Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Forty Years of Baby Choice: A Timeline

Forty Years of Baby Choice: A Timeline

Last updated on: October 3, 2019 at 3:38 pm by Mary Pezzulo

Forty Years of Baby Choice: A Timeline 2019-10-03T15:38:47-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Now, fast forward a few years to Pavone’s YouTube video in November of 2016, stumping for president Trump. In this video, he places a baby on an altar and claims he borrowed it from a “Protestant Minister” who got it from a “pathologist” who removed it from an “abortion facility.” That video has been deleted, but you can still see still photos of the infant all over the internet with a simple google search. The baby on the altar is of an identical size to one of the babies in the coffin, and he or she is burned all black except for a bare patch on the buttocks and under the arm. To me it looks identical to one of the babies from 1978, identical to the smaller baby in the video in 2008 that was supposedly “subsequently buried,” identical as far as I can see to the small baby in the white coffin in 2012 which was going to be buried after the demonstrations. Pavone claims this baby was from a prostaglandin abortion, and that he was loaned to him from a “Protestant minister” who obtained him from a “pathologist” who took him from an “abortion facility.”

He then gave two conflicting statements about the baby’s burial. As I wrote before, on November 8th, 2016, Pavone posted an apology for his stunt on Youtube. In the video, he claims that “I’ve already celebrated that baby’s funeral, that baby is, is already, uh, laid to rest.” The video has since been deleted, but plenty of people watched and remarked upon it; here’s my colleague Keith Michael Estrada’s reaction.

Then, later, he told the National Catholic Register that he “he did not know when the baby would be buried. He said the body was out of his hands and back with the Protestant minister.”

I waited for three years for Pavone to answer any of my questions about where he’d gotten this infant, how old she or he was, and whether the baby had been buried. He only responded by blocking me on Facebook.

Finally, last month, Pavone emailed my editor a single jpeg of a certificate of burial, which I’m posting in its entirety here:

He claimed that this one document was proof that the baby from his 2016 stunt had been buried in a timely fashion. He also grouchily told me on Twitter that the baby was and had always been said to be the victim of a prostaglandin abortion, not saline. This is a certificate for someone named “baby Ryan,” whom I presume to be the baby with a black head and bare buttocks and underarms since the other baby was certainly a girl and “Ryan” isn’t usually a girl’s name. However, the baby with a black head and bare buttocks and underarms was referred to as a girl when he or she lay in the coffin in 2012– presuming that these identical-looking infants with identical burns are all the same. At any rate, Baby Ryan was stated to be born on 11-1-2016 and died the same day, and then buried on December 6th, 2016 at 10 AM with no outer burial container and no witnesses to the lowering. The certificate is not signed by Pavone but by Jerry Horn, a former Pentacostal minister who works for Priests for Life; his relation to the deceased is stated to be “friend.” The grave is in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but the document is notarized in Tennessee. Priests for Life is now located in Florida, though I believe it was still in New York in 2016.

I presume now that Jerry Horn is the unnamed “Protestant minister” who obtained the baby from a pathologist and loaned him to Pavone, at some point. His name is on the document and he’s a former Protestant minister, the only named Protestant minister in this story. If Horn was the one who was keeping the baby, we need to ask him what safety precautions he took when working with an old cadaver, and we also need to ask about the pathologist who as far as I can tell committed a crime in stealing the baby in the first place. I don’t see how it can be legal to take either medical waste or dead bodies out of a pathology lab and hand them off to a cleric like this. And it certainly isn’t ethical. It would be meritorious, in many cases, to break the law in order to give a person who was dehumanized and condemned to a violent death a proper burial. Breaking the law in order to keep the corpse of such a person as a trophy is the opposite.

Now here’s one last mystery.

Father Stephen Imbarrato, who used to work with Priests for Life, claims he was given the body of an unborn child named Ryan, by Priests for Life, in July of 2018, and that he held an official funeral on September 5th of that year. He shared photos on his own Twitter page of a gravestone with no date, and “In memory of Ryan and Eve, taken before birth, messengers for Life!” etched on it.

