Monday, April 13, 2009

1968: Safe, legal, deadly

Stella Saenz, age 42, had arranged for a legal abortion in the spring of 1968. On April 11, she was admitted to Los Angeles County General Hospital with sepsis. Doctors administered penicillin. Stella went into anaphylactic shock; neither she nor the doctors had realized that Stella was allergic to penicillin. Doctors tried to treat both the infection and Stella's reaction to the penicillin, to no avail. She died on April 13. The California Department of Public Health classified Stella's death as both a drug reaction death and a legal abortion death.

For more abortion deaths, visit the Cemetery of Choice:



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1 comment:

John C. Hathaway said...

"They" would probably just say that illegal abortion created a stigma that prevented development of safe medical procedures (even though they oppose efforts to require abortoin clinics to adhere to the same safety standards as hospiatls).

Most people would stop at the date, ignore the fact that abortion was legal in CA before _Roe_, and completely miss the point.

It's like divorce: I quote Jesus' words directly to people, and they say, "Oh, that's the Old Testament. Jesus got rid of that mentality!"