Legal and Illegal, All Equally Dead

Little is known about the death of Sharon Margrave. On May 21, 1970, she died following a safe and legal abortion in Los Angeles County, California. She was 25 years old.

In May of 1934, Mary Schwartz asked Marie Hansen, a coworker, to help her arrange an abortion. That same day, a Monday, Marie took Mary to Dr. Justin L. Mitchell's office south. Marie had undergone an abortion at Mitchell's hands three years earlier, and, telling him that her friend “wants to get fixed up,” she negotiated a discount from the usual price of $50 to $30. The next morning, the two women again went to Mitchell's office. Marie waited outside during the abortion, then took Mary home with her to recover. That evening, Mary took ill, so Marie called Mitchell and told him that Mary “was bad sick.” Mitchell told Marie to give Mary castor oil, and place warm towels on her abdomen to help with the pain. This did not alleviate Mary's pain, so on Marie took her back to Mitchell's office on Thursday evening and Friday morning. Marie told Mitchell, "Don't forget to scrape her. . . . and do a good job." At 4:00 Saturday morning, Marie was very concerned and called Mary's lover, Joe Henja, who was a foreman at the meat plant. Joe complied with Marie's request that he come right away and get Mary. He called his own doctor then rushed Mary to a hospital, where Mary died, likely on or slightly before May 21, 1934.

According to her husband, Baptist, 26-year-old homemaker Mary Jane Douds had been in ill health for four years. When he'd come home from work on the morning of Monday, May 18, 1900, he found her sick in bed. He wanted to call a doctor, but “she would not have it.” Baptist figured that his wife must be menstruating, since she always had difficult periods. When he came home on Saturday, he found Mary Jane in even worse condition. He sent for Dr. Staub, who treated her four or five times before recommending that she go to the hospital on Sunday. Mary Jane refused, asking for her old doctor, Dr. Heurits of Turtle Creek, who came to the house at about noon. Heurits prescribed medication for Mary Jane, but she couldn't keep it down. Baptist sent for another doctor, J.J. Green, who arrived at about 8:30 on the evening of May 20, then sent for his assistant, who stayed to provide care to Mary Jane under Green's supervision until about 3 a.m. She got weaker and finally lost consciousness a few minutes before her death at around 9:00 a.m. On May 21. Green diagnosed her cause of death as septic peritonitis from an abortion performed by an unknown perpetrator.

What's a Few Dead Women Between Friends?

I get angry every time the Democrats do this -- and they do it on a regular basis -- but it's in particularly poor taste to do this so soon after the Kermit Gosnell trial. They're attacking prolife pregnancy centers again.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), has sponsored the so-called "Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women's Services Act" (H.R. 2030), designed to protect women "at an extremely vulnerable time in their lives" from prolifers who might offer them food, shelter, medical care, and friendship instead of selling them an abortion.

Robert A. Heinlein famously defined an honest politician as "one who stays bought." I sent Rep. Maloney an email expressing my disgust, but she and the other Democrats in Congress won't start to care about whether women live or die as long as they're getting large campaign donations from the people who are killing them.

Nevertheless, it doesn't hurt to let these honest politicians know that we're wise to what's going on, that the abortion lobby is trying to throw up a smoke screen to block investigation into the goings on that truly endanger women. So here's contact information for the stalwart defenders of abortionists' rights to endanger patients. Their names link to their FaceBook pages.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)
Phone: 212-987-5516
email: carolyn@carolynmaloney.com

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
Phone: 202-224-4744
email: through contact form

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Phone: 202-224-3224
email: contact@lautenbergfornj.com

I've contacted all of them through FaceBook and email. If anybody can go with a cooler head and more tempered words, please do so. I've gone all Bad Cop. Maybe a few Good Cop emails will help to break the shell of indifference to women's lives.

Nurse, Doctor, Fake Doctor

Pitkanen was also charged with the abortion deaths of Violet Morse and Margie Fraser. On May 20, 1939, 37-year-old widow Hilja Johnson of Butte, Montana, died from complications of an incomplete abortion. A surgical nurse, Gertrude Pitkanen (pictured), admitted at the coroner's inquest that Hilja had come to her office, and that she had later visited Hilka at her home and advised her to go to a hospital. Pitkanen was charged with murder in Hilja's death. She fled, but was located about a year later, living near Columbia Gardens. She was brought to court in a wheelchair, pleaded innocent, and was jailed in lieu of $5,000 bond. The charges were dropped in 1940, for reasons not reported. Pitkanen was also charged with the abortion deaths of Violet Morse and Margie Fraser. The fact that Pitkanen married a former Butte police is an interesting tidbit of information that raises questions about how she kept her freedom in spite of her openly practicing abortion facility and black-market baby operation.

Dr. Claude C. Long ran a rather fishy medical practice in San Francisco. He, his wife Isabel, and a relative named Ann Fisher, were charged with the May, 1937 murder of 26-year-old Genevieve Arganbright. Long admitted -- once he'd been caught -- that Genevieve had died while he'd been performing an abortion on her. The jury acquitted Mrs. Long and Ann Fisher, but found Dr. Long guilty of manslaughter. Genevieve was, according to her husband, Perry, about 2 1/2 months pregnant at the time of her death. She had been in good health, athletic, and in the habit of taking long hikes, dancing, swimming, and playing tennis. At about 6:45 on the evening of May 20, she left, telling her husband she going for her abortion. She was planning to go by streetcar to the Valencia Street office, where a driver was to take her to somewhere on Haight Street for the actual surgery. She brought with her $50 that she had borrowed to pay for the abortion.
That was the last time Mr. Arganbright saw his wife. Nobody at Dr. Long's practice called to tell him that his wife had died on the operating table. Long and his accomplices sent Genevieve's body to a mortuary, saying that she'd died of a heart attack and that her family would be in touch. Long and his wife fled. Perry called Long's office and was told that his wife had left. Meanwhile, the mortuary, suspicious because the dead woman's family had not contacted them and the doctor had not brought a death certificate. They contacted the police, who brought the sad news to Genevieve's husband. Long was captured and tried. He tried to argue that the abortion had been legal, performed to save Genevieve's life because she had a heart condition. But the prosecution noted Long's fishy behavior and pointed out that even had the abortion been legal, the appalling injury that he caused to his patient would still warrant prosecution. The jury gave heed to the expert testimony that had Genevieve been ailing, an outpatient abortion was taking undue risks with her life, and returned a guilty verdict. Long was granted his request for a new trial, and his conviction overturned, on the grounds that the judge had improperly instructed the jury, placing the onus on the defense to prove the abortion had been medically indicated, rather than on the prosecution to prove that it had not been.

