Police in New York City honored the short life of a baby girl Saturday after her body was discovered in Brooklyn earlier this year.
New York Daily News reports the baby was estimated to be about 20-weeks gestation, not quite to the stage of viability. People speculated that the baby, named Monica by a pro-life charity that organized her funeral, likely was abandoned after a miscarriage.
On Saturday, six New York Police Department officers served as pallbearers for her funeral at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Brooklyn, according to the report.
The Life Center of New York, which provides support to pregnant and parenting mothers, sponsored the funeral. The pro-life organization named Monica after the mother of St. Augustine, whose dying words were said to have been, “You will remember me at the Lord’s altar, wherever you be.”
“We decided to give her that name,” pro-life advocate Fred Trabulsi said. “Baby Monica, like all of us, deserves dignity and respect in living and dying.”
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According to the report, the baby’s body was discovered under a tree near Nathaniel Greene School in February in Brooklyn. Police said she was found in a bag with bloody clothing.
When it learned about the baby, the pro-life organization asked the medical examiner for permission to give her a funeral. After testing and investigations were completed, the Life Center received her body at the end of June.
Baby Monica’s body was buried in the Guardian Angel section of Resurrection Cemetery in Staten Island with other abandoned babies, according to the organization.
Pro-life advocates urged people to pray for the baby’s mother.
“As we are living in a ‘culture of death’ and a throw away society, the Life Center wants to show that life is sacred from beginning to end, praying that what we do here will advance the culture of life,” the organization wrote on its website.
