Imagine it’s 2014. Nazi concentration camps whose smokestacks emitted the by-product of incinerated human remains were eradicated more than sixty years before. The only place one could see such horrors was in old newsreels or science fiction films.

Not so fast.

It turns out some smokestacks in the U.K. have been billowing out the burned remains of more than 15,000 fetuses over the last two years. This would have necessarily included not only aborted fetuses, but babies that were stillborn or the result of miscarriages as well. Imagine the horror of being told your baby was “cremated,” only to find it was disposed of in a “waste-to-energy” plant and used to heat the hospital.

Tom Bryant of Britain’s Mirror Online writes:

“Forms handed to women at the hospital say remains are “cremated,” not mentioning “incineration.” This goes against guidance from Sands, the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Charity, which states “incineration must not be called cremation.”

Adding to the messiness of the story, one hospital was surprised to learn that fetal remains from another hospital were burned at their facility; which of course means that waste was transported there -- much like the garbage truck that took remains to the disposal-center in Soylent Green.

Britain’s Channel 4 is airing the results of this investigation in a program hosted by Amanda Holden called “Exposing Hospital Heartache.” Coincidentally, two days before the report was to air,the Telegraph reported that the “Department of Health issued an instant ban on the practice which health minister Dr. Dan Poulter branded “totally unacceptable.” Kudos to Holden for doing what journalism was meant to do: expose injustice and keep society in check. It is obvious, however, that many people must have known this was happening, but no one was doing anything about it.  It also appears the Department of Health scrambled to put a ban in place on Sunday night in an effort to stave off backlash that would inevitably come when the story went public.

A comment underneath the story in the Telegraph asked, “As the mothers and staff have discarded them as so much unwanted waste -- why attack the disposal (method)?” Apparently this commenter hastily overlooked the fact that the “fetal remains” also consisted of babies from miscarriages and stillbirths.

I recently had an epiphany while watching a documentary on the Holocaust. I saw the dead, as well as the emaciated living (who likely had days or hours to live after their camps were liberated). Instead of being sickened, I was struck by their beauty; an indescribable beauty that transcended their pain and suffering. I saw people whose minds and physical bodies had been pushed to the limit as they strove to maintain that one great gift from God -- life. How indomitable the human spirit is; how miraculously unyielding the human body can be! Yet how easily we take that gift and deny it to others or discard it like trash.

The fact remains that aborted fetuses in America are either incinerated as medical waste or disposed of in landfills. What seems to have shocked the public with the recent revelations in the UK is that this waste was used to generate heat in what can only be termed “extreme recycling.”

While Briton’s are likely to reel from Channel 4’s revealing documentary on the treatment of fetuses, there’s hope that all reverence for life is not lost. Emerging from a country that like our own seems to be wallowing in degradation, are Britain’s latest viral sensations, “Mr. & Mrs. F.”

Tom Flectcher, one of that country’s most popular singer/songwriters, married his girlfriend, Giovanna Falcone, in 2011. Childhood sweethearts who seemed to epitomize true love, the couple announced they were expecting a baby in a creative video. Months later, after they posted a video called, From Bump to Buzz, the public learned that the couple had photographed Giovanna’s pregnancy every day for nine months. In a touching time-lapse video (complete with an original song), we see them welcome the birth of their first child, Buzz Michelangelo Fletcher.  One can only hope that with role models like the Fletchers -- and others -- the U.K. will at least have a fighting chance at raising a new generation that will put pregnancy and childbirth back where it should be: into the realm of the miraculously divine. Let’s hope a new generation of Americans can be inspired to do the same.

Susan D. Harris can be reached at http://susandharris.com/