On May 20, 1870, Mrs Matilda Henningsen, aka Matilda Hunt, died at No. 182 East Seventh Street in Brooklyn from infection caused by an abortion. Mr. A. A. Wolff, from Denmark, purported to be a physician, but is not identified as such in the source document. Six fetuses, along with various instruments, were found in his office. The jury determined that Wolff had performed the fatal abortion.

Quackery Kills, Legal and Illegal

Susan Levy was 30 years old when she underwent a safe and legal abortion at the Family Planning Associates in Mission Hills, California on April 9, 1992. FPA is a member of the National Abortion Federation. Susan, originally from Florida, was homeless and was living in a car owned by a friend. On May 19, 1992, she was found dead in that car. The cause of death was determined to be from an infection that developed from fetal tissue that was not removed during her abortion. Other women known to have died after abortion at Allred's facilities include Denise Holmes, Patricia Chacon, Mary Pena, Josefina Garcia, Lanice Dorsey, Joyce Ortenzio, Tami Suematsu, Deanna Bell, Christina Mora, Ta Tanisha Wesson, Nakia Jorden, Maria Leho, Kimberly Neil, Maria Rodriguez, and Chanelle Bryant.


The autopsy report for 22-year-old Joan Camp attributed her death to "complications apparently as a result of a recent termination of pregnancy." Joan had been found unconscious in the morning on May 18, 1985. She was rushed to Memorial Hospital in San Leandro, California, where doctors tried to save her life.
Their efforts were futile. Joan died the next morning, May 19, from clots in her lungs. The CDC classified Joan's death as "unknown" abortion, because they could not find out where the abortion was done. The CDC does not count an abortion death as a legal abortion death unless they can verify that the person who performed the abortion was a licensed physician, or another legally qualified medical professional in states that allow non-physician abortions.

Our final anniversary today takes us all the way back to 1958. On May 19, 28-year-old Amelia Weber died at the home of 58-year-old Dr. Charles Cobel in Brooklyn and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery. "[F]rom the privacy of the burial and other mysterious circumstances surrounding the case, the body, six days after interment, was ordered by the Coroner to be exhumed for medical examination." An inquest concluded:
"Dr. Cobel received an application from Mrs. Weber, who had left home for that purpose with her husband's consent, on the 8th instant, to produce an abortion upon her person, he did so, and violent inflammation supervened, which baffled his skill. He then called Dr. Kertachmann, pretending that the lungs were the seat of disease, but it was to no purpose."The autopsy revealed noting at all wrong with Amelia other than an abdominal infection caused by the abortion and bringing about her death. Cobel, a known abortionist, was also implicated in the deaths of Antoinette Fennor and Emma Wolfer. However, considering the state of medicine at the time, Cobel seems to have a better track record of patient safety than FPA's Steve Lichtenberg.
 

Gosnell Case Shifts Opinion -- Of People Who Hear of It

"Gosnell Case Is Shifting Public Opinion On Abortion," is the headline on the Investors' Business Daily story. But not all of the public. Only the members of the public who have a clue that Kermit Gosnell isn't a green Muppet.

Their latest poll found the following breakdown of how people's abortion views were changed by reading or seeing news coverage of the Kermit Gosnell trial:

• More pro-life: 42%
• More pro-choice: 17%
• No change: 41%

This would look like good news for life advocates except for one teensie weensie little problem:Only 24% of people surveyed said that they had seen or heard anything about Kermit Gosnell and his "house of horrors."

How could it be that only a quarter of adults were aware of a mass murder trial involving drug trafficking and severed body parts kept in jars?

Perhaps overall the awareness was higher than what IBD found. A Gallup poll found that 54% of respondents weren't following the Gosnell case at all, and only 25% were following the trial either "very closely" or "somewhat closely."

We still wind up with only about 25% of the population having any real awareness of the Gosnell trial, "well below the 61 percent average level of attention Americans have paid to the more than 200 news stories Gallup has measured since 1991."

What if the Gosnell case had gotten even an average amount of media attention? What if 61% of Americans had been made aware of what had been going on at the Women's Medical Society?

Well, 42% of 24% is 10% of the American public drifting further prolife, whereas 42% of 61% would be 26% of the American public drifting further prolife.

In short, the abortion rights movement better pray to whatever god or goddess they pray to that the reporters and producers who were dragged kicking and screaming into covering the Gosnell trial aren't typical Americans, likely to actually re-examine their beliefs when confronted with ugly reality.

Murder or Abortion? A Thought Experiment

Five friends go on Spring Break together. They all come back from Spring Break pregnant.

They discuss their options over the ensuing months. Finally, at 24 weeks,  they decide to opt for abortions. At 24 weeks, the baby has a better than 50/50 chance of survival. Most states that restrict abortions late in the pregnancy also have the legal cutoff at 24 weeks.

The friends go to All Options Reproductive Services on the same day.

