Abortion Homicides, 1917 & 1986

On December 31, 1917, 40-year-old homemaker Victoria Chmileuski died in her Chicago home from an abortion perpetrated by Wilhemena Benn, whose profession is given only as "abortion provider," though she was actually a licensed midwife. Benn was acquitted on March 7, 1918.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. In fact, due to improvements in addressing these problems, maternal mortality in general (and abortion mortality with it) fell dramatically in the 20th Century, decades before Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across America. For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see Abortion Deaths 1910-1919.



Fast-forward to the enlightened post-Roe era.

Eighteen-year-old Sylvia Moore underwent a safe and legal abortion at the hands of Arnold Bickham (pictured) on New Year's Eve of 1986 at his Urgent Medical Care Clinic in Chicago. After the abortion, 48-year-old Bickham gave Sylvia repeated injections of Demerol because she was reporting severe abdominal cramps. According to her mother, Sylvia was bleeding, weak, and unable to walk. When Sylvia tried to get to her feet and collapsed, Bickham called her "lazy," put her in a wheelchair, and physically ejected her from his Chicago clinic. Sylvia's mother took her to a nearby hospital, where staff tried in vain to save Sylvia, who had arrived with no pulse and no blood pressure. An emergency hysterectomy was done to remove her lacerated uterus, which still had a plastic instrument embedded in a 6.5 cm laceration. Sylvia also had a 2.2 cm laceration of her vagina. Despite the surgery, she bled to death. The medical examiner was so appalled at Bickham's treatment of Sylvia that he declared the manner of death to be homicide, but no charges were ever filed.

Bickham had already had his license suspended for performing abortions on women who weren't actually pregnant. He also was found negligent in the 1978 abortion death of Sherry Emry.

Two Criminal Deaths: 1904 & 1924

In late December of 1904, Stella Murgatroyd lay ailing at the home of her parents just outside Jacksonville, Illinois. At first her illness was blamed on pneumonia, but the doctor who treated her recognized the symptoms of a botched abortion and questioned Stella. She made a declaration naming the father of her unborn child, and the doctor who had performed the fatal abortion, just before her death on December 30. The postmotrem examination verified that Stella had indeed died from an abortion.

Note, please, that with overall public issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. For more about abortion and abortion deaths in the first years of the 20th century, see Abortion Deaths 1900-1909.



On December 30, 1924, 21-year-old Agnes Nazar, an immigrant from Persia (modern-day Iran), died at Chicago's St. Joseph's Hospital from an abortion performed earlier that day. On January 6, 1925, Rogie Hatal was held by the coroner as the guilty abortionist. Hatal's profession is not listed. Mike Nazar, her husband, was arrested as an accessory, as was Sarah Babian. Hatal was indicted for felony murder on February 15, 1925.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see Abortion in the 1920s.

During the first two thirds of the 20th Century, while abortion was still illegal, there was a massive drop in maternal mortality, including mortality from abortion. Most researches attribute this plunge to improvements in public health and hygiene, the development of blood transfusion techniques, and the introduction of antibiotics. Learn more here.

Resculpting the Unconscious Violinist

Judith Jarvis Thompson's famous "Unconscious Violinist" argument in favor of abortion is posited thus:

You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you—we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.

Greater minds than mine have plucked this argument apart. Unstringing the Violinist is an excellent example. But what I want to do is what I did with the forced kidney donation argument: tweak it until it becomes more analogous to pregnancy.

First, to point out the areas where the Unconscious Violinist differs from pregnancy and abortion:

1. The unborn child is not a stranger.
2. Except in rare cases of rape pregnancy, the pregnant woman has engaged willingly in an act that she knew might leave her "hooked up" to her child.
3. Pregnancy does not, except in rare cases, leave a woman confined to bed. She is quite free to go about her business, albeit somewhat awkwardly in the later months.
4. Abortion is not merely "unplugging" the unborn child. It is taking active, usually violent, steps to kill him. He is poisoned or dismembered or stabbed.

So how do we re-draw Jarvis Thompson's picture, incorporating these differences?

First of all, we need to remove the existing emotional relationship between mother and child. The person in the thought experiment will be the father, who has only just found out that he had fathered the child in question.

We would have to put the man in a situation in which he knew he was placing a child at risk of being entirely dependent upon his body for survival. So let's posit that the man was engaging in a hobby that involves the use of chemicals that are fairly safe for adults, but are strongly toxic to a growing child's immature organs. Although he knows that having the chemicals around the house might cause a child to have kidney failure, he chose to have them there, and his child suffers kidney failure as a result.

Somehow we need to make the physical dependency one that does not utterly incapacitate the man. So let's make the child very young and portable, say, a newborn infant. The man does not have to remain in bed for nine months. Rather, he needs to remain connected to the child, but the child can be carried in a snugli. To make it even more like pregnancy, we'll say that the child is sedated the entire time so that crying and such would not interfere with work or social life. The child would just be bulky and awkward to carry around everywhere. The sickness and sedation would temporarily halt the child's growth and development. Once her kidneys have healed, and the sedation is reversed, her growth and development will take up where they had left off, but during the time that the man must carry her around, she will remain the size of a newborn.

Then we need to add the final difference. The man in our thought experiment isn't insisting that he had a right to unplug the infant and leave her to die. He is insisting that he has a right to demand that the doctor kill the child -- either by poisoning her or by dismemberment.

And let's remember -- the father knew from Day One that his hobby involving those chemicals might leave him in that situation, with a baby hooked up to him and utterly dependent upon him for nine months. He indulged in his hobby anyway.

Does it look different now?

