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In 1980, twenty-one-year old Linda Lovelace of Tennessee underwent the abortion that would end her life.
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Eighteen-year-old newlywed Barbaralee Davis called a local women's group for an abortion referral. They sent her to a member of the newly founded National Abortion Federation, Hope Clinic for Women in Granite City, Illinois.
After the abortion, performed June 14, 1977 by Hope Medical Director Hector Zavalos, Barbaralee attended a post-abortion counseling session, during which she was pale and reporting lower abdominal cramping. She was kept for observation an additional two hours, but the CDC noted that Barbaralee's vital signs were last noted 45 minutes after the abortion. Barbaralee then reportedly told staff that she felt better and asked to be sent home, so they discharged her even though she was still showing, according to the CDC's investigators, symtoms "suggestive of internal hemorrhage." Barbaralee was not given a discharge examination before being sent home. Her sister helped her, pale and bleeding, to the car. Barbaralee slept in the back seat the whole way home, approximately a two-hour trip. Her sister helped her to bed.
When Barbaralee's sister checked on her several hours later, she was unresponsive. She was rushed to the Pickneyville hospital, where an emergency hysterectomy was attempted to save her life. Barbaralee died during the surgery, leaving one child motherless.
The autopsy found the face and spinal column of Barbaralee's baby embedded in a hole in her uterus. There were two quarts of blood in her abdomen. Barbaralee had bled to death.
The medical examiner noted: "A very large retroperitoneal hematoma is present with dissection of blood along right ureter. A 4 mc. tear is noted on the right anterior surface of the lower third of the uterus and a large amount of blood, estimated at 2000 ccs. is present in the pelvis. Two fetal parts, the face and thoracic spinal column, are embedded in a 700 cc. fresh hematoma inside the uterus."
Illinois law placed a 12-week limit on outpatient abortions. Zavalos told CDC investigators that he thought Barbaralee had been only 11 weeks pregnant even though her last normal menstrual period had been five months earlier. The clinic records examined by CDC staff said that the gross examination of the fetal tissue removed during the abortion was consistent with an 11-week pregnancy. However, the medical examiner drew a different conclusion, based on the tissue that had been left embedded in Barbaralee's uterus:
"In an attempt to estimate the length of gestation in the absence of the whole fetus, the two parts, namely the face, less the crown, and the thoracic vertebral column without the rump, are laid end to end. Together they measure 9 cm. A conservative estimate of the crown to rump length would be 10 to 11 cm. This will place the gestational age at 16 to 16 1/2 weeks."
Hope Clinic for Women was not only permitted to remain in operation, it was allowed to remain a member in good standing of the National Abortion Federation.
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Rosario Bermeo, age 30, died following abortion by Dr. Joseph B. Shapse at Prospect Hospital in New York June 14, 1983.
Shapse contended he had no responsibility for actions of the certified nurse anesthetist, and no responsibility to monitor and evaluate Rosario's condition during and immediately after the abortion. Therefore, he said, he was not to blame for her death from respiratory and cardiac arrest.
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Nebraska abortionist Leroy Carhart refused to follow proper infection control procedures dealing with a patient with active tuberculosis, and fell asleep while injecting a patient.
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Angela Hall, a 27-year-old mother of five, called to arrange an abortion at Thomas Tucker's office in Alabama. One of Tucker's employees, Joy Davis, screened Angela and felt that she had risk factors that made abortion in an office setting unsafe. Joy got on the phone with Tucker and indicated that she felt that Angela should be referred to a hospital. Tucker told Davis that "we need the money" and ordered her to prep Angela, who was in the second trimester of pregnancy.
Angela underwent the abortion on June 11, 1991, and started having difficulty breathing. Her blood pressure fell, setting off an alarm on a piece of monitoring equipment. Tucker told Davis to turn the alarm off because other patients could hear it. Angela was sent to a recovery room where she bled so heavily that Davis became alarmed and called an ambulance. Tucker swore at Davis when he learned of this, and he had her cancel the ambulance because they'd already sent a patient to the hospital that day. Angela continued to hemorrhage, and Davis continued to plead with Tucker to take action. Finally Tucker cursed at Davis, telling her to call the ambulance, and he left the building, leaving the untrained woman to cope alone with the critically injured patient.
Angela was taken to the hospital, where she suffered respiratory failure, clotting, and sepsis. She died just before midnight June 14. The autopsy found numerous tears and lesions in the pelvic area, and congestive necrosis in Angela's liver and spleen. The doctors concluded that amniotic fluid embolism had caused clotting problems resulting in necrosis, septic shock, and cardiac arrest. When Alabama authorities subpoenaed Angela's records, Tucker ordered Davis to destroy some and falsify others. Davis tore up the records, but then taped them back together and provided the authorities with photocopies.
It is interesting to note that in the publicity surrounding the lawsuit filed by Angela's family, Ron Fitzsimmons of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, among other prochoice groups, balked at efforts to close Tucker down, on the grounds that he was Alabama's only abortionist, and that even he was better than no abortionist at all.
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Oriane Shevin, age 34, died of infection following off-label use of RU-486 for an abortion in California in 2005. Oriane got the drugs at the Eve Surgical Center, located at 10150 National Boulevard in West Los Angeles. She took the mifeprestone on June 9 and vaginally inserted the misoprostol on June 10. The coroner's office was not able to deterime if a physician saw or examined her at the abortion facility. Both Christopher Dotson, M.D. and Josepha Seletz, M.D. are associated with the facility.
Oriane was an attorney with two young children, ages 3 and 4. She had sickened three days after taking the drugs. She was suffering from severe pain and havy bleeding, and was rushed by ambulance to Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center, where she died on June 14 from severe metabolic acidosis and sepsis.
Dotson has a spotted history. At the time of Oriane's abortion, Dotson had not yet completed eight years medical board probation for gross negligence and incompetence in causing the death of a patient identified as "RJI" on February 3, 1992. The board said that Dotson "was grossly negligent in the care and treatment of RJI." He failed to take an adequate exam, failed to classify her as a high risk pregnancy, failed to heed the risk of severe bleeding, failed to have appropriate equipment for monitoring, and failed to transfuse her in a timely way, having left the room while she was still bleeding. Dotson had also been investigated in 1993 after Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital of Los Angeles had reported him for being negligent in the treatment of six women.
Dotson had also worked at San Vicente Hospital, a notorious abortion mill that was bought out by Family Planning Associates Medical Group. San Vicente was where Sara Lint, Natalie Meyers, Joyce Ortenzio, Laniece Dorsey, and Mary Pena underwent their fatal abortions.
Despite his appalling record, Dotson, through his Eve Surgical Center, is a member of the National Abortion Federation.
Margaret Davis died of sickle cell crisis after an abortion performed by Dotson on July 25, 1971.
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