Four anniversaries.

On June 16, 1910, Mrs. Paulina Sproc, age 35, died in a Chicago home from an abortion that had been performed on June 5. Dr. W.L. Orainger was held by the coroner's jury. The source document doesn't indicate that the case ever went to trial.

Twenty-five-year-old Margaret Smith traveled from Michigan to New York for a safe and legal abortion because she had been exposed to rubella. Her abortionist, Jesse Ketchum, had run a criminal abortion practice in Michigan, before carpetbagging to Buffalo when New York legalized abortion. Ketchum performed a vaginal hysterotomy on Margaret the morning of June 16, 1971. Margaret was then left virtually unattended until her boyfriend retured at 2:00. He found Margaret unresponsive, and begged Ketchum and his staff to do something. But it was too late. By the time the ambulance arrived, Margaret had bled to death. Ketchum was charged with criminally negligent homicide in Margaret's death. Before his case went to trial, he performed a similar fatal abortion on Carole Schaner of Ohio.

Margaret Paula Clodfelter was 19 years old when she had a safe, legal abortion at Richmond Medical Center For Women on June 2, 1989, performed by William Fitzhugh. After she was sent home, Margaret had pain and bleeding. She called the facility to consult with them, but they did not tell her that she needed further care. On June 4, she sought treatment at a hospital, where she was diagnosed with retained fetal tissue and a perforated uterus. Efforts by doctors there to save her were in vain. Margaret died on June 16, 1989, leaving behind a husband and a one-year-old son.

A 20-year-old Newark college student, identified in prolife sources as "Jane Doe of Newark," underwent a safe and legal abortion by Dr. Steven Berkman at Metropolitan Medical Associates on June 16, 1993. Jane reportedly felt dizzy in recovery. Berkman examined her, noted that she had a perforated uterus, and after a two hour delay, had her taken to a hospital by ambulance. She bled to death in surgery, leaving her four-year-old son motherless.

I'm not really seeing that things improved for women over time. But I do notice that abortionists had less and less reason to be fearful that they'd suffer repercussions if they killed their patients.