Safe and Legal in Illinois: Deaths in 1998, 2001, and 2009

I'd contacted the Pro Life Action League about the deaths Meghan Twohey wrote about in the Chicago Tribune. John Jansen really came through for me with one of the Meghan Twohey deaths, plus two other Illinois deaths I'd been unaware of.

First is the 2009 death Twohey wrote about, of a teenager who died at Woman's Aid Clinic. Antonesha Ross went in for an abortion on May 8. Dr. Josephine Kamper performed the abortion, while CRNA Lawrence Hill administered anesthesia. During the abortion, Antonesha's blood oxygen saturation fell to between 80% and 90%, and she began to cough up blood through her mouth and nose. An employee gave her a bag to breathe into. Needless to say, this wasn't any help, and Antonesha went into cardio-respiratory arrest. She was not provided with proper resuscitation, and she died, leaving behind 1 1/2-year-old Antonio and 6-month-old Antwane.

On January 22, 2001, 19-year-old Melissa Heim went to Access Health Center in Downers Grove, Illinois.She was given "twilight anesthesia" with a drug cocktail including Versed, Fentanyl, and Brevital for an abortion, which started at about 11:45 a.m. and was finished at about noon. After the abortion, she was moved to the recovery area, where she went into cardio-respiratory arrest about half an hour later. An ambulance was summoned, and Melissa was resuscitated by the paramedics, but due to the brain injury she had suffered, she died on January 26.

Seventeen-year-old Janice Gumm went to Dimensions Medical Center for an abortion on December 5, 1998, to be performed under anesthesia. Her abortionist was Dr. Jesse Chandler, and the anesthesiologist was Dr. Murray Rosenberg of Hospital Anesthesia Group. The suit by Janice's survivors held that Dimensions failed to perform an adequate physical examination prior to the abortion, particularly in that they did not properly assess her increased risks due to the fact that she had asthma. As a result, Janice suffered an anesthesia-related complication that resulted in her death that day.

I'm still looking for information about the following deaths:

• Maurice Stevenson's wife, who died in 2002 from an infection after an abortion at a Chicago Planned Parenthood
• A teenage girl who went into cardio-respiratory arrest and died immediately after an abortion performed in 2009 in a suburban northern Illinois clinic
• A patient who died in 2008 after an abortion at Planned Parenthood

John Jansen believes that the teenager who died in 2009 is Antonesha, that there were six, not seven, deaths that Meghan Twohey uncovered. I'm still trying to get in touch with her to find out.