All Options Reproductive Services has five doctors, each of whom prefers a different method. These are all real methods that have been used, or are still being used, by real doctors in real abortion practices.

Kenneth uses the Edelin Method: It's a hysterotomy. He performs a c-section but instead of removing the fetus as soon as he opens the uterus, he reaches in and detaches the placenta then waits for the fetus to die from lack of oxygen before removing it.

LeRoy uses the Carhart Method: It's an induction. He injects a drug into the fetal heart to achieve fetal demise. He uses sterile seaweed sticks to dilate the patient's cervix. After a couple of days, the cervix is fully dilated and he administers drugs to induce labor and the dead fetus comes out. Sometimes he has to pull it out with forceps, and because it's been dead for a few days it is soft and comes out in pieces, "like meat in a crock pot."

Martin uses the Haskell Method: It's an extraction. He uses dilators, like LeRoy, to dilate the cervix, but he does not use the drug to ensure fetal demise. He uses forceps to pull the fetus out feet first, then, just before the head is delivered, he shoves scissors into the base of the skull to make a hole, then he suctions out the fetal brain.

Warren uses the Hern Method. It's an evacuation. He uses dilators, like LeRoy, to dilate the cervix, but not as far as LeRoy does. He uses forceps to reach in and grasp parts of the living fetus. As he gets hold of a body part -- an arm, a leg -- he pulls and twists until that part comes out. If it is too difficult to pull a piece off, he reaches in with heavy duty surgical scissors to cut off the body part he's trying to remove. The fetus dies at some point during this process. He continues this until he has removed all of the parts of the fetus and the placenta. 
Kermit uses the Gosnell Method: It's a mixed method. Like LeRoy, he uses dilators and drugs to induce labor. Like Martin, he doesn't ensure fetal demise first. He waits until the entire fetus is delivered, then, like Martin, uses skulls in the base of the skull to ensure fetal demise. The main difference between Kermit's method and Martin's method is where the fetus is when the scissors are inserted.

Each of the friends chooses a different doctor and goes through her abortion. All of them are finished by the end of the week.


Is there any moral difference among the friends' choices or the doctors' methods?

Showery Was Convicted; Why Not Karpen?

Is the sworn testimony of four former employees enough to send an abortionist to prison for killing a live-born infant? Douglas Karpen might want to whip out his Ouija board and talk to Raymond Showery.

Five of Showery's employees testified against him. They said that Showery was performing an abortion in 1979 on a woman who was between five and seven months pregnant. He was performing a hysterotomy, which is basically a c-section, but with the intention of achieving the death of the baby. The baby was a girl, about a foot long, with light brown hair.

The child lay curled up in Showery's hand. She was attempting to breathe. Showery held the placenta over her face. She continued breathing. Showery then dropped her into a bucket of water. Bubbles rose to the surface. Showery then retrieved the child from the bucket and put her in a plastic bag which he tied and set aside. The employees reported that the sides of the bag moved as though somebody was breathing inside it. Eventually the bag stopped moving.

One witness said that he held the bag while Showery put the little girl in it, and that he later put the bag into the freezer where the fetuses were stored.

Showery was convicted in 1983 and sentenced to 15 years in prison, though the body of the infant was never found and employees could not identify the baby's mother from among the facility's patients. Showery had "been convicted of a felony charge of altering his hospital's records," which hindered the state's attmepts to locate the woman. The jury chose to convict him of murder even though they had the option of convicting him of the lesser charge of manslaughter. Karpen might do well to remember that unlike his own workers, Showery's workers only had their testimony, not any photos of the murdered newborn.

Current clinic workers might want to think twice about staying in their jobs. Police and prosecutors look a lot more kindly on people who come forward than on those who wait to get caught then beg for plea deals. Legal help is available to you if you contact one of the following organizations:

• And Then There Were None: Toll-free (888) 570-5501
• Life Dynamics: (940) 380-8800
• Operation Rescue: ($25,000 reward for information leading to arrest and conviction) (316) 683-6790 X 155

Two Doctors Kill One Patient, and an Unknown Perp

Janice Easterbrook, who was 20 years old, traveled with her parents from her home Arcadia, Nebraska to  to Dr. Harry Werbin's Kansas City, Missouri office to arrange an abortion. Werbin took Janice into his office to examine her, then consulted with her parents, explaining that he charged $100 per month of pregnancy, so the charge for Janice's abortion would be $300. Mr. Easterbrook handed $300 to his wife, who handed the $300 to their daughter, who handed it to the doctor. Werbin asked when they wanted the abortion done, and Janice said, "Now is as good a time as any." Werbin took her back into his private office. About ten or fifteen minutes later, Janice emerged, not seeming ill, but with some blood drops on her shoes. Werbin took her back into his office, and instructed her mother to go down to the drug store and buy some Kotex. When Mrs. Easterbrook returned with the Kotex, the parents asked Werbin if Janice should go to the hospital, and he said, "No. Let's leave the hospitals out of it. I know how to take care of it, and what to do." He gave Janice some medication, and gave her parents one of his cards, on which he'd written the name of the U-Smile Motel on Highway 40.

 Janice returned with her family on Saturday morning, May 17, per Werbin's instructions. Werbin took her back into his office for about fifteen minutes. That evening at the motel, Janice began to vomit violently. Her mother called Werbin, who came back and forth to the motel several times, spending more and more time on each visit, staying there most of Saturday night. Janice was sick and in a lot of pain, and Mrs. Easterbrook again suggested taking Janice to a hospital. Werbin reassured the parents that it was not uncommon for women to be in Janice's condition after an abortion. He used a curved instrument about ten inches long to remove some tissue from her vagina.