Is this the same Ryan that was supposed to be buried in 2016? If not, why does he have the same name? If intact aborted bodies are so very rare, why did they recycle the exact same name after only two years?

Is Ryan, if Ryan is the name of the baby on Pavone’s desecrated altar, really over forty years old? This seems to me to be the only possible explanation. I don’t find it credible that Priests for Life just happened to have multiple identical infants just the same size, with the exact same pattern of burns or bruises, kept in embalming fluid and displayed naked in identical coffins when convenient at this many times in the past.

Where is the other baby, the girl with the bare head, the one who had her genitals thrust at the camera by a doctor? Is she still in Pavone’s possession right now?

Who is the unknown pathologist who stole the bodies in the first place? Is Jerry Horn the minister who obtained them? And when?

Are we even sure how these babies died? Was it a prostaglandin abortion, saline, or something else?

How has Priests for Life operated for so long without being stopped by the Church, or by secular legal authorities for that matter? Is it legal to keep a preserved corpse in fluid, not in a morgue but in your own office, let alone two and for this long? It’s certainly against Catholic teaching to desecrate a corpse in this way. Bodies are temples of the spirit and required to be treated with respect. Burying the dead is a work of mercy– what we do to a corpse, is what we do to Christ.

Whatever’s going on, I think we all deserve an answer.

(first image via Pixabay, other images are my own screenshots)

Public face of Catholicism

Previous Post

October 2, 2019

Abby Johnson Doubles Down on Racism and Attacks a Priest

Next Post

October 3, 2019 Transitus

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abortion Abuse Advent America American Christianity angel angels Annunciation Appalachia apparition apparition chaser apparition chasers apparition culture art art review babies baby baby Jesus Bad Lip Reading bad statue contest bath beauty Bible story blog blogkeeping blood book review Brandon Sanderson breastfeeding bus Catholic catholic conspiracy alarmism Catholic Oppositional Disorder Charismatic Renewal Charlie the Cat chastity Christ Christian idenitity Christianity and Judaism Chronic Illness clean clothing COD piece comedy compassion conscience conspiracy theory conversion cop-on-black violence Crucifixion cry of the poor culture Daesh Daily Saints death death penalty devotional diaconate diaper diapers dirty disability Donald Trump Dorothy Day dream drugs Eastern Catholicism Eastern Christianity education election election update Elsewhere on Patheos empathy environment Fear feminism film review fish flashback fluffy buns food Franciscan University of Steubenville Friendship Room fun Gabriel gardening gospel hair-splitting Heaven hell heresy Hillary Clinton history Holly the Witch Holy Spirit holy war Homeschooling homosexuality horror human dignity humor Icon idol immigrants infection inter-religious dialogue Interpretation of Scripture Islam Jesus Jihad Joseph joy laity and lay vocations lamb dinner laundry lent lgbtq literature love manners Mary Medicine and Science Meditation mercy mess milk misogyny Missouri monasticism monster motherhood mourn with those mourn movies movis music mystery nature neurodiversity New Pro-Life Movement news nonsense nostalgia O antiphons obituary objectification Ohio Valley Ordinary Time ordination Ordo Amoris parable paradox Passover peanut butter personal beliefs pets philosophy Planet Charismatic poetry politics polls poop Pope Francis Pope Leo power in the Church prayer prayer request prayers preferential option for non-violence president presidential election priest primary private revelation pro-life prophecy Public face of Catholicism Pure Flix Q and A race racism random rape rape. sexuality reader's request Reckoners refugee religious trauma ressurrection Right to life Saints saints and celebrations same-sex same-sex marriage satire scandal secular feasts seder Seven Joys Seven Last Words sex sexual ethics sexuality silencing six months skid row slavery social justice Speculative fiction spiritual abuse spoon stain story suffering suffrage suffragette Sunday Gospel temple Tenebrae Responsories Terror the exorcist The Friendship Room The New Pro-Life Movement Things I Learned on the Internet tin cup traffic true story tv review Uncategorized USCCB vice and temptation violence Virtue virtue and vice war Way of the Cross whimsy whole life women's ordination work of mercy Year A

Select a Month November 2026 October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's dream of a statue?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Daniel Joseph Abraham Ezekiel