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0:01 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: In an effort to better understand the legal landscape surrounding the D.C. Five, whether it be Lauren Handy’s discovery or the potential federal abortion crimes committed by the abortion center’s notorious abortionist, Dr. Santangelo, we reached out to Lauren Handy’s attorney Martin Cannon.

 

0:20 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: Cannon is with the law firm, the Thomas More Society. He represented his client in federal court as she was charged with a violation of the FACE Act, a law that’s been used to prosecute people that block or obstruct entry into abortion centers.

 

0:37 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: Cannon claims his client was not blocking entry but rather trying to spare any more women and children from undergoing the abortion center’s illegal practices where babies were believed to be aborted through illegal means such as partial birth or born alive abortions. Let’s hear from Mr. Cannon on why he believes federal abortion crimes were committed, what that means moving forward, and if the law really is our best teacher when it comes to abortion.

 

1:10 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: From Exposed: Abortion in America: The D.C. Five, this is Episode Five: What Has the Law Taught Us?

 

1:40 – MARTIN CANNON: This is Martin Cannon. I’m one of several senior trial attorneys with the Thomas More Society.

 

1:49 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: And Martin, what’s the Thomas More Society?

 

1:52 – MARTIN CANNON: Thomas More Society is a public interest law firm with cases nationwide, protecting religious liberty, freedom of speech, pro-life interests obviously. Those three things mostly.

 

2:15 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: And Martin, I should have mentioned this earlier, but our first episode of Exposed: Abortion in America was with Lauren Handy, and she’s your client, correct?

 

2:22 – MARTIN CANNON: Yes. And she is…just a beautiful, wonderful woman. Wonderful woman.

 

2:31 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: And you, when did you first start representing her?

 

2:35 –MARTIN CANNON: When she was charged here.

 

2:37 –EMILY ERIN DAVIS: And big question for you, how did you become aware of the DC Five babies?

 

2:45 – MARTIN CANNON: Well, about five minutes after they came off the truck, I got a phone call from my clients, Lauren Handy and Terrisa Bukovinac saying my gosh, look what we have here. What are we supposed to do? I think they were talking to every attorney they could get a hold of. It certainly wasn’t just me, you know, this is a very alarming thing and there’s all kinds of, you know, reflexive reactions to it and they, they wanted good advice on what to do.

 

3:15 – MARTIN CANNON: So they talked to lots of people and rather promptly, they made arrangements through actually another attorney to have these babies made available to deliver to law enforcement, which happened very quickly.

 

3:32 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: Looking back on that. Do you think that they acted in the right way? Was that a right, the right approach to something this horrific?

 

3:40 – MARTIN CANNON: Yes, I believe so. The Five raised very fair questions. Two of them particularly raised the question of whether they had been born alive and left to die. And the other three raised questions of partial birth abortion, which is illegal everywhere and, and the everywhere is important as is the born alive and left to die thing because I think local law enforcement took the position that there are no laws against abortion. No restrictions in D.C. Therefore, it’s not possible to do an illegal abortion. But a baby that’s left that, that is born alive is no longer a pregnancy under any stretch or any reading of the abortion legal landscape. And federal law makes it a crime to neglect that child.

 

4:34 – MARTIN CANNON: And then, as far as, and that’s the born alive part and partial birth abortion is illegal everywhere in the country including Washington, D.C. So partial birth abortion and babies born alive and left to die are outside of the otherwise permissive aspect of abortion in Washington, D.C.

 

4:55 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: And Martin, can you go over that just a little bit more? So you said there might have been confusion from the police. Why is that again? Because of D.C.’s laws? And, and what is a federal abortion crime?

 

5:11 – MARTIN CANNON: Well, under federal, there are two important federal laws. One is the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which at its core and its most important feature simply says that a baby outside the woman’s body at any stage of development is a person, period. And, and a person is entitled, you know, the doctors and parent teachers, everybody pretty much has a duty to assist a child in need. They are utterly dependent, and we don’t get to neglect them.

