Twenty-year-old Gail Ann Vroman had a safe and legal abortion performed on July 14, 1979, by New York abortionist Taskin Ratharathorn at Ft. Wayne Women's Health Organization. Within two hours, Gail was transferred to a nearby hospital. Gail died of massive infection on July 18. The coroner ruled that the death was caused by clostridium perfringens, or "gas gangrene."
On the very same day that Gail died, Geneva Calton, age 21, mother of two, underwent an abortion at Northside Family Planning Service in Atlanta, Georgia. On the drive back home she was in pain, but she figured that this was just the cramping the clinic had told her to expect.
At 8:30 that evening, Geneva was admitted to a hospital, with no vital signs detected. Doctors attempted to resuscitate her, to no avail. She was pronounced dead. The autopsy found that Geneva's uterus had been perforated. She had bled to death. The clinic where Geneva's fatal abortion was performed seems to be the same clinic where Catherine Pierce underwent her fatal abortion in 1989.
On July 18, 1911, 24-year-old Mrs. Regina Beck died from an abortion performed on May 9th by Mrs. C.M. Anderson. Anderson was held by the Coroner and arrested on July 19, but the case was stricken off during trial
Due to improved overall health and advances in medical care, maternal mortality in general (and abortion mortality with it) fell dramatically in the 20th Century, decades before Roe vs. Wade
For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see Abortion Deaths 1910-1919.
legalized abortion across America. It's interesting that advocates of legalized abortion claim credit for a drop in mortality that took place decades before they got their wish. For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion
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