On Sunday morning, Janice got up to use the toilet, where she passed a mutilated fetus about six inches long. Her parents summoned Werbin, who summoned Dr. Richard Mucie to assist him at about 11:00 a.m. Janice's parents were alarmed that she appeared blue and was breathing rapidly. Werbin and Mucie held a quiet conversation that the parents couldn't overhear, then Mucie picked Janice up and carried her out to Werbin's car, telling her parents to caravan with them to Independence Hospital. After driving about six miles east, Werbin did a U-turn, and the Easterbrooks lost him in traffic. Werbin went to General Hospital, where he met Joseph L. Connors, a non-physician and deputy coroner, at about 3:10 p.m., telling him that the dead woman in his car was a patient he'd been called to treat at the U-Smile for hemorrhage.

Mucie testified that Werbin had called him in to assist in treating a botched self-induced abortion at the motel, and that Werbin had performed a curretage to remove tissue, while Mucie had given her medications to stimulate circulation. In spite of their efforts, Janice died. Mucie concluded that Janice had died from an embolism, possibly air or a clot lodged in the heart or lungs. The autopsy found ample evidence of a pregnancy and an abortion performed with instruments. Janice's uterus had been perforated, and Owens concluded that she had bled to death. Werbin was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to two years. His sentence was upheld on appeal.

It's difficult to distinguish Janice's abortion from a modern, safe-n-legal one. She went to a reputable physician who treated her in his office. Keeping her in a motel room while she recovered is considered perfectly acceptable for late-term abortionists such as LeRoy Carhart in the current day. Delaying before bringing her to the hospital, likewise, isn't unusual. That's how Tonya Reaves died.

******
On May 18, 1925, Della Davis, a 25-year-old Black woman, died in Chicago from an illegal abortion performed that day, leaving behind her husband, Huston. The person responsible for her death was never caught.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see Abortion in the 1920s. During the first two thirds of the 20th Century, while abortion was still illegal, there was a massive drop in maternal mortality, including mortality from abortion. Most researches attribute this plunge to improvements in public health and hygiene, the development of blood transfusion techniques, and the introduction of antibiotics. Learn more here.

Safe and Legal in New York, Illegal in Chicago, and Equally Dead

"Danielle," age 18, had decided to take advantage of the liberalized law, and traveled from Massachusetts to New York for a safe and legal abortion. On May 17, 1972, the abortion was performed. Minutes after the abortion was completed, Danielle was dead from air that had gotten into her blood stream.

Abortion rights activists would claim that, as tragic as Danielle's death was, even more women would have been dying were abortion still illegal in New York. As you can see from the graph below, this theory doesn't hold. Abortion deaths were falling dramatically long before legalization. This steep fall had been in place for decades. To argue that legalization lowered abortion mortality simply isn't supported by the data.

On April 2, 1924, 26-year-old homemaker Mary Whitney underwent an abortion at the Chicago office of Dr. Lou E. Davis. On May 17, Mary died at St. Mary's Hospital of complications of that abortion. Dr. Davis was held by the coroner on May 19. Davis was also implicated in the abortion deaths of Anna Adler and Esther V. Wahlstrom. The permissive attitude toward abortion in Chicago might have played a role in why Davis was free to commit so many lethal abortions.

On May 17, 1919, 27-year-old nurse Gertrude Schaefer, a widow, died at Chicago's Wesley Hospital (pictured) from septicemia caused by an abortion perpetrated by an unidentified person. Since Chicago abortions tended to be perpetrated by doctors and midwives, it's likely that one of them was instrumental in this young woman's death.

On May 17, 1904, Miss Margaret McCarthy died in Chicago's Mary Thompson Hospital from an illegal abortion performed some days earlier at an unknown location. Mrs. Gertrude Plenz was arrested on May 21 for the death, and Benjamin Frederick, a boiler inspector, arrested for complicity. Both Plenz and Frederick were held by Coroner's Jury. Plenz is listed as an unskilled laborer in this arrest, but when she was arrested for the abortion death of Sarah Cushing, her profession was given as midwife, and the fatal abortion was listed as having been performed at a hospital. Margaret's abortion was unusual in that it was performed by a midwife, rather than by a doctor, as was the case with perhaps 90% of criminal abortions.

Note, please, that with general public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good.


For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion 

Abortion Giant's Staggering New Slogan: "Your Baby Will Thank You."

Planned Parenthood has reached a new degree of disconnect with reality with this new advertising banner. What about your visit to Planned Parenthood would your baby thank you for? For aborting its siblings? For aborting him or her and thus sparing him or her the chance to draw breath and ever know your love?

Maybe your baby will thank you for turning around and walking out the door so that he or she didn't become one of the 98% of unborn babies who don't make it out of the Planned Parenthood offices alive.

Here's what that poster should look like:

Seth Williams on the Gosnell Case: What About the Mothers?

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams held a press conference in the wake of Kermit Gosnell's sentencing, and he has so much to say that I'd like to respond. I've already responded to the infanticide aspects -- both Williams' assertion that the case was "groundbreaking" and that Gosnell's sentence would deter other abortionists from slaying live-born infants.

I'll set aside his recounting of the deplorable conditions and practices at Gosnell's mill. An entire book could be written about how disgusting and degrading abortion facilities too often are. Instead, I'll turn to a question raised after Williams made his prepared statement.

I could not hear the question, asked in a woman's voice, but by Williams' response, the reporter asked about why there were no charges filed against the mothers who had in essence handed their babies' lives over to Gosnell.

Williams started by pointing out that there are no legal grounds in Pennsylvania to prosecute a woman seeking what is a legal abortion procedure. As for the women who were beyond the 24-week Pennsylvania limit, prosecutors would have had to be able to prove that the woman knew that she was carrying a viable baby, that the baby in question would be born alive, and that Gosnell would then kill it after birth. As Williams said, that was probably not something Gosnell (or his staff) would have pointed out to the patient during the informed consent process.