 

5:49 – MARTIN CANNON: The law further goes on to say that, that a baby born alive must be given care. So, so in, in even in D.C., if a baby is born alive, doesn’t matter how far along in the, in the gestation period he or she is, this child is a person and he wasn’t five minutes ago, you know, supposedly in the, in the womb, but now he’s a person and that means not only does the doctor have a duty to, to provide it and care for him, but it also makes it appropriate for outsiders to intervene on his behalf.

 

6:29 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: That’s really interesting. And, and can you go into the partial birth abortion just a little bit more? How, how come that is a federal abortion crime?

 

6:38 – MARTIN CANNON: Well, the federal law makes partial birth abortion illegal. And of course, we all know what partial birth abortion is. It’s a method of delivering a full-size human baby without dismembering it first. And there are reasons the doc doesn’t want to do that. First of all, when a baby is that big, it’s hard to tear them apart.

 

7:00 – MARTIN CANNON: But maybe more important to the doctor is that if you can take a baby out in one piece, you aren’t, instead of dismembering him inside the womb, you are eliminating the risk of perforating the uterus and you are eliminating the risk of leaving jagged bone fragments and other parts of the baby inside the woman. It’s in the interest of the doctor and arguably the interest of the woman from the doctor’s perspective to bring any baby out intact almost at any age.

 

7:35 – MARTIN CANNON: So they want to do this, but with very late term babies that the head makes that difficult. So what do we do? We deliver the baby most of the way and then we reach up and puncture the back of his skull, suck out his brains, collapse the cranium and bring him out the rest of the way. Now, that’s the theory. In reality, and that’s what’s illegal, in reality, the doctor knows perfectly well that there is no moral magic in a four-inch trip through the birth canal. This baby that he, that he is allowed to kill in this fashion.

 

8:14 – MARTIN CANNON: And as Santangelo has even said, he says you’re here for a procedure, you’re going to have a procedure. The upshot of what he says is you’re here for an outcome and you’re going to get it, that being a dead baby. So the, the abortionist that is comfortable killing a baby inside the womb is just as comfortable bringing that baby out intact if you can. And just letting it die.

 

8:36 – MARTIN CANNON: And so, so the partial birth abortion ban and the fact that, that we even have to be having this discussion really addresses the fact that the doctor performing a partial birth abortion isn’t likely to be very fastidious about trying to kill this child. When Roe blew open this huge space in our, in our society that allowed for abortion, we created an industry over 50 years that got bigger and bigger and more embedded and rooted in our economy. And of course, we killed 60 million kids in the, in the process.

 

9:19 – MARTIN CANNON: It’s just a wickedness and these five babies bring that before everybody’s eyes. That’s the real reason they must be investigated. The videos of Dr. Santangelo that you’ve probably seen that I have watched in their completeness, not just the shorter live action version that is, you know, a kind of edited version for the sake of brevity, but I’ve watched the whole thing and I have painstakingly transcribed it, word for word. It’s clear to me that Santangelo is speaking from experience when he, you know, says a baby being born alive, you know, it doesn’t happen here. But as he goes along, he gets talking a little more freely and a little more carelessly. It becomes pretty obvious that those, that that does in fact happen. And then he says very frankly that when it does, we won’t help that child. So that’s a big deal.

 

10:14 – MARTIN CANNON: When you add to that, the fact that he does abortions in exactly the fashion addressed by the Society of Family Planning, and a later study that indicates that these abortions will result in a 50% rate of live birth. That’s pretty appalling stuff. So we know what’s going on in that clinic, whether these five babies can be proven or not, we know it is happening. It is implausible that it would not be. So, so that’s item number one.

 

10:48 – MARTIN CANNON: Item number two is of course the Curtis Bay thing, these babies that came off the truck weren’t even supposed to be on that truck. There are layers upon layers of federal regulation about transporting fetal remains and dead bodies and medical waste and so forth.

 

11:05 – MARTIN CANNON: But the point is that these babies demonstrate where abortion has come. You know, when Roe came down 50 years ago, nobody anticipated this. We should have, because when you allow for evil, you’re go,  you’re going to get it. You know, we get what we tolerate and there aren’t limits on that. We are, there’s, there’s wickedness everywhere and we have to be we have to be aware of it. We have to push back on it at all times. You open the door, it’s coming through.

 

11:39 – MARTIN CANNON: So this is what these babies really show us the end result of Roe and what it has done to our social consciousness and callousness.

 

11:51 – MARTIN CANNON: You know, people will look at the judge in Lauren’s case. Very good judge. Very sharp. I think she can’t see her way through this issue, but at one point she referred to these pictures of the Five as “fetal tissue.” You know, that’s, that’s kind of amazing. OK? You know, it just shows you how far we’ve come and how blinded we can be.

 

12:19 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: That makes me think Martin, you know, they say the law is the best teacher. So for us, what has Roe taught us then?

 

12:27 – MARTIN CANNON: What, what Roe taught us. Although I think there’s a flip side of the coin it’s worth noticing. Yes, the law is a teacher. When Roe came down, half the people in the country were just horrified. Abortion was illegal in practically every state. That’s what people were used to. That’s what the law had taught them now. And now it’s legal everywhere and everybody sees that at the time of Roe. People are horrified. 50 years later, most of those same people are acquiescent. That is the effect of legality. To people who don’t live and breathe an issue, they get their cues about what’s right and wrong from what is legal.

 

13:10 – MARTIN CANNON: But here’s the fun part. How much worse should it be then for people, kids who weren’t even alive before Roe who’ve grown up knowing nothing but the legality of abortion, they should be all in on abortion. No question about it. It’s just what they’re used to. They’ve never known anything different. And yet look at the March for Life. Practically any other pro-life event. Three fourths of the people there are younger than Roe. The effect of legality has been matched by a message of life.

 

13:50 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: So let’s get up to speed here because two years ago, roughly was when the D.C. Five were discovered by your client Lauren Handy and Terrisa. And now there has been a breaking news event that’s kind of kicked this case back up. Can you, can you explain to me what’s happened in the last few weeks?

 

14:12 – MARTIN CANNON: You got to understand the history on the medical examiner. So when the FACE case came up very shortly after the babies were delivered to the examiner, my client is also charged with FACE. And I sent the medical examiner a letter saying don’t dispose of those babies, you know, they’re relevant to the FACE case. He writes me back a letter. Maybe it was an email saying, what relation can these babies have to an event, a FACE violation charged for events that occurred a year and a half ago? I responded to that.

 

14:50 – MARTIN CANNON: I could share with you the letter if you want explaining why I thought they were connected and why he needed to retain those and he agreed to do so. Over the course of, you know, the next nine months or whatever it was as we prepared for her trial, I had conversations with various pathologists and, and so forth and shared with them videos and photographs of the babies. They were appalled but it’s hard to get somebody to testify, you know, kind of make that jump from being appalled to actually talking about it. And at some point, we just decided not to try and have an expert testify about these babies. Doesn’t mean that they don’t raise fair questions. We just decided as a strategic matter to kind of focus elsewhere.

 

15:40 – MARTIN CANNON: So once the trial was over and of course, she hasn’t been sentenced yet and things could be appealed, but once the trial was over, the medical examiner called me back and said, hey, you know, nobody’s interested in these babies anymore. We’re going to dispose of them, you know, within a week or something. If we don’t have a court order to the contrary. And I believe he mentioned, the DOJ, it might have been the U.S. Attorney’s office, doesn’t really matter. He, he was kind of kind of sending me the message that the administration had no interest in investigating these babies.

 

16:20 – MARTIN CANNON: So that’s when, you know, all the alarms went off and so many organizations were, were just pedal to the metal trying to get Congress to issue orders saying we’re going to investigate these kids, don’t dispose of the babies. And, and I think that mostly happened because my preference was to get it from Congress, not try to get it from our trial judge. And so that’s where you wind up with Thomas More Society and lots of other organizations knocking on doors and making a lot of noise. And we get, say the letter from Ted Cruz and, and other representatives talking about doing this investigation.

 

17:03 – MARTIN CANNON: And then the medical examiner appropriately says, ok, we’re not going to do anything with these babies until Congress has done whatever it wants to do. So I think that’s about where it sits right now. We need to keep the pressure on Congress to do the investigation.