From Criminal in 1907 to Safe and Legal in 2003: All Equally Fatal

On December 29, 1907, 19-year-old Marcie Mayer (or Mamie Meyer) died in St. Elizabeth's hospital in Chicago from complications of a criminal abortion. Mary Bing, a midwife, was arrested, tried, and sentenced to Joliet. A man named John Mansfield was also held by the coroner's jury, but acquitted by the judge. Marcie's abortion was atypical in that it was not performed by a physician.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. For more about abortion and abortion deaths in the first years of the 20th century, see Abortion Deaths 1900-1909.


"Beth" was 23 years old when she traveled from Massachusetts to take advantage of New York's liberalized abortion law in 1971. The abortion was initiated by injecting saline into Beth's uterus. But instead of the amniotic sac, the saline went into Beth's bloodstream. Beth immediately began to have seizures and went into a coma. She was pronounced dead on December 29, 1971.

Mary Ann Page was 36 years old when she went into cardiac arrest during an abortion/tubal ligation performed under general anesthesia on December 28, 1977. Both procedures were completed, then Mary Ann was taken to the Intensive Care Unit at St. Luke's Hospital.She was pronounced dead on December 29, 1977.

On December 29, 1987, 31-year-old Sheila Watley had a safe, legal abortion at Concerned Women's Center in Houston, Texas. She was 17 weeks pregnant, and had one child. The abortion was performed by Dr. Richard Cunningham. About four minutes into the procedure, Sheila went into cardio-respiratory arrest. She was pronounced dead later that day. The cause of death was listed as an amniotic fluid embolism, which is when fluid from the uterus gets into the woman's blood stream.

Hoa Thuy "Vivian" Tran, like Holly Patterson, got abortion drugs at a Planned Parenthood. Vivian was 22 years old, and died December 29, 2003, six days into the abortion process. She‘d been given the drugs on December 23 at the Costa Mesa Planned Parenthood facility. The autopsy showed that she died of sepsis. Other women identified as having died of infection deaths after RU-486 deaths in the Los Angeles area: Chanelle Bryant, and Oriane Shevin. Chanelle got her abortion drugs at a Planned Parenthood, and Oriane and Vivian got theirs from National Abortion Federation members.

As you can see from the graph below, abortion deaths were falling dramatically before legalization. This steep fall had been in place for decades. To argue that legalization lowered abortion mortality simply isn't supported by the data.

Unsolved Abortion Death from 1921

On December 28, 1921, Belle Keehn died at the Chicago Lying-In Hospital from an abortion perpetrated by an unknown doctor on or about November 27. Documents are unclear as to how it was determined that the perpetrator was a doctor. The hospital was a reputable facility, not a seedy abortionarium, so Belle would have received superior care as doctors tried to save her life.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see Abortion in the 1920s.

Mystery Woman Perpetrates Fatal Abortion

Rose Kulamer's husband, John, said that on Saturday, November 30, she'd told him that she'd been to see “a woman in the West End Pgh.” who had used “a rubber tube” to cause an abortion. She was taken to Columbia Hospital in Wilkensbert, Pennsylvania by ambulance on Monday, December 2.

Rose was taken to the operating room, where the dead three- to four-month fetus was removed and her cervix was packed with gauze. The next day surgery was performed to remove the placenta.

Rose's condition fluctuated over the ensuing days. On Christmas morning, Rose seemed fine, but around midnight on Christmas night her doctor was called in because Rose's condition had taken a sudden downturn. He arrived to find that she had vomited and been incontinent in both her bowels and bladder. She was unconscious, with a weak, irregular pulse. Chalfant diagnosed a pulmonary embolism and remained with Rose for about an hour, during which she seemed to be improving. But the next time Chalfant checked on her, she was showing signs of brain damage from an embolism. She held on until about 1 p.m. December 26.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see Abortion Deaths 1910-1919.

Four Christmas Eve Deaths

All of the women whose deaths we commemorate today died from criminal abortions, three of them at the hands of physicians and one at the hands of a surgical nurse who was clearly getting support from a physician.

>On December 24, 1908, 38-year-old homemaker Christina Pearson died in Chicago from compilations of an abortion. Dr. L. A. Mueller was held by the coroner, but for reasons not given in the source document he was not charged.

In 1928, Roy E. Hardesty won an award of $5,000 for the death of his wife, Arretta. At the age of 31, she had sought an illegal abortion and died on Christmas Eve, 1924 as a result, leaving her husband to raise their three children. Arretta paid a physician, John T. Martin, $10 for the abortion, which was performed surgically. After returning home, Arretta expelled the dead fetus and took ill. The surgeon came to her home to provide follow-up care, but within 48 hours, Arretta was dead.

On Christmas day of 1934, the nude body of a young woman was found in a thicket near a highway south of New York City. Laura and Joseph Devine, whose 19-year-old daughter, Loretta Wilson, had been missing since December 19, contacted authorities and were able to positively identify the body. When an autopsy revealed the cause of death as abortion, Loretta's husband of two years indicated that he had not even been aware that Loretta was pregnant. Dr. John H. Becker Jr., who admitted to having examined Loretta on December 17, was charged with homicide in the death. He denied performing the abortion.

Over the years, many details of the Jacqueline Smith case have been lost, and the remaining story often is dismissed as an urban legend. But strange and macabre as the story is, it was all too true. Jacqueline Smith, age 20, moved to New York and took an apartment with two other women early in 1955. Her boyfriend, Thomas G. Daniel, arranged for 46-year-old scrub nurse, Leobaldo Pejuan, to perform an abortion at Daniel's apartment on Christmas Eve. After performing the abortion, Pejuan became alarmed at the young woman's condition, and summoned Dr. Ramiro Morales, who told him that Jackie was dead. Daniel and Pejuan cut Jacqueline's body into pieces and took it to Pejuan's home, and cut into as many as 50 pieces, which they wrapped in Christmas paper and disposed of in trash cans along side streets off Broadway, from 72nd to 80th. On December 30, Jacqueline's father came looking for her, and at first Daniel said she was missing, then that she had committed suicide, but eventually he confessed.

