BY JOHN DUNPHY
Staff Writer
MIGUEL JUAREZ staff Janice O’Brien (l) and others pay respects during a funeral Mass for 19-week-old fetus Monday. The service was led by the Rev. Michael Krull. SAYREVILLE — A funeral ceremony and burial was held Monday for a 19-week-old fetus found at the county’s wastewater treatment plant last week.
The 5-month-old fetus, named John Paul after the late pope by the Our Lady of Victories Pro Life Group that organized the funeral, was laid to rest near the entrance to New Cavalry Cemetery, Washington Road, on Monday afternoon.
Janice O’Brien, chairwoman of the church group and wife of Sayreville Mayor Kennedy O’Brien, decided to put together the funeral when she read about the gruesome discovery at the water treatment plant last week in the newspaper. The discovery was made April 6.
“He deserved better,” O’Brien said of John Paul. “[As a pro-life group] we try to put our money where our mouth is. This is a life, a short one, but already he’s touched so many people.”
The Rev. Michael Krull, pastor at Our Lady of Victories Church, Main Street, conducted the funeral.
“On Wednesday, we probably didn’t think we’d be doing this,” he told the approximately 50 people in attendance. “We wonder, whenever a little child has died, what his life would have been.”
O’Brien said the decision to name the fetus after the late pontiff was one shared by everyone in the pro-life group, as well as by the Rev. Krull.
“I thought it should be the name,” O’Brien said. “Pope John Paul II had a special love of children.”
Fliers with quotes from the pope were handed out during the ceremony.
Robert Latham, operations superintendent with the Middlesex County Utilities Authority, was on duty at the time the fetus was discovered at the plant, in a bar screen used to catch large objects within the water way. He reported the finding to authorities.
He said medical examiners had believed someone must have had what is referred to as a “spontaneous miscarriage” and flushed the fetus down the toilet. Once the decision was made to hold a funeral for the fetus, the funeral home was contacted.
In cases of unborn fetuses, if they are 20 weeks or older at the time of death, a death certificate is issued and the mother is given the option of burial or cremation of the fetus, according to Eric Muench, public affairs coordinator with Raritan Bay Medical Center.
If the unborn fetus is under 20 weeks old and the mother chooses not to have a burial, it is “treated as medical tissue waste, which means it is disposed by incineration,” Muench said.
He said he did not know who would be responsible for an unborn fetus if the mother is not known, as the hospital has not dealt with a situation where that was the case.
O’Brien said she did not want the fetus to be treated as medical waste, which prompted her to take action.
“He’s not medical waste,” she said. “[At 19 weeks old] this is a fully formed child.”
Latham was in attendance at the funeral, along with his wife, Ann Marie, and their six children.
“I think what [O’Brien] did was wonderful,” Robert Latham said. “To see something like this is upsetting. It affects our whole family; that’s why we’re here.”
Originally expected to be buried in a part of the Roman Catholic cemetery dedicated to infant deaths, the Rev. Krull made the decision to bury the fetus at the entrance, below a statue of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
“It will always be a reminder to us of the beauty and dignity of life,” he said.
Though O’Brien had been visibly shaken at the funeral proceedings over the incident, she said no ill will was harbored against the unknown mother of the fetus.
“It just seems like she panicked and didn’t know what to do,” she said. “We want this mother to be at peace and know that he is taken care of.”