More than fetuses saved by abortion doctor

One of the most endearing and oft madding traits of we humans is our obsession to collect the mementos of our life. An example of the latter is late abortion doctor Urlich Klopfer of suburban Crete who died last month at 79. A reclusive hoarder, Klopfer’s jam packed garage coughed up an astonishing collection of 2,246 fetuses, each chemically preserved in a sealed vial. It took 71 boxes to amass these two out of tens of thousands of aborted fetuses Klopfer produced over a five decade career in Chicago and Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

Klopfer’s collection was unknown to anyone but himself, and he left nary a trace of his motivation. It might go back to his traumatic origins as a survivor of the WWII Allied fire bombing of Dresden, Germany where Klopfer grew up. The February, 1945, raid killed tens of thousands of his fellow citizens. Maybe that trauma and its aftermath put Klopfer on the path to a life of service to women in need of the most basic reproductive service largely denied them by a cruel society.

Rather that focus on the ‘why’ of Klopfer’s unusual collection, we should honor his saving the lives of tens of thousands of women from an unwanted pregnancy, allowing them to put their lives back together against tremendous individual and societal obstacles.