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BROOKES, OR, May 13, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A U.S. waste-to-energy facility has been forced by the county in which it operates to cut ties with a Canadian provider of biomedical waste after the story broke globally last month that some of that waste allegedly includes the remains of babies destroyed by abortion in B.C. facilities.

The Marion County Board of Commissioners moved to cancel the county’s contract with biomedical waste-hauler Stericycle, despite the company that owns and operates the waste‐to‐energy facility claiming that aborted babies are not being burned for electricity.

“It’s not just inaccurate; it’s completely false,” Jill Stueck, vice president of marketing and communications for Covanta Energy Corporation — the company that owns and operates the plant in Brooks — told the Woodburn Independent at the end of April. Stueck said Stericycle assured her that aborted babies did not make up part of its waste stream entering the Oregon incinerator.

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LifeSiteNews attempted numerous times to contact Stericycle by phone and email, but never received a response. The medical waste giant has also refused interviews with mainstream news services.

Stericycle has a long history of collaboration with the abortion industry in the collection, transportation, and incineration of aborted babies.

Pro-life activists called for Stericycle to be investigated last year after evidence surfaced that the medical waste giant unlawfully dumped the bodies of babies killed by convicted abortionist Kermit Gosnell into a municipal landfill. In 2012, Stericycle was reported to have been servicing the late-term abortion facility of Steven Brigham, who at the time was facing numerous charges including murder. In 2011, Stericycle was fined $42,000 for illegally dumping aborted babies into a municipal landfill in Texas along with household and commercial garbage.

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It remains unclear how Stericycle can defend its claim that aborted babies are not being burned in the facility. The B.C. Ministry of Health told the B.C. Catholic by email that “biomedical waste” shipped to the U.S. to be incinerated includes “human tissue, such as surgically removed cancerous tissue, amputated limbs, and fetal tissue.” The original communication, obtained by LifeSiteNews explains that “fetal tissue” consists of “early miscarriages or abortions.”

Health Shared Services BC (HSSBC), responsible for Stericycle’s contract, confirmed to LifeSiteNews that some of the “human tissue” waste leaving the province’s facilities does in fact include “abortions.”

One possibility is that after receiving the B.C. biomedical waste, Stericycle sorts though the human tissue, separating aborted babies from other “waste” to ensure that none of it ends up in the Oregon waste-to-energy facility.

No matter what the story, Marion County has had enough. Along with severing ties with Stericycle, the county has also amended its laws to “prohibit the acceptance of fetal tissue as medical waste.”

County Commissioner Sam Brentano told the Portland Tribune that the move was necessary to make sure that dead babies were not being incinerated. While the waste-to-energy facility is privately owned and operated, the county has the final say on what is incinerated.

“I have no comfort in trusting them on this,” he said. “That’s just my personal opinion. We’d like to have that confidence, but I don’t know how we could, other than tearing into the containers. I have no confidence that fetuses haven’t been in there.”

Brentano said the county is also asking that all medical-waste companies in business with the facility provide certification that their waste stream does not contain fetal tissue. They must also agree to allow inspections of all waste entering the facility.

“We’re asking for certification. And we will have the ability to — as gross as it is — examine the manifests of boxes,” he said.