I wonder, though, about what legal options he would have felt he had if it could be proved that the women knew that the babies were past the age of viability and that if they were born alive Gosnell would n some unspecified way ensure that there was no live baby to deal with regardless of what condition the baby was in when it emerged. Members of the jury had expressed disgust that the mothers who "waited so long" weren't on trial with Gosnell, so evidently even among the vehemently "prochoice" there is room for judgment against a woman aborting what she knows is a healthy, viable baby -- at least if the baby ends up born alive then murdered.

Seth Williams on the Kermit Gosnell Case: Killing of Viable Babies

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams held a press conference in the wake of Kermit Gosnell's sentencing, and he has so much to say that I'd like to respond. In fact, he says so much that it will take several posts to fully address all of it. Bear with me.

Williams began by pointing out that no woman or child will ever again be harmed by Kermit Gosnell. This is an important thing for supporters of legal abortion to grasp: It was not the work of prochoice advocates that came to protect women and children from Gosnell. Prochoice advocates in a variety of roles, from politicians and bureaucrats to a National Abortion Federation inspector and employees of other abortion clinics, not only allowed Gosnell to practice, but also enabled him. One National Abortion Federation clinic actually employed him and handed patients over to his care. It was not, again, prochoice advocates who acted to protect women from Gosnell. It was only after people who had no connection to abortion rights -- DEA agents and cops on a drug bust -- that any action was taken to shut Kermit Gosnell down.

Should it be only when complete outsiders who don't have a dog in this fight that seedy, dangerous abortionists are shut down?

Williams pointed out that the case is groundbreaking. It certainly is the first time I know of in which an abortionist went on trial for his life for killing live-born infants. Other abortionists have been charged with, and even convicted of, crimes related to the killing infants born alive during abortions, but they have been few and far between, especially when one considers that hundreds of infants, perhaps over a thousand, are born alive in the United States every year during the process of an abortion. Most anecdotal reports are that the babies are simply abandoned to die. Local prosecutors don't want to touch the cases because it's almost impossible to prove that a baby drew breath if it's born prematurely and the lungs don't have a chance to fully inflate. The federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act is being broken in every case in which the babies are simply abandoned, but as far as I know nobody has ever been prosecuted under the act.

The following are cases I know of in which a doctor was convicted of a crime relating to killing an infant born during an abortion:

1975: Dr. Kenneth Edelin, who remains a hero to the abortion rights movement, was found guilty of manslaughter when, during a hysterotomy abortion performed in a hospital operating room (basically a c-section performed with the intent to ensure the death, rather than the survival, of the baby), Edelin reached into the womb, detached the placenta, and watched the clock, waiting to make sure the baby was dead before removing him from the uterus. Edelin's conviction was overturned on appeal.

1977: Dr. William Waddill was tried twice for strangling a 28-week abortion survivor in front of a pediatrician, an emergency physician, and several horrified nurses in a hospital nursery, cursing all the while that he couldn't find the trachea and the baby just wouldn't die. Two hung juries, who argued over whether Waddill had caused the baby's "death" under an obscure legal definition of death, allowed Waddill to walk. He continued to perform abortions, working for National Abortion Federation member clinic chain Family Practice Associates Medical Group.

1979: Dr. Raymond Showery was convicted of murder after a group of his employees came forward to report that he had attempted to smother, then drown, and then finally suffocated a little girl of about six months gestation who was born alive during an abortion at his freestanding abortion hospital in El Paso. Testimony from employees and evidence from the hospital indicated that Showery was a Gosnellesque practitioner, routinely performing abortions late in the pregnancy in his nasty facility, and killing any babies that survived. While he was out on bail pending an appeal for the murder conviction, he performed a fatal abortion on Mickey Apodaca.

1989: Dr. Josepha Melnick was convicted of infanticide for allowing a 32-week aborted baby girl to die of neglect in a Philadelphia hospital  in 1984. The child's death was uncovered when a nurse found the baby gasping in the utility room amid the successfully-aborted fetus slated for disposal about an hour after she was delivered. Despite finding him guilty, the judge declined to punish Melnick in any way, saying, "I think he  has been chastened by this event, has paid a great monetary price and his reputation has suffered." Such a decision, made by a judge right in Philadelphia, would certainly not have given Kermit Gosnell the impression that he had anything to fear in his own practice.

Whether a live-born infant leaves the building still breathing seems to depend entirely upon actions taken by nurses who intervene.

Williams expressed satisfaction with the consecutive life sentences without parole, indicating that he thinks it will serve as a deterrent to other doctors who, faced with a live-born infant, are tempted to simply kill the child. I think that the deterrent will only be effective in Philadelphia, and only as long as Seth Williams remains District Attorney. One doctor's bad luck in getting caught in a place where abortion-related crimes are taken seriously isn't likely to make doctors in other states -- Kansas springs to mind -- where no matter how openly an abortionist is breaking the law, his political connections ensure that he'll never be held accountable.

With the recent revelations regarding Douglas Karpen in Texas (WARNING: Extremely graphic content!), we will see if other abortionists have any cause for alarm. If Karpen walks away a free man with his license and his abortion business still going strong, the prosecution of Kermit Gosnell will be, and remain, one of those flukey things where everything went .... well, wrong if you're the abortionist. Right if you're anybody who really cares about your fellow human beings, both born and unborn.

Could Quacks Thrive Pre-Legalization?

