The revelation comes just one day after the discovery that 351 stillborn babies and fetuses were being kept in the morgue of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul Hospital, some as long as two decades.
Dr. Axel Kahn, a member of France's national ethics committee tells the Associated Press, "I think that there are fetuses and stillborn infants in all maternity wards at university hospitals. Once, it was the norm ... Researchers who needed them for their work asked obstetricians not to dispose of them."
French law currently calls for creamation of the bodies of unclaimed stillborn babies within 10 days. Fetuses cannot be used for medical purposes, except with parental consent. In such a case, the body must be cremated within six months.
Paris hospital offcials say jars in Saint-Vincent-de-Paul's morgue contained autopsied bodies and dismembered body parts, some speculated to date as far back as 1985; twenty bodies had been conserved in the last year.
Although most were either aborted fetuses or stillborn babies, at least two had been born alive and died shortly after.
The hospital has not said who kept the fetuses or why. Newspaper reports indicate only a few people had access to the two-room annex, kept under lock and key.
A woman's search for the remains of a fetus she aborted in '02, led to the discovery. Caroline Lemoine, 27, says she called the hospital to verify her child had been cremated. Instead, she was told the body had never been disposed of.
