It was just nine days after an abortion doctor died that police discovered the remains of more than 2,000 medically preserved fetuses.
Dr. Ulrich George Klopfer died at age 75 on Sept. 3. Then, on Thursday, an attorney representing the late doctor’s family called the Will County Coroner’s Office in Illinois to report relatives’ disturbing findings, according to a press release.
The remains of 2,246 unborn babies had been found — fully preserved.
“The attorney informed the Coroner’s Office that, while going through the doctor’s personal property, they discovered what appeared to be fetal remains and requested that the Will County Coroner’s Office provide proper removal,” read a statement from the local sheriff’s office.
The statement continued: “The family is cooperating fully with this investigation. There is no evidence that any medical procedures were conducted at the property. This is an ongoing joint effort investigation by the Will County Coroner’s Office, the Will County Sheriff’s Office, and the Will County State’s Attorney’s Office.”
As for Klopfer, his license was suspended indefinitely in 2016, when the Indiana Medical Licensing Board voted to do so after hearing roughly 12 hours of testimony.
A local newspaper — The Journal Gazette — described Klopfer as “Indiana’s most prolific abortion doctor in history with numbers going into the tens of thousands of procedures in multiple counties over several decades.” The testimony also reportedly “showed a man who was essentially using the same abortion and sedation procedures from the 1970s and 1980s” and revealed he wasn’t provided pain medication to patients, unless they were under 16 or able to “pay extra.”
The office of the state attorney general filed a complaint in January 2016, claiming the abortionist violated state law nine times by failing to provide medically qualified staff to monitor patients undergoing abortion procedures.
During the testimony, it was also reported Klopfer performed an abortion in an Illinois hospital on a 10-year-old girl who was being sexually abused by her uncle. He did not report the abuse to police and allowed the child to go home with her parents, who were aware of the abuse and refused to prosecute.
Additionally, the doctor was charged in June 2014 for failing to file a timely report regarding an underage patient, which is a class B misdemeanor. Klopfer reportedly performed an abortion on a 13-year-old girl and failed to publicly disclose it within three days, as is required by state law for any patient under the age of 14. He did not report the abortion for six months.
Nevertheless, Klopfer defended himself to the board, claiming he never lost a patient in his more than 40 years of practice. He went on to argue men don’t have the right to make a statement in opposition to abortion.
“Women get pregnant, men don’t. We need to respect women making a decision that they think is best in their life,” he said. “I’m not here to dictate to anybody. I’m not here to judge anybody.”
Klopfer, who operated three abortion clinics at the time, angrily rebuked the board, telling reporters, “Well, let me put it this way, the Attorney General’s Office and the right-to-lifers are in bed together. How is that?”
Between January 2012 and November 2013 alone, according to the state attorney general’s office, Klopfer performed around 2,405 abortions at his three Indiana clinic locations in Gary, South Bend, and Fort Wayne.