Editor’s Note: The following essay was first published as an introduction to “Insecureand, ” a report by Americans United for Life. It was reproduced below with minor modifications.
Men In the fall of 2019, the family of the late abortionist Ulrich George Klopfer made a horrible discovery. Cleaning up his Illinois home after his death, they found the medically preserved remains of more than 2,200 unborn children – evidently victims of his decades-long career in performing tens of thousands of abortions, which earned him a reputation as the most prolific abortionist in the world. Indiana.
They later discovered a stock of 165 fetal body parts hidden in the trunk of one of Klopfer’s cars. Despite a subsequent police investigation, we still don’t know the abortionist’s motivation for keeping these horrible trophies; any disturbing reasons he may have had to collect them went with him to the grave.
Perhaps even more impressive than the lack of clarity about this horrible discovery was the relative lack of public curiosity about it. Klopfer’s body stock received relatively little national attention immediately after local news broke the story, and the entire event went in and out of the mainstream news cycle in less than a week.
In addition to an opinion piece by columnist Ross Douthat, the New York Times published only a brief report on the day the news became public. The following week, some major media outlets offered a brief article or two describing the basic facts of what had happened, but most of the continued interest and coverage came from local journalists. Almost no reporters have asked politicians for comment, let alone Democrats who support unlimited legal abortion.
If Klopfer’s remains were 2,411 adult humans, rather than unborn children, his grotesque newsroom would have received ecstatic national attention for months. We would still be discussing this today, remembering him as the most notorious serial killer in American history. But because those little bodies whose lives he so chivalrously destroyed belonged to children still in the womb, most of us closed our eyes and turned around, preferring to pretend we hadn’t seen.
The natural reluctance to deal with this type of horrible incident may be understandable. For a society that spends as much time as we do fleeing the reality of abortion, it can be difficult to face such a naked and raw display of its destruction. But it is important to realize that a significant part of our ignorance about Klopfer was the product of intentional decisions by our mass media, whose reluctance to focus on history came as no surprise to anyone who regularly follows our debates about abortion.
Although Americans are just as divided about abortion policy today as they were in 1973, when the Supreme Court ruled Roe v. Wade, the most powerful voices in our increasingly influential mass media came almost uniformly to the side of legal abortion. This results in a distorted portrait of our debate on abortion and, in fact, of the facts that support our deep differences about abortion. If you want accurate, complete and unbiased information about abortion – even basic facts like when, where and how often it occurs – conventional media is the last place to look.
Most of the time, experts and reporters either ignore the issue of abortion entirely or provide only superficial coverage, as they did with Klopfer’s stock of fetal remains. When they report on abortion, they omit essential facts, distort them to weigh more against the anti-abortion argument, or distort them to make the case of legal abortion look more favorable.
The Americans United for Life report “Unsafe” is a powerful antidote to widespread media-induced ignorance. In the report, you will find hard data that can be so difficult to locate – the types of facts that are crucial for informed, honest and clear discussions about the reality of abortion in our country.
As far as the seven Supreme Court judges who legalized abortion expected their decision in Roe would resolve the abortion debate forever, it clearly was not the case. Almost 50 years later, abortion remains as controversial as ever, probably the most contested issue in American political life. If we ever want to resolve this contentious battle, we must be relentless in finding the facts so that we can honestly assess the effects of legal abortion in recent decades. These facts and their spread are essential to finding ways to change our abortion policy and protect the least among us – not just the innocent child who has not yet been born, but also his mother.
On this point, let us return to the story of George Klopfer, who really started long before 2019, when those fetal remains were found in his possession. This discovery was not the first time that the abortionist attracted the attention of local authorities. In 2016, Indiana’s medical licensing board indefinitely suspended Klopfer’s license after discovering that he violated state law and standard medical procedures while operating three abortion companies in northern Indiana.
Among other violations, Klopfer did not submit reports of terminated pregnancies to the state Department of Health and the Department of Child Services after having performed abortions on at least two 13-year-old girls. He also admitted to having performed an abortion on a ten-year-old girl who had been raped by her uncle, and he never denounced the state.
During the operation of his business, Klopfer routinely failed to ensure that a qualified team was present when patients received or recovered from anesthesia before and after abortion procedures, and he failed to provide adequate information and advice to patients for at least 18 hours. before having an abortion, as required by state law.
Much like the stories behind each statistic in “Unsafe”, the story of Klopfer’s career as a dirty and dangerous abortionist barely received national coverage. As a result, he received almost no public attention outside the local area – before or after his family discovered all parts of his body in his home. This persistent lack of attention exemplifies the widespread lack of public knowledge about the terrible reality of abortion in our country.
Americans don’t know about Klopfer because abortion proponents and their media allies prefer to ignore or hide information that exposes the abortion industry. Most people do not look for facts about abortion because they prefer not to think about it, because they do not know what to look for or because they do not know what to look for in the first place.
Many Americans are unaware that, in addition to taking unborn human lives, abortion is not safe for women. Most do not realize that even the supposedly “hygienic” abortions pose serious risks to the physical and psychological health of pregnant mothers. even though Roewith the promise of bringing abortion from the dead end into the clean light of modern business, women still suffer serious side effects and sometimes die as a result of abortion procedures – all behind closed doors and away from the front pages of our newspaper course .
These unpleasant and hidden realities explain why abortion advocates are so reluctant to talk about men like Klopfer, his insecure businesses and his collection of fetal remains. Most abortionists, of course, do not collect the remains of the unborn children they killed and store them in molding boxes and old Styrofoam coolers. Instead, they follow common industry practice and dispose of these small bodies along with piles of medical waste.
Is this really better?
We prefer to ignore abortionists like Klopfer because their stories force us to confront the brutal reality of abortion, to recognize the fact that no matter how safe or clean a business may seem, every abortion ends with an empty uterus and the death of a child by born.
This is the simple and horrible fact that advocates of legal abortion are desperate to avoid. It is much easier to defend the right to abortion when it is covered by phrases like “women’s health” or “right to choose”. Recognizing that all abortion ends the life of a different human being and defending him in these terms is much more difficult and much less popular.
That is why it can be so difficult to find facts like those contained in “Unsafe”. That is why most media outlets will never cover any story that shows how the abortion industry profits from killing unborn children and victimizing their mothers. That’s why Klopfer’s victims were buried by the state of Indiana in a mass grave with little more than local news to mark the occasion.
Like the story of Klopfer, the women who were mistreated in their businesses, the unborn children whose bodies he kept and those he just threw away, the realities in “Insecure” are difficult to face. But we cannot close our eyes to them. We cannot afford to forget what we saw.
We cannot tell ourselves that George Klopfer’s business was an anomaly, that most abortions are sterile, hygienic and safe for pregnant mothers – not when the statistics tell a different story. We cannot forever avoid the thousands of tiny bodies laid out behind companies every day. “Insecure” offers a glimpse of the truth for anyone who is willing to look at it. We will face without hesitation the damage that abortion has caused in our country, and we will pray for courage to do what we can to end it.