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Thank you for covering the "funeral" service for the aborted baby girl in the Aug. 3 edition of the Catholic News Herald. I have some further questions about "Baby Choice" that I would like to pose to the organizers of the event. (Read the story here)

A quick internet search reveals that an aborted baby girl by the name of "Baby Choice" has been memorialized by pro-life groups at other times – a fact stated in your coverage. But on July 25, 2011, in Orlando, Fla., an open-casket funeral was held for a "late-term aborted baby girl" of whom photos were taken, and who was also "eulogized" by Father Frank Pavone with Priests For Life. When one compares the pictures the Catholic News Herald took of "Baby Choice" at the open-casket event July 27 and the ones of "Baby Choice" from the memorial event in Orlando in 2011, they are strikingly similar. I am also struck by the gestational ages of both these baby girls: 20-22 weeks. They were also both aborted through the same outdated procedure, with saline.

I am curious to know how many "memorial services" Operation Rescue/Operation Save America and Father Pavone have hosted featuring open-casket remains of children who were not 20-22 weeks' gestation, female, and killed in their mothers' wombs via saline injection. Have any boys been memorialized? Have any children been memorialized who were not 20-22 weeks in gestational age? How many of their burials have been witnessed first-hand? And would a search of Operation Rescue/Operation Save America's facilities or affiliates reveal the remains of "Baby Choice"?

The quote by Dr. Patricia McEwen, "to whom the Priests for Life office referred inquires about 'Baby Choice'" stated that the baby was "the victim of 'a very old saline abortion,'" and that she "is kept in formaldehyde when not being used in demonstrations." Frankly, if this is true, it makes me sick.

If Dr. McEwen's quote is accurate – that is, if she knows the inner workings of the groups she represents – then "Baby Choice" is not being honored in any way, shape or form. Keeping a baby in jar of formaldehyde and occasionally bringing her out for fake funerals is not pro-life, it is pro-death – because it profits from the murder of an innocent person. If Dr. McEwen was not speaking out of turn, then the organizations she represents have not been honest with the people who attend these "funerals." People were deceived into believing that the baby over whom they shed tears was recently aborted and was to be given a Christian burial.

If these things aren't true – if "Baby Choice" is kept in a jar like an oddity at a sideshow – then these groups lie when they say they care about the value and dignity of the little girl in the casket.

There are too many people who turn a blind eye to the evil of abortion – the thousands of babies who are literally torn from their mother's womb every day – without adding any disgrace to the list of reasons why there is not more support for the pro-life movement. I certainly hope that Father Pavone "buried 'Baby Choice' on July 29 in Staten Island, N.Y., where Priests For Life is headquartered, in a plot that the organization has reserved," because if he didn't he has a lot to answer for.

Anita Veyera lives in Matthews.