"Most illegal medical abortionists will not handle a case when the pregnancy is beyond the twelfth week, but there are no doubt some exceptions. The technique of the well-accredited criminal abortionist is usually good. They have to be good to stay in business, since otherwise they would be extremely vulnerable to police action."
— Planned Parenthood President Alan Guttmacher, M.D. Babies by Choice or by Chance, 1959

"Call them what you will, abortionists or anything else, they are still physicians, trained as such; and many of them are in good standing in their communities. They must do a pretty good job if the death rate is as low as it is."
— Planned Parenthood Medical Director Mary Calderone, M.D. "Illegal Abortion as a Public Health Problem," American Journal of Public Health, July, 1960

Abortion-rights activists insist that the Philadelphia "house of horrors" operated by Dr. Kermit Gosnell without let or hindrance was not the result of lax oversight in the age of legal abortion, but was caused by oppressive oversight. And, they insist, were abortion again criminalized, practitioners like Gosnell would become the norm.

If this was the case, it certainly was somehow invisible to Planned Parenthood, even though they held a massive conference on induced abortion in 1955. The participants in this conference included doctors Guttmacher and Calderone, as well as public health physicians, professors in obstetrics and gynecology, New York Chief Medical Examiner Milton Helpern, and even criminal abortionist Dr. George Lottrell Timanus, who gave a detailed report on his own thriving practice. The conference found the practice of abortion to be primarily the work of physicians like Timanus, with the serious damage done in the minority of abortions perpetrated by non-physicians.

I have been studying abortion mortality, both legal and criminal, since 1996, and what I have found anecdotally supports the findings of the conference. Any criminal abortionist who drew attention to himself or herself by harming a patient would be, at the very least, severely inconvenienced by an arrest and investigation even if no prosecution went forward. Prosecution was stressful and expensive and might result in the loss of one's medical license even if it did not result in a prison sentence. If convicted, the abortinoist could expect to go to prison for at least five years, perhaps for life. This reality gave these practitioners, as Dr. Guttmacher pointed out, motive to refrain from taking appalling risks with their patients' lives. Patient deaths were, more often than not, related not to quackery, but to the state of medicine in general. No matter who performed the abortion, or how carefully, an infection was a far more deadly complication in the era before antibiotics, and a laceration far more deadly before blood typing and transfusions.

In fact, it was these improvements in medical care, and not the legal status of abortion, that caused maternal mortality in general, and abortion mortality in particular, to plummet decades before abortion was legalized, as you can see in below. (I have yet to account for the leveling-off in the 1950s.)

As far as I can see from seventeen years or research into criminal abortion deaths, the primary factor in the degree of quackery that went on in abortion practice hinged, as it does today, on the will of public officials and the legal system. In times and places where abortion was seen as an abomination, quack abortionists were quickly taken out of circulation. In times and places where abortion was seen as a victimless crime, practitioners were freed to ply their trade with only the annoyance of an occasional trip to the police station for a scolding.

Chicago in the late 19th and early 20th century seemed to be as keen on enforcing abortion laws as Pennsylvania has been recent decades. The authorities were so tolerant of abortion that perhaps the most deadly quack abortionist of all time, Dr. Lucy Hagenow, fled there in 1889 to avoid trouble after she'd been repeatedly prosecuted over a string of abortion deaths in San Fransisco.

Hagenow found Chicago's permissive attitude congenial. Advertising quite openly, as was the norm for Chicago abortionists of the era, Hagenow managed to kill five women before being incarcerated in 1900. Even then, she was only kept out of circulation a single year before being paroled, allowing her to kill three more women. She was sentenced to prison in 1907 but released after serving only ten years. This prison stint seemed to cow Hagenow somewhat, and although she continued to perpetrate abortions, she managed not to kill any of her patients until something finally snapped in 1925 and she turned deadly again, killing six patients before the end of 1926. She was prosecuted and jailed one last time. Hagenow appealed her case and in 1929 won a new trial. However, the judge dismissed the case, noting that there's been no new evidence gathered during Hagenow's incarceration and that at the age of 81 she was so old that she probably wouldn't case any more trouble. "You had better make your peace with God, Lucy Hagenow," the judge told her. "I do not think your months on earth are many." Hagenow, the Associated Press noted, was nearly deaf and "may not have heard. She muttered something, and shambled laboriously from the room." She faded into obscurity and died in 1933.

In Hagenow's era, as in our own, how much damage an abortionist was able to do hinged not on the law, but on the degree to which abortion is accepted and embraced by those with the power to put an end to the quackery by holding abortionists accountable for their crimes.

1916: Death in Chicago Doctor's Office

On May 16, 1916, 25-year-old Lucile Bersworth died at the Chicago office of Dr. Anna Albers from complications of an abortion perpetrated that day. Though Albers was held by the coroner and indicted by a Grand Jury, the case never went to trial. She was rather a respectable physician, at least as of 1912, so she seems an unlikely abortionist.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good.

In fact, due to improvements in addressing these problems, maternal mortality in general (and abortion mortality with it) fell dramatically in the 20th Century, decades before Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across America.

For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see Abortion Deaths 1910-1919.

Nicolette C. and Why I Believe the Karpan Allegations

I was a bit taken aback when the abortionist discussed in the Life Dynamics video turned out to be Douglas Karpen. I'd known that he was quacktastic, greedy, indifferent to the well-being of his patients, and willing to perform post-viability abortions. It just never occurred to me that he'd be aborting the babies alive then slaughtering them in a variety of gruesome ways. (WARNING: Extremely graphic content)

The revelations made by three ex-Karpen employees make Kermit Gosnell's "snipping" seem merciful in comparison. They described Karpen ripping the babies' throats out with Bierer forceps (chosen for their grasping surfaces, pictured), twisting their heads off with his bare hands, jamming instruments through the soft spot into their brains, hooking his finger through their throats, and jamming instruments into their abdomens. How Karpen killed any particular baby, his ex-employees said, depended on whatever he happened to grab first when confronted with a living baby.

The Life Dynamics video. WARNING: Extremely disturbing content.

In retrospect, I should not have been surprised. Clearly he did very late abortions, including a fatal 25-week abortion he'd performed on 15-year-old Denise Montoya. But was Karpen doing these abortions in a manner that the baby could survive?

