Tattoo artist provides final resting place for unborn babies

Trung regularly receives phone calls from parents who have lost their babies during pregnacy.

He recently got that same call from a couple who had just had an abortion.

“Please help us to bury our child,” the couple said.

He took the four-week fetus home and carefully wrapped it in a cloth before putting the body into a box in a freezer. Trung buried the body in a collective grave, which is now the final resting place for about 300 unborn children.

Ngo Quang Trung has provided final resting places for unborn children.

Four years ago, Trung set up a volunteer group to give babies who never made it into this world a proper burial. Some he has found dumped in garbage cans, while others are left outside churches and pagodas.

“All I want is for these unfortunate babies to have a home after death,” Trung said.

Trung adopted all the unborn babies he had buried. He has given all the babies the middle name Thien, which means good deed in English. He has a list with the names of all his adopted children, which now numbers around 300.

Local people helped raise funds to buy Trung a freezer to store the dead fetuses and build the collective grave.

“All my children live in the same home here in the collective grave so that they can play with each other,” he said.

The collective grave where the unborn babies have been buried.

His wife Nguyen Thi Van supports her husband’s voluntary work, saying she believes his good deeds will bring happiness to their family and to future generations, according to Buddhist belief.

“When he is busy or not in town, I do his work for him,” she said.