Late 19th Century Abortion Death, Chicago

On December 22, 1891, a Swedish girl named Tillie Thom was found dead at the office of Dr. Franklin Brooks in Chicago. Tillie had died of an abortion performed that day in Brooks' office. Brooks was found responsible for Tillie's death by Coroner's Verdict.

Tillie's abortion was typical of those before legalization in that it was performed by a physician.

Two Deaths Each Before and After Legalization

On December 21, 1915, 34-year-old Mrs. Anna Hunt died at Chicago's Rhodes Avenue Hospital from complications of an abortion perpetrated that day by an unknown person.

On December 21, 1926, fifteen-year-old Emily Mueller died from complications of a criminal abortion perpetrated somewhere in Chicago on December 11.  Midwife Magdelane Stegeman, alias Motzny, was booked on December 28. The coroner initially cleared Stegeman. She was nevertheless indicted for felony murder by the Grand Jury on February 15, 1927.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. In fact, during the first two thirds of the 20th Century, while abortion was still illegal, there was a massive drop in maternal mortality, including mortality from abortion. Most researches attribute this plunge to improvements in public health and hygiene, the development of blood transfusion techniques, and the introduction of antibiotics. Learn more here.

Denise Holmes, a 24-year-old Australian woman living in Texas, decided to undergo a safe and legal abortion at Avalon Hospital in Los Angeles, California, on her way home for Christmas of 1970. Denise checked into Avalon Hospital (an abortion facility owned by Edward Campbell Allred) on December 21. Denise suffered an amniotic fluid embolism that carried pieces of fetal bone marrow into her lungs. She was pronounced dead by Edward Allred at Avalon at 5pm. Denise is the first confirmed abortion death at an Allred facility, before the National Abortion Federationwas founded, with Allred's Family Planning Associates Medical Group as a member. Other women known to have died after abortion at Allred's facilities include: Patricia Chacon and.Mary Pena, 1984; Josefina Garcia, 1985; Lanice Dorsey, 1986; Joyce Ortenzio and Tami Suematsu, age 19, 1988; Deanna Bell and Susan Levy, 1992; Christina Mora, 1994; Nakia Jorden, 1998; Maria Leho, 1999; Kimberly Neil and Maria Rodriguez, 2000, and Chanelle Bryant, 2004.

On December 20, 1997, 27-year-old Jennifer Halner went to Potomac Family Planning for a safe, legal abortion, to be performed by under general anesthesia. Jennifer was transferred to the recovery room, still unconscious but breathing on her own, at 10:10 a.m. Her blood pressure was normal but her pulse was very rapid. A nurse put an oxygen mask on Jennifer, but removed the cardiac monitor and pulse oximeter. By 10:20, Jennifer was still unconscious. At the nurse's request, the anesthesiologist, without examining Jennifer, ordered an anti-vomiting drug. Five minutes later, the nurse again requested medication for the still-unconscious Jennifer, and the anesthesiologist ordered administration of a drug that is used to reverse the effects of anesthesia -- again, without examining the patient himself. When the nurse checked Jennifer's vital signs, she couldn't find a pulse. Jennifer's pupils were dilated.

The anesthesiologist finally came to check on the patient and began performing CPR, using a pediatric bag-valve mask too small for an adult patient. McLeod, in the mean time, performed two more abortions before going to assist with Jennifer's care. He ordered appropriate drugs administered but did not place a heart monitor on Jennifer. Finally, at around 10:42 a.m., McLeod told somebody to call 911. Paramedics arrived and found Jennifer in cardiac arrest. The medics immediately began appropriate resuscitation, intubating the patient, ventilating her with an adult-sized bag-valve mask, hooking her up to a cardiac monitor, defibrillating her, and administering appropriate drugs. The medics transported Jennifer to Shady Grove Adventist Hospital. After aggressive resuscitative efforts by ER staff, the patient's heart was restored to a stable rhythm, and she was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. But despite their best efforts, she died at 4:15 a.m. on December 21. McLeod also ran the Hillcrest abortion facility in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where Kelly Morse had died in 1996 after being inadequately resuscitated. 

Supporters of legal abortion would assert that Anna and Emily died because abortion was illegal, without any substantiating evidence and in the face of strong evidence that the ordinary risks of all surgery were so much greater at that time that more deaths could naturally be expected. They would also assert that although Denise and Jennifer's deaths were tragic, there would be more deaths were abortion not legal. Again, there is no evidence to support the claim, since the fall in maternal mortality in general, and abortion mortality in particular, had already leveled off after a precipitous drop in the 1930s and 1940s. Legalization, in fact, may have contributed to Jennifer's death by encouraging sloppy medical practice by doctors who no longer had to fear prison for injuring or killing abortion patients.

1926: Chicago Midwife's Fatal Handiwork

On December 13, 1926, 23-year-old Chicago native Mary Paradowski underwent a criminal abortion.
She died on December 20 at Chicago Hospital.

On January 15, 1927, midwife Josephine Petrova was indicted for felony murder in Mary's death.

The Non-Connection Between School Shootings and Abortion

While yes, the slaughter of 3,000 innocent unborn children a day is by far a tragedy of greater magnitude than any school shooting, I take exception with the idea that legalization of abortion is part of the why of school shootings.

Psychopaths who want to go out in what they consider a blaze of glory don't gun down convicts on a roadside work crew. They don't target an inner city gang. They don't shoot up a KKK meeting or a rally of skinheads. They go after the people whose deaths will outrage the community the most: children.

