(LifeSiteNews) — Forty years ago, the people of Milwaukee were shaken by the ghastly news that young children had discovered the mangled bodies of aborted babies in a garbage dumpster.
According to news coverage at the time, police were sent to investigate a report of children throwing rocks, but the children told the police that they didn’t have any rocks; instead, they were throwing “little people.”
“What concerns many is the way they were found,” noted one television reporter, “by children, who started throwing human fetuses around.”
One little girl interviewed by a local TV station said, “We found some legs, and the arms, and the heads.”
In all, the bodies of 11 aborted babies were discovered to have been discarded in the dumpster, along with the lab specimen jars that had contained them.
Pointing at the blood-stained pavement near the dumpster, pro-life activist Dan Zeidler, who arrived at the troubling scene, explained, “What you see here is the result of an abortion mentality.”
“A lot of people are upset with finding dead babies in garbage dumpsters, but is that any worse than what actually caused them to be put in the garbage dumpster?” asked Zeidler. “In other words, the whole abortion ethic that we have?”
It was later reported that a driver for a local laboratory, making rounds at a number of medical clinics and offices, had picked up the bodies of aborted babies from a Milwaukee abortion center, apparently to bring them to a laboratory for analysis and disposal.
According to news reports, the driver became nauseated as a result of the odor and decided to dump the tiny bodies into a dumpster located at one of her next stops.
With Milwaukee County’s permission, the cooperation of Milwaukee Archdiocesan Cemetery officials, and the help of concerned citizens, arrangements were made to bury these “little people” in a dignified and prayerful manner in the Children’s Section of Milwaukee’s Holy Cross Cemetery.
“The bodies of these little ones have reminded us that in our nation there is a tremendous failure of love right now, and a tremendous triumph of selfishness,” said Pastor Marc Erickson of Eastbrook Church during a graveside remembrance of the aborted children.
“They remind us that in our world and in our society in particular – the richest nation in the world – there’s a tremendous failure of faith,” said Erickson.
“Hear our prayer today, O Father, for us,” offered Rev. Charles Gaskell, “that in our love for you and for all to whom you give life, we may be passionately concerned for all who are deemed unworthy of life, as these little ones were.”
A second group of aborted babies – numbering approximately 1,200 – came from a loading dock of a laboratory in Illinois where pro-lifers, acting on a tip, were able over a period of months in 1988 to recover the mutilated little bodies.
“These babies,” according to the Cemetery’s website, “as those from the first group, were buried at Holy Cross in the children’s section following a prayer service attended by people from all across Wisconsin.”
A monument erected amid the graves of these children is engraved with an image of Christ holding a young child and surrounded by other children. An inscription states:
Let the children come to me. Do not hinder them. The Kingdom of God belongs to such as these.’
— Matthew 19:14
Alongside the main stone is a smaller stone with the following inscription:
This monument stands as a testimony to the Sanctity of Human Life. Among these graves of children are included preborn babies, victims of abortion. ‘The reason why the world does not know us, is that it did not know Him. We are God’s children now.’ (1 Jn 3:1).