Leslie Reagan, in her book "When Abortion Was a Crime," indicates that he was expelled from the Chicago Medical Society after admitting guilt in Anna's death, but there is no record that he served time for the crime. In fact, he was free and in Danville, Illinois in 1917, when he perpetrated a fatal attempted abortion on Matilda Tidrick.
Anna's abortion was typical of pre-legalization abortions in that it was performed by a physician.
Watch "Another Doctor Free to Kill Again" on YouTube.
Edith Clark traveled from her home in Newark, New Jersey to the Sparkhill, New York office of Dr. Robert Livingston to avail herself of the new law, for a first-trimester abortion on June 24, 1971.
Shortly after she was given an injection of Innovar for anesthesia, Edith went into cardiac arrest, and attempts to revive her failed. She left behind three children.
Edith was the first woman to die in New York's Rockland County from a newly legalized abortion. The second, 18-year-old Pamela Modugno, died in May of 1972 after an abortion in one of the many freestanding abortion facilities that opened immediately after New York decided to permit outpatient abortion-on-demand up to 24 weeks.
On June 27, both physicians were held by the coroner. Schultz was indicted for felony murder by a grand jury on October 6, 1930 and released on $10,000 bond. White was released on $5,000 bond. I've been unable to determine the outcome of the case.
On June 10, 1882, a wealthy 62-year-old farmer named James T. Phillips brought his daughter, 20-year-old Ruth Phillips, from their home to another farm near DeSoto, Wisconsin, where his two older daughters lived.
Ruth took violently ill. On June 13, she delivered stillborn twins.
A few days later she made a shocking deathbed statement to her sisters: she said that their father was the father of the twins, and that he had used instruments on her to cause the abortion that killed the twins and was soon to take her own life.
Ruth died on June 24, and was buried on the 26th.
"After the death and burial," says the July 26, 1882 Vernon County Censor, "suspicion of foul play having been around in the neighborhood, Phillips was arrested, the body disinterred, and a post mortem examination had by Dr. Gott."
The autopsy showed that Ruth had died from uterine inflammation, though there were no marks of instrumentation that the doctor could find.
Phillips. a native of Wales, was arrested and jailed pending $1,400 bail (a little over $11,000 in 2022). "There is much excitement in the community where Phillips lives, and open threats of lynching in case he secures bail."
"The crimes is the most terrible one that can be conceived, and if Phillips is proven guilty, no punishment that the law provides for such offenses can prove adequate."
Phillips had been tried fifteen years earlier for committing incest against another of his daughters, but was acquitted in that case.
Lynching turned out to be unnecessary. Phillips hanged himself in his jail cell on August 5, 1882. This leads me to believe that the abortion had really taken place, since a mere incest case hadn't been enough to lead him to suicide 15 years or so earlier.
Watch "Jailhouse Suicide" on YouTube.
Sources:
Cora A. Burke, age 20, lived with her mother and 4-year-old son and her parents in Idaho. She'd been widowed about five months and had recently become engaged to marry.
 |
| Dr. R. J. Alcorn |
Cora went to Dr. Alcorn's room about two days after they were introduced. Mr. Abbey listened from an adjoining room, and heard Cora say that the instrument Dr. Alcorn was using was hurting her.
On the night of Tuesday, June 21, Dr. Alcorn asked Mr. T.J. Rundell to help him carry a table into his office, which was at the back of a drug store in the town of Harrison. Rundell's curiosity was piqued, and he asked Alcorn if he was going to "dissect a stiff." Alcorn told him no, he was going to perform an operation on somebody from across the river.
Rundell decided to snoop, so he returned at 10:00 PM and saw Cora go through the drug store into Alcorn's office. Rundell then slipped around to the back of the building, where he could peer into Alcorn's office around an ill-hung window blind. The following is what Rundell says he observed.
Alcorn stood beside the chair where Cora was sitting, supporting her head with one hand. He had a small vial containing a dark liquid, and was holding a cloth to Cora's face. Cora seemed to fall into a deep sleep, whereupon Alcorn picked her up and lay her on the table.
Alcorn removed Cora's undergarments and positioned her for the surgery. He examined her internally, inserted a speculum, then inserted a probe about a foot long into her body, causing a flow of blood which he blotted up with a cloth. From time to time, Alcorn applied the cloth to Cora's face again. The entire procedure took about an hour and a half.
