JOLIET, ILLINOIS: More than 2,000 medically preserved foetal remains have been found at the Illinois home of a former Indiana abortion clinic doctor who died on September 3, authorities said.

The Will County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release this weekend that an attorney for Dr Ulrich Klopfer’s family contacted the coroner’s office about possible foetal remains being found at the home in an unincorporated part of Will County in northeastern Illinois.

The sheriff’s office said authorities found 2,246 preserved foetal remains but there’s no evidence medical procedures were performed at the home. The coroner’s office took possession of the remains. An investigation is underway.

Klopfer was a longtime doctor at an abortion clinic in South Bend, Indiana. It closed after the state revoked the clinic’s licence in 2015. Klopfer’s licence was suspended by Indiana’s Medical Licensing Board in November 2016 after the panel found a number of violations, including a failure to ensure that qualified staff was present when patients received or recovered from medications given before and during abortion procedures.

Klopfer was believed to be Indiana’s most prolific abortion doctor, with thousands of procedures performed in multiple counties in the state over several decades, the South Bend Tribune reported.

Mike Fichter, the president of Indiana Right to Life, said in a statement sent Friday night that “we are horrified" by the discovery of the fetal remains at Klopfer’s Illinois residence.”