We need to recognize that the outrage over school shootings is a hopeful sign, a sign that contrary to the propaganda of hardcore abortion advocates, the vast majority of Americans do not consider children to be vermin. They value children highly and are devastated when children are slaughtered. They just don't make the connection between the visible child in the playground and the invisible child in the womb.

And even among abortion advocates, there is a profound disconnect in their thinking between the unseen fetus in the womb and the smiling cherub face of a child whose family has an album full of photos. During a National Abortion Federation meeting, members of what amounts to an abortionists' guild expressed total bewilderment that prolifers think they don't like children. They make no connection whatsoever between the child-killing that they devote their lives to and the lives of the baby in the stroller or the second-grader on the playground, any more than a Nazi would make a connection between the Jewish grandmother he's shoving into a mass grave and his own grandmother.

So we need to take this real value that they place on the children that they can see and work with it.

Talk about why it's so heinous to kill children. Why? Because those children had their whole lives ahead of them. They were robbed of Little League games and trips to the zoo; they were robbed of getting their drivers' license and going to the prom. They were deprived of falling in love and getting married and having children of their own.

The younger you are when you're murdered, they grasp, the more of life you're being robbed of.

So, isn't it terrible to rob somebody of every single life experience? Of a single moment of being snuggled over her mother's heart? Of a single moment of warm sun shining on his face?. Of the jingling of car keys and the mushy sweetness of that first bite of banana? The child killed in the womb gets denied even the few life experiences those precious schoolchildren had before their lives were horribly cut short.


We need to start with the profound sense people have that killing children is wrong, make them articulate it, and then ask them, at what point is it no longer wrong? At what point are you not depriving somebody of the rest of their life?

Just ask. And let them stew on it.

But don't make the mistake of thinking that AL shot up kids because our society doesn't value them. The truth is quite the contrary.

Two Criminal Deaths and One Illegal Safe and Legal Death

On December 28, 1871, an Illinois coroner's jury was called to investigate the December 18th death of Mrs. Amanda McCoy. Amanda had died at the home of Dr. Fahlbusch, a German woman practicing as a midwife and described as "of good reputation." She was cleared of any suspicion in Amanda's death.
The Coroner's Jury concluded that Amanda had undergone her fatal abortion before coming into the city.

On December 18, 1923, 40-year-old Sophia Hartozinski died at Chicago's County Hospital due to a criminal abortion performed there that day. The coroner identified midwife Mary Roback as having been responsible for Sophia's death.

Keep in mind that things that may seem appalling to us in the early 21st century -- such as performing surgery in one's home -- was not appalling at the time. Things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see Abortion in the 1920s.


Fast forward to the safe and legal era.

Myrtha Baptiste, age 26, had a safe and legal abortion of her 10 week pregnancy performed by Orlando Zaldivar at Woman's Care Clinic December 18, 1982.  Myrtha, a mother of two, arrived at the hospital in critical condition due to delay of transfer by the clinic staff. She bled to death from two uterine perforations. Zaldivar could not be reached for seven hours while hospital staff were struggling to save his patient's life. Since Zaldivar's license was inactive at the time he performed Myrta's abortion, the CDC classified her death as being due to illegal abortion rather than legal abortion. The other deaths at that facility -- Ruth Montero, Shirley Payne, and Maura Morales -- were counted as legal abortion deaths.

Chicago 1914: Fatal Abortion By Unknown Perp

On December 17, 1914, 24-year-old Emma Fertig died at Chicago's West Side Hospital from an abortion performed by an unknown perpetrator.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. In fact, due to improvements in addressing these problems, maternal mortality in general (and abortion mortality with it) fell dramatically in the 20th Century, decades before Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across America.
For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see Abortion Deaths 1910-1919.

Quacks, both Before and After Roe, Killed Multiple Women

On December 6, 1874, midwife Mrs. Johanna White perpetrated an abortion on Mrs. Christine Seifred. Christine had been unfaithful to her husband when he was away in Europe, and when he returned and learned of the pregnancy, he left her. Ten days later, on December 16, Christine died from infection. Police arrested Mrs. White and her assistant, Margaret Smith.

On December 11, 1911, 34-year-old homemaker Mary Thorning underwent an abortion performed by Paulina Bechtel. Mary died on December 16.  Though Bechtel was identified as a midwife in the Homicide in Chicago Database, she was actually a doctor. At that time and place, female obstetricians were often referred to as midwives. Bechtel had already killed Ida Henry and Barbara Shelgren in 1900, In both of those cases she had been indicted but not tried. Bechtel was held by the Coroner's Jury and indicted on January 1, 1912 for Mary's death, but the case never went to trial.

On December 16, 1925, 22-year-old factory worker Bridget Masterson died in her Chicago home from a botched abortion. John O'Malley, the father of Bridget's baby, committed suicide by gas after learning of Bridget's death. He left a note implicating "a lady doctor at 310 W. North Ave." This was the address of Dr. Lucy Hagenow. Hagenow was indicted for felony murder by a grand jury on January 5, 1926. Hagenow, who had already been implicated of the abortion deaths of Louise Derchow, Annie Dorris, Abbia Richards, and Emma Dep in San Francisco, would go on to be linked to over a dozen Chicago abortion deaths: Minnie Deering, Sophia Kuhn, Emily Anderson, Hannah Carlson, Marie Hecht, May Putnam, Lola Madison, Annie Horvatich, Lottie Lowy, Nina H. Pierce, Jean Cohen, Elizabeth Welter, and Mary Moorehead. Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. In fact, due to improvements in addressing these issued, maternal mortality in general (and abortion mortality with it) fell dramatically in the 20th Century, decades before Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across America.

Now we move ahead to the days of safe-n-legal abortion.