Cora was awakened, and Alcorn helped her to set her clothing to rights and sent her on her way.
At about 4 PM the next day, Alcorn was called to tend to Cora, who was in a lot of pain. He examined her and found her uterus to be inflamed and bleeding. He prescribed ergot, to be given one-half teaspoon each half-hour for three doses, then every hour afterward for 18 hours. Cora's mother asked Alcorn about her daughter's condition. Alcorn told her, "She caught a bad cold. She does not flow enough when she has her monthlies. I will give her something to make her flow."
At about 6:00 PM on the 21st, William Ketchum called Alcorn to visit Mrs. Ketchum, but Alcorn told him, "Well, I don't know. I am expecting a miscarriage here any minute. I can go over there, and come back, if it does not make any difference to them." So he went to Ketchum's home to attend to his wife.
Over the ensuing days, Alcorn visited Cora five times, the last time about two hours before she died on Friday afternoon, June 23. Her feet and hands were cold, her fingers blue, her lips purple. Alcorn told Cora's mother that she was doing well and would be up soon. Alcorn immediately took a train to Washington state, returning about 10:00 on the following Sunday morning. The next day he again left the state, this time going to Montana, where he was arrested and returned to Kootenai county.
While Cora had been ill, she passed a lot of blood and clots. Mrs. Knight, who visited Cora during her illness, testified, "I helped dress her after she was dead. Her clothing and bedclothing were saturated with blood. A quilt was doubled up under her four thicknesses, and it was clear through the quilt. It was clots of blood. I observed an odor in connection with it. There was too great a quantity to have come from the ordinary menstruation. Much greater in quantity."
Kootenai County Sherriff F. H. Bradbury testified about the conversation he'd had with Alcorn on the train bringing him back to face justice. "He told me that he never had anything to do with this girl, Cora Burke; that he began in the daytime an operation on a man for stricture, and did not complete it; and that he took him in the back room of the drug store and completed the operation in the evening. He gave me this statement after I had warned him not to make any statement to me."
Alcorn testified on is own behalf, saying that Cora had attempted to do an abortion on herself with "a hair dart," which had punctured the wall of her uterus and broken off, leaving about 1 1/2 inches. Alcorn said that he'd used a speculum and piston syringe to remove the foreign body from Cora's uterus.
The physicians called as expert witnesses on the case all agreed that Cora died of septicemia or blood poisoning. They also agreed that ergot itself would be enough to cause an abortion.
Alcorn's defense also raised the possibility that Cora hadn't actually been pregnant, but the court concluded that Cora had believed herself to be pregnant, had sought an abortion, and had undergone a procedure intended to cause an abortion, which was enough to demonstrate the intent of the defendant to kill a fetus, especially in the light of Alcorn's statement that he was expecting a patient to miscarry.
Alcorn was charged with murder. His first trial ended with a hung jury. The second jury found him guilty of manslaughter. The judge sentenced Alcorn to seven years in the penitentiary. Alcorn appealed, partially on the grounds that since the indictment did not specifically say that the abortion took place in 1899, the injury was not proven to have taken place less than a year and a day prior to the death.
Watch "Shouldn't 'All Surgery Have Risks' Apply?" at YouTube.
Sources:
At 11:45 am on June 22, 1951, 18-year-old Minnie Bell Stewart was pronounced dead on arrival at Columbia Hospital in Columbia, South Carolina. Minnie had worked as a domestic servant.
Her cause of death was determined to be generalized peritonitis due to a criminal abortion. It was ruled a homicide.
A practical nurse was held by police in the case.
Both Minnie and the nurse were Black women.
Watch "Was Scant Reporting Due to Race?" on YouTube.
Sources:
On June 21, 1985, Debra's parents filed suit against Dr. Scheininger, Dr. Sinha, and other staff for failing to properly screen and examine Debra prior to her abortion. They also alleged that staff failed to properly monitor their daughter's vital signs during the abortion, failing to quickly detect and properly treat respiratory difficulty. As a result, Debra suffered the brain damage that had caused her coma.
Shortly after midnight on June 22, a hospital staffer checked on Debra and found her dead; she evidently had died shortly before midnight.
See the memorial page Debra's friends put in her high school year book here.
Watch "Did Anybody Monitor Debra?" on YouTube. |
| Dr. Milan Vuitch |
Dr. Milan Vuitch was a hero among abortion advocates. He had deliberately been arrested performing criminal abortions so that he could challenge the Washington, DC abortion law, and he succeeded in changing the way the law was enforced, effectively nullifying it.
