Monday, July 17, 2006

Safe-and-legal: The deaths of Gail Vroman and Geneva Calton

Twenty-year-old Gail Ann Vroman had an abortion performed on July 14, 1979, by New York abortionist Taskin Ratharathorn at Ft. Wayne Women's Health Organization. Within two hours, Gail was transferred to a nearby hospital.

Gail died of massive infection on July 18. The coroner ruled that the death was caused by clostridium perfringens, or "gas gangrene."

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Geneva Calton, age 21, mother of two, underwent an abortion at Northside Family Planning Service in Atlanta, Georgia, on July 18, 1979. On the drive back home she was in pain, but she figured that this was just the cramping the clinic had told her to expect.

At 8:30 that evening, Geneva was admitted to a hospital, with no vital signs detected. Doctors attempted to resuscitate her, to no avail. She was pronounced dead. The autopsy found that Geneva's uterus had been perforated. She had bled to death.

Northside was eventually sued by their malpractice insurer because they'd allowed one of their abortionists to continue to perform surgery even though his manual dexterity had deteriorated due to multiple sclerosis. The suit by the insurer also alleged failure to meet state health standards, failure to have enough nurses on duty, failure to have proper on-call procedures, and lack of a professional director of medical services.

The clinic where Geneva's fatal abortion was performed seems to be the same clinic where Catherine Pierce underwent her fatal abortion in 1989.

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