Barbara Auerbach was 38 years old when she went to a New York hospital for a safe, legal abortion and tubal ligation, performed December 11, 1981. Two days later, she was discharged. On December 16, Barbara was vomiting and suffering from back pain and inability to void her bladder. She was admitted to Princeton Medical Center in Princeton, New Jersey. Doctors there tried in vain to save her life, but she died within three hours of being admitted. The autopsy showed that Barbara had an obstruction of her small bowel, which caused massive infection throughout her body.

On December 15, 1984, Mary Pena underwent a safe and legal abortion at San Vincente Hospital in Los Angeles. Mary had thought that she was 3 months pregnant, but doctors discovered she was at 22-weeks. During the procedure, Mary sustained two cervical lacerations, and because she was bleeding heavily, a hysterectomy was performed in an effort to save her life. The surgery was not successful, and at 1:50 am on December 16, 1984, she died while on the operating table. The Investigator's Report states "Dr. Allred cleared the case with Coroner and body was released to the family picked mortuary ... and services held. When the death certificate was taken to Kern County Health Department they refused to accept it and called the case to Los Angeles Coroner. ... Mortuary in Bakersfield will bring body to this office for autopsy on morning of 12-20-84." Only then was cause of death attributed to exsanguination due to cervical laceration due to therapeutic abortion. The cervix showed two lacerations - a small one that had been sutured and a large unsutured one extending through the full ring of the cervix. Once a cause for the fatal hemorrhage was determined, the death certificate was accepted, and Mary was laid to rest again. San Vicente had been purchased by National Abortion Federation member Familiy Practice Associates Medical Groupshortly before Mary's death. Other patients known to have died after abortion at Allred's facilities include:  Denise Holmes, Patricia Chacon, Josefina Garcia, Lanice Dorsey, Joyce Ortenzio, Tami Suematsu, Deanna Bell, Susan Levy, Christina Mora, Nakia Jorden, Maria Leho, Kimberly Neil, Maria Rodriguez, and Chanelle Bryant.

Venus Ortiz submitted to a 15-week abortion at National Abortion Federation member Eastern Women's Center at the hands of  Dr. Leiber on February 24, 1993. Her family due on the grounds that there was negligence in administering anesthesia to Venus, and then failed to resuscitate her promptly when she stopped breathing. Venus was left in permanent need of respirator, with profound brain damage. Venus remains in a coma/vegetative state. She was hospitalized a little over five months before being transferred to permanent nursing home care. She remained in a vegetative state for the remainder of her life. She died in a Staten Island nusing home on December 16, 1998 at the age of 29. Two other patients, Dawn Ravenelle (only 13 years old) and Dawn Mack, also died of complications of abortions done at Eastern Women's Center.

Prolifers need to learn that criminalizing abortion won't be enough. We will have to close loopholes in the law and demand accountability from authorities, who in the name of abortion rights will ignore quackery whether abortion is legal or not. Prochoicers need to learn that legalizing abortion didn't abolish quackery. Only diligence can keep the quacks in check.

One Criminal, Two Safe-n-Legal, All Dead

At around 9:10 p.m. On December 15, 1891, Dr. J. M. Ryall was called to the Pittsburgh home of 32-year-old Nancy Hildinger. He found her dead. Her family told Ryall that Nancy had been sick and bleeding from her period. He performed an autopsy. Nancy was a large, muscular woman weighing about 160 lbs. and found her uterus enlarged to about three months size, flabby, inflamed, and marked by an injury caused by some sort of instrument. She had already expelled the fetus. Her lungs were also  congested. The coroner's jury found that Nancy had died at the hands of an unknown abortionist.

Twenty-year-old LaSandra Russ, from Berkley, California, went to Los Angeles to have an abortion on December 13, 1971. She was six weeks pregnant. The abortion was performed at Memorial Hospital of Hawthorne the next day, December 14. LaSandra went into cardiac arrest almost immediately after the abortion. Attempts were made to revive her, but she was finally pronounced dead on December 15, 1971.

"Faye" was 19 years old when she went to the office of Andre Nehorayoff for a safe and legal abortion on December 15, 1979. Nehorayoff failed to record an adequate history or medical exam for Faye. Nehorayoff left Faye in a recovery room at 2:25 p.m., without any monitoring. When somebody finally checked on her an hour later, she was cyanotic (blue) and had no pulse. She was pronounced dead at a hospital. Nehorayoff was also disciplined regarding Patient E, an 18-year-old patient who bled to death after Nehorayoff sent her home in 1983 with a fetal leg still in her uterus.

As you can see from the graph below, abortion deaths were falling dramatically before legalization. This steep fall had been in place for decades. To argue that legalization lowered abortion mortality simply isn't supported by the data.

Four 20th Century Abortion Deaths

On December 14, 1911, 34-year-old mother-of-four Mrs. Ella Kettler died from an abortion that Dr. Robert H. Foster had perpetrated at his practice on December 2. Foster was held by the Coroner's Jury and indicted on December 19, but the case never went to trial.

On December 14, 1916, 19-year-old Eleanor Dillon, who worked as a clerk, died at Chicago's Columbus Hospital from a criminal abortion perpetrated by Dr. M.R. Perlstein that day. Perlstein was arrested December 15, and Michael Schackman and Abraham Kruchersky were held as accessories. Perlstein was acquitted on May 18, 1918.

Walter Hufnagel of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, noticed on December 4, 1918, that his wife, 19-year-old Emma Hufnagel, was sick with body aches. The next day he called Dr. C. Barton, who diagnosed the young homemaker with influenza. By December 7, Emma's stepmother, Louise Jackson, was told of Emma's illness and went to visit her. Emma told her mother that, since her period had been about two weeks late, and believing herself to be pregnant, she had used a catheter on herself on November 30. By December 10, Emma's family was so alarmed by her condition that they brought her to Presbyterian Hospital. In spite of doctors' best efforts, Emma died of peritonitis and septicemia on December 14.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. In fact, due to improvements in addressing these problems, maternal mortality in general (and abortion mortality with it) fell dramatically in the 20th Century, decades before Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across America.

