Anniversary: Sloppy practices lead to woman's death

Janyth Caldwell, age 36, died February 4, 1986, a month after George Wayne Patterson attempted to perform an abortion on her. The Alabama state Medical Examiner attributed her death to loss of oxygen to the brain, due to internal hemorrhaging from an ectopic pregnancy.

A proper pre-abortion examination should be able to determine if the pregnancy is ectopic, in which case standard abortion techniques will not touch the embryo. Proper post-abortion pathology reports would detect that no embryo was removed from the uterus, and would clue the abortionist in to the fact that the pregnancy was ectopic. Patterson evidently missed both of these opportunities to detect Janyth's ectopic pregnancy and prevent her death.

Even though, in theory, women who choose abortion should be less likely to die of ectopic pregnancy complications, experiences shows that they're actually more likely to die, due to sloppy practices by abortion practitioners. Brenda Vise, for example, suffered this fate after getting abortion drugs at a clinic that was operating illegally after having been shut down by Tennessee authorities.

According to official documents, another Alabama woman, Mary Bradley, died after an abortion performed by a doctor identified as Wayne Patterson. The Alabama medical board lists no Dr. Wayne Patterson, only Dr. George Wayne Patterson, deceased, which leads me to believe that the same Dr. Patterson responsible for Janyth's death had also caused the death of Mary Bradley the year before. If anybody can confirm or disprove this theory, please let me know.

Patterson himself also suffered an early death at somebody else's hands. He was gunned down outside a pornography theater in an apparent gangland slaying. (The Feminist Majority Foundation, and Revolutionary Worker refer to the slain doctor as "Wayne Patterson", which is further evidence that he is the same doctor responsible for Mary Bradley's death. The fact that these groups lament the gangland shooting of an abortionist, while ignoring the fact that he himself had evidently killed two women, underscores where the abortion lobby's priorities are.)

Hear Janyth's story in a minute: