Recall Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, where Swift satirically suggests wealthy Englishmen eat poor Irish babies as a delicacy to solve the problem of a rampant poverty-stricken population. Of course, he never meant a word of it. He meant to shock.

Melanie McDonagh said it best when she commented that “Swift couldn’t have made it up” in regards to the following story:

The remains of at least 15,500 aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated as clinical waste and even used to heat some hospitals in the United Kingdom, an investigation has revealed.

The Department of Health on Sunday issued an instant ban after 10 National Health Service trusts admitted to burning fetal remains alongside garbage and two others used the remains in “waste-to-energy” programs, the U.K. Telegraph reported.

In fact, I wonder if Swift could have even imagined this abhorrent practice.

The remains of tiny aborted or miscarried babies – those who McDonagh calls “unwanted” and “wanted” – were mixed with trash and tossed into an incinerator as a heating source for hospitals. Addenbrooke’s Hospital burned 797 babies for “energy,” but told their mothers they were being cremated. An English investigative news network reported that over the past two years, upwards of 15,500 babies were incinerated.

McDonagh continues:

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.

I couldn’t agree more. Burning the remains of babies in order to heat a hospital is absolutely revolting. However, to the callous energy Nazi, it’s excellently efficient. 

Are words decrying the incineration of tiny baby parts for fuel even necessary? Should this discussion even play a part in our modern, 21st-century, highly evolved world? Forget the moral question of abortion; how about this discovery of complete disrespect for human remains? Should dead people be nothing more that coal, or wood, or propane?

Thank God this has not made it to American shores. Thankfully, Health Minister Dan Poulter said, “This practice is totally unacceptable.” Now that the media exposed the truth, hopefully UK officials will take every measure to stop this immediately.

Let’s leave the atrocities to satire.