For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see Abortion Deaths 1910-1919.



Edith Cote was 38 years old when she submitted to a safe and legal abortion in New York. On December 14, 1991, she was unresponsive and was taken to the emergency room at Syosset Hospital. Hospital staff were unable to save Edith's life. Her cause of death was listed on her death certificate as pulmonary amniotic embolism after an induced abortion.

1996: Bled to Death With her Son in her Arms

First, a little background.

In one session of a National Abortion Federation Risk Management Seminar, a participant indicated that when he pulled bowel (extracted part of a patient's bowel through a perforation in her uterus), his preferred method of treatment (if you can call it that) was to stuff the bowel back through the perforation, administer medications to make the uterus contract and control bleeding, monitor the woman more carefully in recovery, and if she seemed okay, send her home none the wiser.

The moderator was appalled. He pointed out that even if there was no obvious injury to the bowel, it might be bruised and damaged. The recommended procedure is to admit the patient to the hospital and examine her bowel, and observe her for signs of further injury. The moderator then asked how many of the other participants followed this method of stuffing the bowel back in and hoping for the best. Six participants raised their hands to be counted.

Sharon and her son Curtis

I knew it was only a matter of time before one of these bowel-stuffing abortionists killed somebody. That's where the unwitting Sharon Yvonne Hamptlon stepped into the picture. She went to Bruce Steir (rhymes with "fear") at A Lady's Choice Women's Medical Center for a safe, legal abortion on December 13, 1996. She was 20 weeks pregnant.

Steir remained at the facility for about an hour after Sharon's abortion. She was still in the recovery room when he left.

Excerpts from Sharon's mother Doris's statement to the medical board can be found at "...And So I Could Hold You and You Could Go to Sleep". Here are some excerpts:

Maybe around 3:00 pm I took Curtis inside to use the bathroom. I saw a grey haired man dressed in green surgical clothes sitting at a desk. He said, "You know she is far along." I said, "No. I didn't know because she didn't tell me." Then I saw Sharon in the recovery room about 3:30 or 4:00 pm. She looked so bad that I felt scared. She was laying on a lazyboy style chair with an IV in her left arm and a blood pressure cuff on the other. She looked very pale. Her eyes were partially open and I could see only the whites of her eyes as if she were in shock. She was not speaking and her whole body was shaking real hard in big shivers. Her legs were especially bad. The doctor said, "She doesn't react to drugs well." .... A woman came in and said that Sharon didn't need the blankets that were on her already and pulled the blankets off. Other girls in the recovery room were vomiting and the attendant woman told the girls to keep vomiting, that vomiting was good for them at this time. I went back to the waiting room and a Spanish lady came out and said that Sharon would be ready in a few minutes as soon as the IV finished.
Sharon was in the recovery for only about 45 minutes, because at 5:00 pm they came out and said she was ready to leave. I heard someone say that the doctor was real busy and he had to rush out like he was going to the airport, something about him having to go to Sacramento or San Francisco. I saw two women struggling to place Sharon in a wheelchair. Sharon could not walk at all and she was not speaking. She looked very, very pale now.
....
On the way home to Barstow, I stopped at Wendy's to get a sandwich for little Curtis. I tried to wake Sharon but all she said was "Huh, Huh." Then Curtis said, "Mamma, I love you. Do you need anything? Are you okay?" And Sharon said, "Okay. I'll take a drink." Sharon was lying in the backseat of the car and said to Curtis, "Come on back with me Curtis. I love you and so I could hold you and you could go to sleep." She was silent for about one hour. Near Victorville, she said, "I'm so hot. Please let the window down." I opened the window a bit. After that, Sharon was silent forever.
We got home to Barstow and I saw that Sharon, still laying in the back seat was naked from the waist up, having removed her shirt, shoes and socks. I started yelling, "Sharon. Sharon. Wake up," but she didn't and my husband, Ben Hamptlon, said, "Call 911."

According to Nancy Myles, an untrasound technician who was assisting Steir during Sharon's abortion, Steir was having trouble locating and extracting the fetal skull. She said that he looked at her strangely and said, "I think I pulled bowel."

Steir was already on probation with the medical board at the time of Sharon's abortion; he had a history of botching abortions, including causing uterine perforations. He'd been found negligent in six abortion cases, including three in which the woman had to undergo a hysterectomy. One woman had to have a fetal skull removed from a tear in her uterus. Steir surrendered his license in 1997, in the wake of the fallout surrounding Sharon's death.

Pro-choice organizations, including the national leadership of NOW, and the National Abortion Federation and the California Abortion and Reproduction Rights League, rallied around Steir. One supporter stood outside the courthouse with a sign reading, "Abortion doctors are heroes, defend Dr. Bruce Steir." The Feminist Women's Health Center in Chico, with whom he once was affiliated, set up a "defense committee" and raised funds for his legal expenses.

Joseph Durante, who owned the facility, was also on probation with the medical board at the time of Sharon's fatal abortion. He had attempted a late abortion which resulted in the birth of a live but injured infant.

Sharon was a single mother who worked part-time at Burger King while attending community college. Sharon's mother said that she wanted to go off welfare and become a nurse. California taxpayers funded the fatal abortion through Medi-Cal.

Steir eventually plea bargained. He was sentenced to a year in prison, with six months of the sentence suspended in leiu of community service. He was also given five years' probation. At the sentencing hearing, four years after Sharon's death, Sharon's father said he still often pulled his car to the side of the road, looked at his daughter's picture, and wept.