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, on June 20, she was dead. During interrogatories, Vuitch said that anesthesiologist Strahil Nacev described Wilma as "so quiet" during the abortion. Although he had begun a vacuum abortion, Vuitch said that the fetus had been too big to pass through the suction tube. He said he used instruments to remove the remaining fetal parts.
Although the abortion was done at around 2:00 PM, Vuitch didn't transfer Wilma to a properly equipped hospital until after midnight. Wilma's family sued, claiming 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. The suit also claimed that Vuitch and his staff falsified records to cover their tracks. The family won a judgment on December 23, 1976, but the settlement was sealed by court order.
Georgianna English also died after an abortion by Vuitch. WDVM-TV won a Peabody Award for their expose of Vuitch after her death.
Vuitch isn't the only abortionist who kept his nose clean as a criminal abortionist, only to kill two patients after legalization. Jesse Ketchum managed to kill Margaret Smith and Carole Schaner in a four-month period after New York put out a welcome mat for carpetbagging abortionists in 1970. Benjamin Munson of South Dakota killed Linda Padfield and Yvonne Mesteth.
Watch "Permission to Take Lethal Risks" on YouTube.
After awakening from a nap on June 19, 1984, 14-year-old "Gwen Newhart's"* mother found her dead on the bathroom floor.
 |
| Dr. E. Wyman Garrett |
At home after her abortion, Gwen began vomiting and suffered from abdominal pain and a high fever. Her mother called Garrett, who told her that the symptoms were normal and prescribed antibiotics. She seemed to improve briefly, but took a turn for the worse on June 18.
Gwen's mother called the next morning and Garrett said to bring Gwen in to the office. Mrs. Newhart took a nap and awoke to find her daughter dead on the bathroom floor.
The massive infection that was causing her symptoms killed her.
An autopsy found that Gwen's uterus had been punctured, and her abdomen was full of pus and adhesions.
When the New Jersey medical board investigated Dr. Garrett, they noted that he had illegally altered Gwen's medical records. He had also performed Gwen's abortion in violation of state regulations, since New Jersey required that abortions past the first trimester be performed in a hospital.
They noted other, non-fatal injuries including:
Garrett argued that he was suffering from ''burnout syndrome,'' caused by performing more than 2,600 second-trimester abortions between 1982 and 1986. He asserted, "If any man has this much work, he's going to have complications." He pleaded no-contest in the state case.
In 1986 the board concluded that Garrett was guilty of gross negligence, abandonment of patients, and professional misconduct. He failed to recognize and treat complications in a timely manner, they found. banned Garrett from performing abortions or other outpatient surgery. In 1987 they revoked his license. They cited a total of 26 abortions performed in a "grossly improper" manner. As of 1994 he still owed over $175,000 in fines and court costs from the medical board suspension proceedings.
Garrett had other unsavory run-ins with society. In 1971, during a teacher strike, Garrett (who was then a school board member) told a school trustee "We know where you live. We're going to get you." He then turned to a reporter who was taking notes and said, "You'll have to give me your notebook or you won't get out of this building alive." Garrett then, according to the reporter, summoned two men to beat the reporter up and take his notebook and wallet. Two weeks into the trial Garrett plea-bargained down to interfering with people at a public meeting and paid $2,000 in fines and costs.
In 1983 he started refusing to do second-trimester abortions at University Hospital in Newark because they would no longer pay him $250 to $300 per abortion instead of the Medicaid physician fee of $79. (In 2022 dollars, he had been getting $734 - $880 per abortion when the Medicaid fee was $232.) Garrett publicly said that since the hospital was reimbursed $1,334 ($3,915 in 2022 dollars) per abortion and he performed 851 abortion there in the previous year, he'd brought the hospital more than $1.2 million in Medicaid dollars (about $3.5 in 2022 dollars). Garrett argued that he was entitled to more than $79 because his usual abortion fee was from $400 to $900 ($1,174 - $2,641 in 2022 dollars).
In 1986 a whistleblower claimed that she discovered that Garret was preparing post-operative reports prior to surgery he was performing at University Hospital.
*Source failed to redact name in original, but out of privacy respect I use a pseudonym.
** "John Roe 268" in Lime 5
Watch "Stopped Before He Could Kill Another Patient" on YouTube.
Sources:
