Thai police found the remains of almost 1 000 illegally aborted foetuses hidden at a Buddhist temple in Bangkok on Friday, with more grisly discoveries expected.
The bodies, wrapped in plastic bags, were discovered in a newly opened area of the mortuary days after authorities found 348 in the first room to be searched.
Two temple undertakers have admitted stashing foetuses in three different storage units, leading to the new inspection, police said.
“In just one room we have found 950 foetuses and we are now opening the next room,” said Colonel Sombat Milintajinda, area commander of Bangkok Metropolitan Police.
He said some had been stored there for more than a year.
The discoveries have shocked Thailand and highlighted the scale of illegal abortions in a country where the procedure is only allowed when delivery would harm the mother or the pregnancy is the result of rape.
“This reflects the severity of the problem,” said Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, although he rejected suggestions that the abortion law be amended, saying it was “flexible enough”.
The public health ministry, which ordered a nationwide crackdown on abortion clinics as a result of the finds, estimates that of one million pregnancies in Thailand each year, 80 000 are illegally terminated.
So far a 33-year-old woman has been arrested and confessed to carrying out illegal abortions, said Lieutenant Colonel Dilok Ruennet, chief investigator of Phya Krai police station, where the temple is located.
He said the two undertakers had told police they were hired separately by a network of abortion clinics and had no idea how many foetuses they had stored in the mortuary.
They would normally have disposed of the corpses by placing them with the remains of people being cremated, but the furnaces had broken and the number of stored bodies had built up while repair work was carried out.
Buddhist temples in Thailand not only perform cremation ceremonies, but also store bodies in specially refrigerated areas. – AFP