It’s not like they wanted to exploit her or anything like that. But they’d  been keeping her in a jar, deprived of proper Christian burial, for over a decade? That’s what Dr. McEwen just stated.

“Baby Choice,” this particular Jane Doe, is said to be a victim of a saline abortion, barely used anymore; saline abortions comprised only 1.7% of abortions in 1985 when the first baby known as “baby choice” was being displayed (and Pavone claims this isn’t the same baby, for the record). Saline abortions accounted for .8%  of abortions in 2002 and .1% in 2007. And the dead babies are usually removed from the womb piecemeal after a saline abortion instead of delivered whole. Yet they have an intact female baby killed by a saline abortion on display at a public funeral in 2012.

How long was this baby kept by Priests for Life?

Do they still have her?

How many Jane Does have their been? How many Baby Ryans? Is there a record somewhere? Are we absolutely sure that all of these babies are victims of abortion? What if someone deceived Pavone about where they got the bodies– how does he verify? Does Pavone have a morgue? What precautions does he take to keep people safe around rotting corpses when he removes them from the fluid and puts them in open caskets or on altars like that? What does he do with these bodies in between show funerals, and why is this allowed? Does he ever make any effort to find their families? How can this be legal? How is he not committing severe canonical violations for exploiting bodies like that? And why has nobody intervened?

And that’s my point in all of this grotesque examination. I don’t have answers to these questions, which no one should have to ask about a priest. Here’s a Catholic priest who is supposed to be under the authority of a bishop, though he is famously disobedient and multiple bishops have washed their hands of him. He’s traipsing around the country with an unknown number of dead human children who deserved a proper burial, some in formaldehyde, some used at different funerals all over the country. He’s not a medical professional. He’s had no regulation or oversight that I know of. We don’t know where the babies come from and he won’t say. We have no idea how many there have been. For all we know, some aren’t the results of abortions. Pavone can say what he likes, but he’s not a doctor, a coroner or a pathologist or anything of the kind. He doesn’t seem to be acting under anybody’s authority or oversight but his own.

This isn’t right.

This isn’t pro-life.

This isn’t the respect that’s due to a dead body, not according to the Catholic Church. It’s exploitation, it’s gross, and it’s not becoming of a priest.

And somebody has to put a stop to it.

(image via Pixabay)