A suit filed on behalf of Nicolette C, age 16, alleged that Nicolette called Karpen's facility from her home in Louisiana, seeking counsel regarding her pregnancy. Clinic employees advised abortion and quoted a price of $895, with the price to increase with each passing week. About 10 days later, Nicolette called to schedule the procedure, and the price quoted was $1,050.

Nicolette drove alone to the facility, without parental knowledge or consent. Women's Pavillion didn't even ask Nicolette if her parents would consent to the abortion. Upon Nicolette's arrival, the staff quoted a price of $1,800, and refused to proceed without full payment.

Nicolette left the facility to pawn jewelry but was unable to secure sufficient funds, so she returned home to borrow additional money and returned the following day. She paid for the procedure, and laminaria was inserted to dilate her cervix. Nicolette was told to return the following day.

After leaving the facility, Nicolette felt fetal movements, and felt unprepared as she had not been informed of the nature of the procedure or of fetal development. After feeling her fetus move, Nicolette changed her mind about wanting it dead. She returned to the facility, asking that the laminaria be removed and her pregnancy be allowed to continue, but abortionist Karpen did not answer her questions, and told Nicolette to continue with abortion. He told her that the procedure was irreversible and that any attempt to allow the pregnancy to continue would seriously threaten her health. (This is, by the way, not true. Women can change their minds, have the laminaria removed, and continue to term.)

Laminaria sticks,
showing how they
epand to dilate the cervix

When they got to Women's Pavilion, mother and daughter were met by Richard Cunningham rather than by Karpen. They were informed that Cunningham and Karpen had consulted and did not wish to remove the laminaria (pictured) and release Nicolette to other care. After 30 minutes of "high pressure scare tactics," mother and daughter still wished to have the procedure stopped. Cunningham instructed them "to look in the yellow pages for an anti-abortion group," insisted that they sign a release form, and had them leave the facility.

Mother and daughter sought emergency care at a hospital, where Nicolette delivered a 1 lb. 13 oz. infant girl, who Nicolette named Ashley. Despite efforts by hospital staff, Ashley died six months later.

The suit alleged that the actions of Karpen and others at the facility constituted a breach of the law against abortions past 26 weeks except for medical indications. Nicolette's attorney faulted Karpen and the clinic staff with failure to obtain lawful consent; "making false and misleading statements to Nicolette about the development of Ashley, in order to gain Nicolette's consent by fear;" continuing with insertion of laminaria and allowing labor to continue in order to end the life of the fetus when the mother wished for the fetus to live; failing to refer Nicolette to a hospital that could have reversed the abortion and saved Ashley's life; and inflicting deliberate emotional distress "in order to coerce them into allowing the abortion to continue." A suit was also filed for the wrongful death of baby Ashley. (Harris County District Court Case No. 93-33063)

From the "Back Alley" to Main Street

The abortion-lobby response to the Kermit Gosnell mass murder debacle has been to insist that Gosnell was not enabled by prochoicers even though, in the spirit of Janis "Aghast in my Gut" Compton-Carr perhaps, they employed him, referred to him, failed to report him, and deliberately turned a blind eye to him. It's not their fault  because, you see, women were "forced" to go to Gosnell because the unenforced regulations somehow made it impossible for responsible abortionists to undercut Gosnell's supposedly unbeatable discount prices.

Gosnell, the abortion lobby insists, is only an example of what we would see were abortion to again be criminalized.

The abortion lobby seems to forget that first of all, Gosnell arose during the pre-Roe days, already being enabled by prochoice heroes such as Harvey Karman and the Jane abortion ring in Chicago. Had the then-nascent prochoice movement followed the lead of the local feminists -- who were protesting the supercoil experiment and letting the air out of the bus tires outside Gosnell's clinic -- Gosnell would have been recognized as the quack he was, imprisoned, and stripped of his license, and unable to open up and brazenly operate an abbatoir like his Women's Medical Society. Would women really have been worse off if Gosnell had been slapped in irons back in 1972?

What of other "back alley butchers"? It turns out that they, like Gosnell, had their enablers, and were able to flourish in the world of safe-n-legal abortion.

Milan Vuitch

Milan Vuitch

The most celebrated beneficiary of prochoice enabling was Dr. Milan Vuitch. He was openly perpetrating abortions in the District of Columbia, daring anybody to arrest him so that he could challenge the law. They did, and he did, and although the DC abortion law was not struck down, it was re-interpreted so that the state had to prove that the abortion had not been necessary to save the woman's life, rather than having the onus on the abortionist to prove that it had been necessary. This was in 1969. Vuitch continued his abortion business, though it wasn't until after Roe struck the law down entirely that he really relaxed, secure in his confidence that the law couldn't touch him.

On June 15, 1974, seventeen-year-old Wilma Harris of West Virginia went to Vuitch's Laurel Clinic for a safe and abortion. Five days later, she was dead. Wilma's family sued, noting that Vuitch and his staff had allowed Wilma to lapse into a coma and lie unattended for 12 hours before transferring her to the hospital.

Vuitch administered general anesthesia himself for an abortion he performed on Georgianna English on January 12, 1980, and she never woke up. When Vuitch was investigated, it was discovered that he kept patients overnight in his home (an unlicensed facility) which he designated "The Annexe." Inspectors also noted repeated violations of medical standards regarding sanitation and anesthesia. Vuitch also admitted during another case that he had lacked hospital admitting privileges since 1963.

