By way of a metaphor for the way the NHS and, come to that, the law regards foetuses, you can’t really better the reality, viz, that foetal remains from abortions and miscarriages are being incinerated in NHS hospitals and possibly used to heat that hospital.
If a foetus lives less than 13 weeks, it could, in Addenbrooke’s Hospital, for instance, be used as fuel as part of the hospital’s waste-to-energy schemes. And 13 weeks is just over three months’ gestation – the point at which wanted foetuses register as recognisably human on the scans that prospective parents take home and show their friends. Meanwhile, the unwanted foetuses, or the ones that die early, get dumped with the used disposable gloves, in the incinerator. I don’t know why, but it’s almost worse that some of these unfortunates are burnt as part of a progressive energy-efficiency scheme; it somehow demonstrates our social priorities – with recycling way above respect for human remains.
We owe this gruesome insight to the Channel 4 Dispatches team, which, in a programme aired tonight, reveals that at least 15,500 foetal remains were incinerated by 27 NHS trusts in the last two years alone and that Addenbrooke’s incinerated 797 foetuses below 13 weeks’ gestation at their waste-to-energy plant.
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