Steir was released after serving only four months of his sentence.

Again, from Doris Hamplton's statement:

I don't know how she heard about Dr. Durante's offices. I think he was recommended by the people at San Bernardino County Social Services or by Dr. Krider. Sharon was on Medi-Cal and had Pacific Care as the Medi-Cal managed care agent. I understand that because Dr. Durante and Dr. Steir were on probation they were not entitled to Medi-Cal payment, but they got it anyway. I understand that their office was not accredited as an ambulatory surgical office, and that it was supposed to be accredited to comply with the law. I had no idea that Dr. Durante and Dr. Steir were on probation with the Medical Board for incompetence and negligence against women patients. I am sure that Sharon did not know either. If I had known, I would never have taken Sharon to such a bad place with such bad doctors. I learned about their records in the newspaper articles.
....
I cry every day for the terrible loss of my daughter, and I am overwhelmed that 3 year old Curtis had his mother taken away forever. My husband, Ben Hamptlon, (father of Sharon), is sick with grief, has terrible head pain, is under the care of a doctor for this and has been taking strong pain medicine since Sharon's death. My prayer is that these doctors be stopped immediately so that no other girl will be killed and that no other family will have to suffer as we have.

Two Incorrigible Criminal Abortionists and a Flukey Post-Roe Death

On Monday, December 12, 1892, Emily Anderson, a Chicago widow who kept a boarding house, died of peritonitis from a criminal abortion. Emily, a widow, kept a boarding house. One of Emily's boarders, Henry Gibspen, denied having gotten Emily pregnant but said that he had accompanied her to a doctor at her request, but had stayed at the foot of the stairs. He saw her enter the office of Dr. Lucy Hagenow (pictured), then went home. Gilbspen turned State's evidence against Hagenow, but she was acquitted when the judge instructed the jury to return a not-guilty verdict, concluding on his own that the state had not produced sufficient evidence for a conviction. Hagenow had already been tried multiple times for abortion deaths in San Francisco (Louise Duchow, Annie Dories, Emma Dep, and Abbia Richards) before moving to Chicago, and had already been implicated in the deaths of Minnie Deering and Sophia Kuhn. She went on to be tied to nearly a dozen more Cook County abortion deaths, including  Hannah Carlson, Marie Hecht, May Putnam, Lola Madison, Annie Horvatich, Lottie Lowy, Nina H. Pierce, Jean Cohen, Bridget Masterson, Elizabeth Welter and Mary Moorehead.

On December 12, 1930, 22-year-old Jeanette Reder died from complications of an abortion that had been perpetrated on December 1 by Dr. Emil Gleitsman. Jeanette died December 12. Gleitsman was arrested on December 13, and held for murder by abortion. He was indicted by a grand jury for homicide, but was acquitted on June 15, 1931. The source does not clarify why there was enough evidence to indict Gleitsman, but not enough to convict him. Gleitsman was also indicted for 22-year-old Lucille van Iderstine's abortion death, and was convicted in the death of 21-year-old Mary Colbert in 1933. Jeanette's abortion was typical of illegal abortions in that it was attributed to a physician.

The seedy careers of Lucy Hagenow and Emil Gleitsman stand as a warning to prolifers that simply recriminalizing abortion won't be enough to stop abortionists, not even the biggest quacks, from plying their trade unless the laws have teeth in them and we address the kind of corruption and political game-playing that enabled abortionists to keep killing. We will never be able to rest, because the abortionists and their enablers certainly won't.

Still, abortion deaths should remain rare. During the first two thirds of the 20th Century, while abortion was still illegal, there was a massive drop in maternal mortality, including mortality from abortion. Most researches attribute this plunge to improvements in public health and hygiene, the development of blood transfusion techniques, and the introduction of antibiotics. Learn more here.



Jumping ahead to the safe and legal era, we have a death that actually appears to be just one of those flukey things. Thirty-year-old Sandra Williams was 11 weeks pregnant when she underwent an abortion on December 12, 1984. She went home following the abortion. Less than twelve hours later, she was dead. Her death certificate noted that she died from a pulmonary embolism.

1927: The Infamous Rongetti Case

The first man sentenced to die in Illinois's electric chair was not a typical death row inmate: he was a physician whose patient died from complications of an illegal abortion. Reporters covering the case in Chicago contended that Rongetti was the first doctor in the United States ever sentenced to die over a patient's abortion death.

Dr. Amante Rongetti's death sentence was handed down by a Chicago jury on March 1, 1928. He had been convicted of murder in the December 11, 1927 death of 19-year-old Loretta Enders on November 16.

Rongetti reportedly stood stunned and quiet as the sentence was read, but his wife became hysterical, pushing her way through the courtroom crowd crying, "Let me out."

Many factors disclosed in court helped to seal the jury's verdict:

• The baby had been born alive; Rongetti left it unattended to die, then threw the body in the furnace. (Rongetti faced an additional charge of manslaughter in the death of the baby.)
• After Loretta had developed sepsis (blood poisoning) from the abortion, Rongetti refused to provide follow-up care, including possibly life-saving additional surgery, because she had no money to pay him.
• Not only did Rongetti refuse to provide the care himself, but he prevented Loretta from going elsewhere for fear his practice would be exposed.
• Rongetti filed a falsified death certificate, claiming that Loretta had died of heart disease.
• Rongetti refused to allow Loretta's mother to summon a priest to perform last rites, again fearing exposure of his illegal practices.

After the sentence was handed down, Rongetti's attorney, Scott Stewart, immediately filed motion for a new trial. Stuart's bid for a new trial was successful, and the very next year, Rongetti was at large to be implicated in the criminal abortion death of Elizabeth Palumbo, who died May 23 after an abortion performed May 10.

He was tried again for Loretta's death in December of 1929. He was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to Joliet.

