D.C police have found five fetuses in the home of
an anti-abortion activist named Lauren Handy.
Now Lauren Handy is based in Virginia, but
she has gotten in trouble with the law quite a few times previously because
of her illegal anti-choice activism will detail that for you in just a moment.
But before we do, let's get to the issue at hand shall we?
The fact that this woman had fetal remains in her home while officers responded to
the home of this anti-choice activist Lauren Handy to investigate a tip about
potential biohazard material in the residence.
Once inside they located the fetuses.
The remains were collected by the D,C Office of the chief medical examiner.
So the authorities were given some sort of tip.
They decided to follow through with that tip, follow up on it and
see if there was any truth to it.
And all of a sudden we find out that this woman did, in fact,
have five different fetuses stored in her home in Virginia.
Now she has gotten in trouble with the law fairly recently back in 2020.
She and eight other anti-choice activists were terrorizing women at
an abortion clinic and we'll give you the details on that in just a moment.
But what I found fascinating is in some areas she's actually quite honest.
So here's a tweet from a reporter who tried to get some statement from her
after this story broke.
When I asked anti-abortion activist Lauren Handy what homicide detectives
pulled out of her house Wednesday?
She only said quote people will freak out when they hear and
guess what she was right.
People are freaking out because this is incredibly creepy and, of course,
everyone is wondering where did these fetuses come from now?
The authorities haven't clarified that,
they're not answering any questions about where the fetuses came from.
We don't know if they belonged to her, we don't
know if it belongs to some other medical facility that she might have broken into.
But something that you should know about is the fact that she had bragged
on Facebook about gaining access to the university of Washington in Seattle.
And essentially having access to the refrigerators there.
So there's some belief that maybe she could have stolen the fetal
remains from that facility, it's really unclear what the truth is.
So it was a deep walk-in freezer that she was bragging about
gaining access to on March 23rd.
So Farren as we know, right wingers are incredibly obsessed with
doing away with a woman's right to choose doing away with a woman's
agency liberty ability to make decisions about her own body.
And there's always been a creepy component to that, this component of control.
But this kind of takes things to a whole new level, right?
>> I mean, I'm still trying to wrap my head around any
capacity where she would need these fetal remains.
I still can't quite make sense of any of this yet because it is just so
disturbing and like you said, everything is still breaking here.
But we do have something throughout the United States.
Each state is a little bit different, but we have abuse of corpse laws
that basically say that you cannot have any human remains in your home,
like on your property, anything of that sort.
So there's all kinds of laws here that she very easily could be prosecuted for
depending on maybe there's a legitimate scientific reason here.
I highly doubt that that is the case whatsoever.
But assuming there's not one, yeah, she is facing all sorts of different state and
potentially federal charges for just having these in her possession.
And if it is tied to her gaining access to these university
refrigerators, then that's a very serious crime.
And so I, I think based on everything that's happened and
everything with her history, multiple instances of getting in trouble with
the law, let's say because a lot of them weren't prosecuted.
But yes, she has a history, it's gonna work against her in this, and
she's probably going away for a very long time.
>> I hope so.
>> Yeah, pretty much what I think is gonna happen here.
>> Absolutely, yeah, I mean, look, who knows what is likely to happen?
She's gotten in trouble with some pretty
serious charges as a result of her so-called activism.
And every single time the charges have been lessened or they've been dropped.
But there's one exception, and it has to do with what she and
her fellow anti-choice zealots did in October of 2020.
I wanna get to those details right now.
So Handy was indicted along with nine others on Wednesday by a federal
grand jury.
So she's facing federal charges, but not for the fetus is,
we don't know what the charges for the fetuses will be yet.
But Handy is accused of felony conspiracy against rights for
a blockade inside a D.C abortion clinic in October of 2020.
What she did breaks federal laws.
So she essentially, she along with her, her friends essentially blocked women
from being able to gain access to the clinic that they were targeting.