WDVM-TV, Washington, D.C. won the Peabody Award for its investigation of Vuitch uncovering how Vuitch's practice had been cited for a multitude of violations, such as in 1980 for dirty instruments and lab specimens being refrigerated with food; in 1981 for taking patients to Vuitch's home overnight and having expired drugs; in 1982 for unlicensed drug distribution and mixing dirty and clean surgical instruments and for a patient sent home though she was passing red urine and had a catheter still inside her body; in 1983 for having anesthetic drugs "not freshly prepared and yellowish in color". The investigator also noted that despite these violations, the city kept renewing the clinic's license until 1982, after which Vuitch just operated without one.

In spite of the terrible toll on Vuitch's patients, he remained a hero to the prochoice movement and was hagiographically eulogized upon his death in 1993.

Jesse Ketchum

Less well-known than Vuitch was Dr. Jesse Ketchum. Vuitch was a crusader. Ketchum was just an abortionist. He operated his abortion practice alongside a legitimate (if somewhat lawsuit-prone) medical practice. Although Ketchum's criminal abortion practice wasn't the best in the world, he evidently maintained some standards and protocols for screening patients. No patient deaths have been attributed to Ketchum's criminal practice, which was largely supplied with patients via Clergy Consultation Services, an abortion advocacy group which rather than address women's issues simply ensure that by hook or by crook (literally, in their referrals to the likes of Jesse Ketchum), they got their abortions..

Ketchum was arrested when an undercover policewoman arranged for him to perform an abortion at a motel in Southfield, Michigan, and his case was taken up by abortion advocates who rallied on his behalf.

When New York legalized abortion on demand in 1970, Ketchum set up shop in a Buffalo motel suite. For Ketchum, New York must have seemed like the Promised Land. Abortionists were flaunting safety standards with impunity. Practices such as injecting patients with saline then sending them home to abort raised eyebrows, to be sure, but they didn't get anybody thrown in jail.

On May 28, 1971, Ketchum seriously injured a woman in a botched abortion, but no harm befell him. Ketchum decided to do hysterotomy abortions -- which involve slicing the uterus open to remove the baby -- in his office. It didn't take long for this practice to turn deadly. In the second half of 1971, Ketchum caught the eyes of the authorities by allowing two hysterotomy patients to bleed to death.

His first victim was 25-year-old Margaret Smith, who had traveled from Ketchum's home state of Michigan to New York for a safe and legal abortion because she had been exposed to rubella. Ketchum performed a vaginal hysterotomy on Margaret at 10:30 the morning of June 16, 1971. Margaret was then left virtually unattended until her boyfriend returned at 2:00. He found Margaret unresponsive, and begged Ketchum and his staff to do something. Paramedics were summoned, but they were unable to revive Margaret. She was taken to a hospital across the street from Ketchum's office, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. Margaret's vagina had been sutured, but a laceration in her uterus and cervix had not been repaired. She had bled to death.

Ketchum was verily astounded when he was charged with criminally negligent homicide in Margaret Smith's death. Eidently he didn't think the state could possibly succeed in their case. He kept taking risks with patient's lives Before his case even went to trial, he performed a similar abortion on 37-year-old Carole Schaner of Ohio on October 20, 1971, who was sent back to her motel to die of injuries similar to those that had killed Margaret Smith.

Ketchum was convicted for Margaret's death on October 26, 1973, despite the fact that Milan Vuitch testified on his behalf. When Roe v. Wade was handed down and assorted criminal abortionists started getting their old convictions thrown out, Ketchum tried Roe for leverage. He got nowhere. Eventually, he was sentenced to prison. Ketchum served little time, however. He was released after less than a year, and relocated to Florida where he managed not to kill any of his patients as a staff physician at a VA  hospital in Miami, from September of 1976 to November of 1977. It turned out that no license was required for a doctor to practice in a government operated hospital. According to the medical board licensee lookup, Ketchum lives on Michigan now. His petitions to restore his medical license, made in 1984 and 1987, were both denied. Nevertheless, despite killing two women, he remains a free man.

Benjamin Munson

Dr. Benjamin Munson

Dr. H. Benjamin Munson performed abortions in Rapid City, South Dakota. He opened his practice in 1967. He was convicted in 1969 for performing an abortion on a 19-year-old patient. Munson challenged his conviction, winning in circuit court. The state appealed, and the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled against him. He appealed this decision, which was rendered moot by Roe.  In 1973, Munson discharged 28-year-old Linda Padfield after an incomplete abortion. She died of sepsis three days later. Munson was charged with manslaughter. Yvonne Mesteth paid with her life when Munson made the same screw-up with her that had killed Linda Padfield. Though not as celebrated as Vuitch, Munson was nevertheless considered altogether respect-worthy because of his purported courage in doing abortions. Seventh Circuit Judge Merton Tice, Jr. instructed the jury to acquit, saying that the state's case was inadequate because prosecutors could not prove that Munson intended harm to his patient. Thanks to having a friendly judge, Munson remained free to continue his practice, even joining the prestigious National Abortion Federation, and 18-year-old

Sidney Knight

Dr. Sidney Knight was facing a number of criminal abortion charges in 1973, when Roe v. Wade made them a moot point. He hung out his shingle and began performing abortions legally. In March of 1974, Janet Blaum went to Knight's New Orleans facility for a safe and legal abortion. Five days later, on March 11, she was dead of brain hemorrhage. Janet's ex-husband sued Knight on behalf of the couple's children, alleging that Knight had administered a fatal dose of anesthesia while preparing Janet for the abortion.

Others?

I know there are other "back alley butchers" who simply started advertising and practicing more openly after legalization. Erstwhile criminal abortionist Hipolito Barreiro (who, like Vuitch, Ketchum, Munson, and Knight, had no pre-legalization deaths I've been able to find out about) hired some marginal doctors and opened a safe and legal abortion facility in Miami that killed four abortion patients from 1979 through 1983. I have no doubt that other erstwhile "back alley butchers" have found legalization to be quite a boon.

It's a shame that women pay with their lives so that abortionists can sleep easier.