The big yawn

Abortion advocates who are keening the death of Rosie Jimenez would do well to remember that the CDC counted 17 women who died from safe and legal abortions that same year. I have only been able to find details on five of those deaths:

On December 2, 1977, 29-year-old Jackie Bailey was injected with saline by Dr. Eboreime for an abortion at Pacific Glen Hospital in Los Angeles County. Five hours after Jackie expelled the dead baby, her condition appeared grave. Shortly after midnight, she was transferred to Memorial Hospital of Glendale. Doctors at Memorial suspected a uterine laceration, so they performed exploratory surgery. The bleeding was so profuse that they then performed a hysterectomy in a last-ditch attempt to save her life. Jackie died just before sunrise on December 3. The autopsy report found that Jackie's uterus had ruptured during the abortion, and that her uterine artery had been lacerated. She had bled to death from her injuries.

Eighteen-year-old newlywed Barbaralee Davis was referred to a member of the newly-founded National Abortion Federation. They sent her home with the face and spinal column of her fetus embedded in a rip in her uterus. She bled to death.

Louchrisser Jackson, a 23-year-old mother of five, was 12 weeks pregnant when she went to Dr. Robert L. Gardner for an abortion at Reproductive Services in Dallas on November 4, 1977. Louchrisser began hemorrhaging. Gardner said that he ordered blood for a transfusion, but it didn't arrive so about an hour before her death he attempted to give her a transfusion with his own blood -- which turned out to be an incompatable type. Louchrisser died that day. The autopsy found massive hemmorage of at least two liters of blood, and a "1.8 x 2 cm. ragged perforation in the right lateral wall just above the internal os of the cervical canal. This perforation commonicates freely with the retroperitoneal space on the right side. The endometrial surface of the uterus is ragged and hemorrhagic."

Mary Ann Page was 36 years old when she went into cardiac arrest during an abortion/tubal ligation performed under general anesthesia on December 28, 1977. Both procedures were completed, then Mary Ann was taken to the Intensive Care Unit. Mary Ann suffered several more cardiac arrests while she was in the ICU. She was pronounced dead on December 29, 1977.

Mary Paredez was 26 years old when she underwent an abortion at San Jose Hospital on April 19, 1977. During the procedure, Mary's uterus was perforated. She began to hemorrhage. Less than seven hours later, she was dead. The autopsy found 2500 cc of blood in Mary's abdomen.

Why was Rosie's death an unacceptable tragedy, and these women's deaths nothing but a big fat collective yawn?

PS. Does anybody have a copy of the CDC's 1978 Abortion Surveillance Annual Report? I have this quote:

We found no significant change in the number and proportion of publicly funded hospitalizations for complications of illegal or spontaneous abortions, but we did find a marked decrease in publicly funded hospitalizations for complications of legal abortions, from 19 (38%) to 2 (6%).

I realized that I didn't make clear -- least of all to myself -- what original data they were reflecting on. And I don't have my Abortion Surveillance Reports here in Korea with me.
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For more abortion deaths, visit the Cemetery of Choice:



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