Prosecutors say that Handy called the clinic pretending to be
a woman named Hazel Jenkins who needed an abortion and made an appointment for
the morning of 22nd October 2020.
That morning, Handy allegedly approached a clinic employee and said she was
Hazel Jenkins there for an appointment when the employee opened the door.
The indictment says Handy and
her other co-defendants forced their way into the clinic in the process.
They allegedly knocked a clinic employee over causing her to injure her ankle and
then once inside the defendants allegedly moved chairs to block the entrance
to the clinics treatment area and use chains and rope to tie them together.
Now, back in the 199s, this was actually a pretty common tactic used by
right-wing anti-choice zealots who loved having control over women's bodies.
And so hundreds of them would get together and
they would block the entrance to these clinics.
And at that point, luckily when Congress apparently still was managing to
accomplish something passed a law that would prevent that from happening,
they're able to protest outside the clinic.
We see that happening all the time,
that's something that's protected by the First Amendment.
But blocking entry, blocking access to a woman to these clinics is against the law,
which is why these individuals have now been indicted.
But again, I wanna reiterate that indictment is for
what happened in October of 2020.
We still don't know what the consequences will be or what the charges will be for
the fetuses that she was storing in her basement in Virginia.
>> When we have stories like this and
we see what these so-called activists, they do here.
And thank goodness, this wasn't a more extreme instance that they got arrested
for, because we've seen that far too many times.
But what gets me about all of this is that there's no actual concern for
children in this country among these Republicans.
We have children right now that are going hungry and
they're going hungry partly because there's not any Republicans in D.C.
that want to do the free school lunches.
They're still trying to cut back on that.
They're blocking it at the state level.
They're not doing anything about the extended child tax credit that we know
lifted tens of millions of kids out of poverty in the last few months of
last year.
There are kids suffering in this country right now and they're only suffering
more and more thanks to these right-wing crazies that are running these states.
They're targeting the LGBTQ youth kids are suffering.
And if Republicans actually cared like they claim to,
we've got to protect the children were out here protecting them.
No, you're not, you're letting them die because they can't get medication.
You're making them orphans because their parents can't afford the insulin.
There's all sorts of things these people could be putting their bodies and
their minds to doing to actually create some good in this country to better
the lives of children.
They're refusing to do it because they're hung up on this one issue that,
quite frankly is none of their damn business at all.
But they want to shove themselves into it when we have kids on the street right now
that don't know if they're gonna get another meal ever.
And that's what it is.
>> I mean, we deal with that hypocrisy on a daily basis.
I mean, this woman Handy actually was interviewed by a reporter for
Human Rights Watch.
And she was encouraging young people, miners to break
federal laws to prevent women from being able to go to an abortion clinic.
And when the reporter asked her about that,
like are you encouraging them to break the law?
She just flat out admitted by the way, I tweeted that story.
I highly recommend you guys check it out.
It's by Human Rights Watch, and she just flat out transparently
admits to encouraging minors to break the law, okay?
Which would mean what, which could mean that they would face prosecution.
They could potentially be locked up for what they're doing, that could ruin their
lives, but she doesn't really care about the lives of these kids.
She doesn't really care for her.
Look, I don't really know fully what's motivating her.
She seems unhinged anyone who would steel fetal remains or
have fetal remains from anywhere in their home clearly has some issues and
needs to be I think she needs to be evaluated aside from prosecuted for
what she's done.
But if you look at the right wing movement in this country overall.
I mean, you gave perfect examples, this effort to do away with any type of
social program that would make children living in poverty hole.
That would ensure that they have a roof over their heads,
food on their table, and their basic needs met.
It's always the right-wing that fights back against it.
And once you confront them about this hypocrisy,
they immediately go to the argument of, well,
why should we be funding the deadbeat lifestyles of the parents?
Well, what about the kids?
What about the kids? You just
want to abandon the kids that you claim to wanna protect so much.
I mean, look what's happening in Texas, where transgender youth are being
prevented from getting the medical treatment that they need,
including mental health treatment, okay?
We know that suicide ideation is something that's prevalent among
young transgender individuals.
It doesn't matter, they don't care for them for politicians.
And I know this without a shadow of a doubt these types of issues, these types
of culture war issues are nothing more than props for their political campaigns.
That's it, they couldn't care less about anyone's life.
I think we see that play out in places like Texas where there isn't like
a school shooting, they don't love.
They take the school shooting and use it as an opportunity to politicize how we
need more guns in the country, which usually translates to more children
getting shot up in their own damn schools, okay?
That's what the right-wing is.
And then they turn around and they try to make us seem like the creeps when we want
women to have freedom to choose what to do with their own bodies.
They should have agency.
They should have the ability to make these types of decisions with themselves and
their doctors and that's it.
But they wanna get involved politicians for political purposes.
The right-wing specifically for control.
If you look at how abortion or how evangelicals came to be so
obsessed with abortion in this country.
Take a look at how they used it as a political prop during
the Reagan administration.
In order to rally support to the evangelical right,
that's all it's ever been about.
It's about control, it's about power, and we need to fight back against this
aggressively, not only in the context of reproductive rights, but
also in the context of our transgender brothers and sisters.
Brothers and sisters who are being targeted right now for political purposes.
Other members of the LGBTQ community, who we thought, gay marriage is legalized,
things are headed in the right direction.
You see right-wingers like Charlie Kirk, for instance,
doing a full on assault on those rights, as we speak.
We need to fight back against it.
These are not people who love freedom.
These are people who love control.
These are people who love to force their religious ideology on everyone else in
a country that's supposed to believe in the separation of church and state.
>> And we have, or at least for the moment, roe versus wade,
that should have solidified this.
And unfortunately, because of this, now, hugely partisan Supreme Court and
Republicans getting crafty with the way they draft these anti-choice laws.
They're whittling that away, and there's no backup for that, by the way.
And I hope people understand that kind of a ramification.
Once this thing gets whittled down and
whittled down to where it's virtually useless throughout this country,
it's going to be almost impossible to get back to where we were.
This is going to lead to dead women, and Republicans are okay with that.
I mean, they've made it clear that they're okay with that, you know,
toying with the idea of maybe if you seek an abortion,
maybe we should give you the death penalty, maybe we should kill you.
So they have no absolute regard for
any living creature in this country.
It's either for political gain or, as you say, it's just this control issue,
because they have these deep seated problems,
which is what they are with themselves, that they feel they need to do this.
This doesn't benefit anybody, right.
This doesn't make anybody's life any better.
It puts lives in danger and they could not care less about it because it's
a wonderful political issue because it gets the stupidest people out here
engaged and out to the polls, and that's what it's always been about.
How can we convince these people who don't think for
themselves to come out and vote for us.
So we'll use these wedge issues, we use the culture wars will do all of
the stupidest talking points that have no bearing on their life.
But they'll vote about it and then we get to screw them over financially,
and any other way we can, because that's what they always do.
>> Yeah, you're so right about that.
I see that as the primary driver of the culture war issues that
the right wing engages in.
It's a perfect way to politicize people while distracting them from the fact
that the very people politicizing them or robbing them blind.
That's the Republican Party, that is what they do.
They want tax cuts for the rich, they want to empower and
embolden corporations to mistreat their workers, they love that system.
They see that more and more americans, both on the left and
the right are fired up about the economic insecurity that they're feeling.
And that would require politicians to do something about it, right?
It would require them to address it, but they can't address it.
Their corporate donors don't want them to address it.
So what do they do instead?
They target the most powerless people in our society,
direct hatred toward them, direct terrible policy toward them or against them.
And we all suffer as a consequence of that.
The country becomes less and less free as a result of that