 

17:20 Why on Earth with all of the priorities and things happening and this being an election year, why on Earth would the Biden administration put their thumb on the scale here or weigh in here?

 

17:34 – MARTIN CANNON: Well, they want these babies to go away, you know, any so-called pro-choice person especially in an election year really doesn’t want this coming up. You know, the, the more abortion gets talked about, the more the babies win. And that’s without the pictures. But you put these Five into the public conversation and I think it’s, I think it’s just, it just demolishes the pro-choice argument. Anyway, it just destroys them. They don’t want to be trying to defend killing these babies but they, but they have no other choice.

 

18:12 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: Yeah, and so continuing on with Congress putting pressure on to make sure that this investigation happens, what else needs to happen in order to determine whether these crimes occurred?

 

18:26 – MARTIN CANNON: Well, there are, there are things that can be examined to decide some threshold issues.

 

18:35 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: And Martin, since we, one of the things that the medical examiner said was that they needed a court order to keep, to keep the children from heading to the incinerator, but they don’t have a court order. So why do you think that they have not sent the babies to the incinerator?

 

18:58 – MARTIN CANNON: I don’t know if he said court order when he called me, he might have, but that’s reasonable enough. That’s what he would expect. But what really matters, and he’s a smart enough guy to understand it, an order from anyone who’s got the authority to, to call and conduct a hearing and subpoena witnesses and evidence. And that can come from Congress just as well as it can come from a judge. So, when he gets a letter from Ted Cruz, I don’t think he’s going to say this is not a, a court order, this is just a congressional thing. He’s not going to be that reckless. So my understanding is that after he got Senator Cruz’s letter and, and there may have been others, he just decided to keep these babies in the freezer for longer until Congress does what it’s going to do.

 

19:51 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: But how can people that are listening to this, I mean, what can we do?

 

19:57 – MARTIN CANNON: I think that the main thing is to keep pressure on Congress to investigate, not just these babies but investigate the clinic itself. Congress has little interest and maybe no authority to investigate clinics elsewhere in the country. But D.C. is not a state. It’s not really even a, a municipality under the typical theories of things. D.C. is, is a separate kind of creature and it is governed by Congress. So, so senators and congressmen literally have law enforcement authority over D.C. much like a police chief or a sheriff or somebody might have in other states. Congress can investigate crimes in D.C. And that’s what they need to do.

 

20:52 – MARTIN CANNON: You know, it got a lot of senators and representatives on board a couple of weeks ago when all that was going on, they really did send it down all the right pipelines. But these guys are busy and there’s a lot of stuff going on all the time. There’s a lot of politics going on. These babies can fall off a center stage if we don’t keep the pressure on.

 

21:15 – MARTIN CANNON: I think it’s very interesting and maybe it shows that we’re turning a corner societally or that, like these five babies demonstrate, we’ve come so far that anybody can see it. You know, Lauren and her group don’t fit the mold of the typical pro-lifers. They come from every conceivable philosophical or political or religious background, but they’re sitting in prison because they can see what everybody ought to be seeing, which is that we shouldn’t be killing these babies.

 

21:47 – MARTIN CANNON: This is an issue that, that is huge. It is critical to the character of our nation and I believe to its survival, and so pro-life people need to step up and turn up the temperature on it. And in a self-governing population, the best way to do that is to not just vote but communicate with your representatives.

 

22:14 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: All right, Martin Cannon of the Thomas More society. Thank you for weighing in here.

 

22:20 – MARTIN CANNON: You are very welcome. It’s been a pleasure.

 

22:27 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: Join us for our next episode as we’ve come full circle ending where we began for now with the D.C. Five’s rescuer, Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising’s director and activist Lauren Handy. Join us as we speak to her in federal prison and get her take on what’s transpired over the last few weeks, and where we go from here.

 

23:40 – EMILY ERIN DAVIS: Time is critical as the bodies of these children, the D.C. Five, could be sent to the incinerator any day. If you, like us, want an investigation and an autopsy done to confirm the truth of the children’s untimely death, please contact D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and the D.C. chief of police. Tell them you demand justice and for them to not destroy the bodies of the D.C. Five babies.