Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Another researcher! More information! (Part 1)

As I was typing up today's post, I remembered that one of the guilty parties, Dr. Lou Davis, had killed somebody else. I took the lazy way of finding out who and just Googled Davis. This led me to the one other person on the internet who seems to be as interested in delving through old abortion death records as I am, "gigan", who dove into the Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database and also gleaned out all the abortion deaths.

In the interests of grammar, I'll assume gigan is a woman until told otherwise. As I go through her posts in order, I'm going to be correcting some of her errors and misunderstandings, but overall I'm just glad to have found a bit of a kindred spirit, somebody on the other side of the fence who really does her homework and uncovered a few deaths I had missed. And she seems to have the same thrill of discovery. Thanks, gigan! If you find this, give me a hollar!

Moving right along:

Gigan started this page with a"Close but no cigar" moment:
the most historically important case listed is that
involving dr. amante rongetti. reporters covering the
trial in chicago contended that rongetti was the first
doctor in the united states ever sentenced to die over
a patient's abortion death.
I'm not sure Rongetti was the first to be sentenced to death; I'd really have to research it further. But he was the first person to be sentenced to Illinois' new electric chair. But he wasn't executed; he was freed to kill again. I'm curious about whether gigan thinks releasing Rongetti was a good thing or not, and whether the fact that he killed another woman has any impact on her opinion about that.

Moving on to the next paragraph, gigan makes another bit of a boo-boo:
November 16, 1927
Enders, Baby (Enders, Loretta - Dec. 11) - Deaths due to a criminal abortion by instrumentation, performed about 11/16/27, at the Ashland Blvd. Hospital by Dr. Amante Rongetti.
Gigan seems to be confused here. Baby Enders was not Loretta's nickname. Baby Enders was Loretta's baby, who Rongetti was also charged with killing since the child had been born alive then tossed into the incinerator. Killing liveborn infants is evidently a bit of a tradition with abortionists; so much for the claim that the targets of abortion aren't babies.

Here is my write-up on Loretta's death,

She then brings up something I'd not known about and will investigate further:

People v. Rongetti (1946), 395 Ill. 580,70 N.E.2d 568, rehearing denied (1947) the defendant was convicted of practicing medicine without a license. One of the issues raised was whether or not he had a right to practice medicine by virtue of a pardon granted by the Governor, restoring his rights of citizenship, which had been forfeited by a prior conviction of manslaughter. The supreme court made a determination as to the effect of the pardon on his later conviction and declined to accord it the effect claimed by the defendant.
In the interests of breaking this down into manageable chunks, I'll move on in another post. Keep following!

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