Loretta's abortion was typical of illegal abortions in that it was performed by a physician.

Two Dead Chicago Teens, Nearly a Century Apart

On December 10, 1914, 13-year-old schoolgirl Ida Kaufman died in a Chicago home after an abortion performed by an unknown perpetrator.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. In fact, due to improvements in addressing these problems, maternal mortality in general (and abortion mortality with it) fell dramatically in the 20th Century, decades before Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across America.

For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see Abortion Deaths 1910-1919.



Jumping from the beginning of the century to the end, we observe the death of another Chicago teen.

On December 10, 1998, Nakia Jorden, who would have graduated from Hyde Park High School in 2000, died of anesthesia complications during an abortion at the Albany Medical Surgical Center in Chicago. According to an expert in anesthesia who reviewed Nakia's records, Nakia had a pulse ox reading of only 94% when she was sedated for her abortion. Nakia was not given oxygen, and was not monitored by EKG as appropriate when administering this degree of anesthesia. The greatest fault that the anesthesia expert found was that Albany staff, upon noting a pulse ox reading of only 74%, he did nothing to ensure that she was in fact getting enough oxygen into her lungs. Instead, he administered atropine to increase her heart rate, "which likely delayed the critical intervention of ventilating the patient with oxygen."

Albany also perpetrated the fatal abortions on  Deanna Bell, Maria Leho,and Maria Rodriguez. Other abortion patients who have lost their lives after entrusting them to FPA's California affiliates include  Denise Holmes, Patricia Chacon, Mary Pena, Josefina Garcia, Lanice Dorsey, Joyce Ortenzio, Tami Suematsu, Susan Levy, Christina Mora, Kimberly Neil, and Chanelle Bryant. You can contact Albany here to tell them what you think of the job they're doing.

1956: The Deadly "Angel of Ashland"

On Saturday, December 8, 1956, 26-year-old Mary Davies of New York City arrived in the Ashland, Pennsylvania office of abortionist Dr. Robert Douglas Spencer. She was seeking an abortion.

As a physician, Spencer was typical of criminal abortionists. What was unusual about him was that rather than sneak the woman in through the back alley, Spencer plied his abortion trade openly.

According to Spencer, Mary was alone, and reported that she'd been bleeding for about two weeks. He didn't examine her, but gave her medication for pain and Ergotrate to stop the bleeding. He told her to return the following day for her abortion.

Mary returned at about 10 AM on the 9th. He administered 13 ccs. of Evipal in a 10% solution to induce anesthesia. "I injected that solution into the vein of the left arm and in ten seconds she was asleep." Spencer said that the next thing he noticed was that Mary wasn't breathing. She also appeared blue. He injected five ccc. of "Metrozol"* into her left leg. She didn't respond, so he gave her an additional five ccs. of "Metrozol", this time injecting the drug into a vein. Mary still did not respond, so Spencer attempted to resuscitate her with oxygen. He called his assistant, Mildred Zettlemoyer, into the room to assist him. With Mary in Zettlemoyer's care, Spencer went to another part of the building to retrieve adrenaline. He gave Mary three injections of adrenaline.

Mary still was not responding, so Spencer had Zettlemoyer call the laboratory assistant, Steve Sekunda, and tell him to come to the office. Spencer put a breathing tube into Mary's throat, but had to work blind because the light on his scope wasn't working. He resumed artificial respiration, "and pulled on her tongue, but got no response." By the time Sekunda arrived, at around 11:30, Spencer had concluded that Mary was dead. The puzzled man concluded "that this patient died in my office from some heart disease."

Dr. Milton Helpern, chief medical examiner for New York City, was among the experts that testified in Spencer's trial for Mary's death. Helpern concluded that Mary had been pregnant, that the pregnancy had been terminated right before her death, and that she'd died from administration of a drug used for anesthesia for performing a D&C. Mary had been in good health prior to her death.

Patricia G. Miller, author of The Worst Of Times, asked another doctor, "Dr. Bert," who had practiced before legalization, to review news reports of Mary's death and speculate as to whether Mary would have died had abortion been legal.

"Dr. Bert" faulted Spencer for not having an assistant while he was administering general anesthesia. "In my view, to give a general anesthetic alone is below good medical care, even in those days." He speculated that Spencer had not had an assistant working with him due to the law against abortion -- an odd speculation, since Spencer was doing abortions quite openly, with at least one member of his staff present in the building. It's also an odd speculation considering how many legal abortionists have had patients die from anesthesia complications, either due to inadequate supervision of the anesthesia process or inadequate resuscitation efforts.

Spencer's widow, Eleanor, told Patricia Miller that her husband had been quite stricken by Mary Davies' death. He continued to perform abortions, however, along with his regular medical practice, up until the trial. He was acquitted on all counts, likely because it was impossible to prove that Mary hadn't either miscarried during those two weeks of bleeding prior to her appointment with Spencer, or been aborted by somebody else. No mention is made of any fetal remains being found in Mary's body or in Spencer's office.

Spencer briefly stopped doing abortions after the trial, "for a month or so," his widow said. But he resumed his business and eventually got entangled with a fellow named Harry Mace who set up a business for himself rounding up abortion patients and bringing them to Spencer. Spencer's widow lamented that Mace flooded Spencer with patients, pressuring him to rush through abortions. Spencer's health began to fail. He was arrested again, due to the attention from Mace's activities, but died before the case went to trial.

Mary Davies is the only woman known to have died from abortion related complications under Spencer's care. Spencer is estimated to have performed between 40,000 and 100,000 abortions.

Bring Out Your Dead (Part 1: The Narrative)

Images are powerful, particularly images of tragedy.

This fact makes images a favorite tool of activists. A picture, as the saying goes, paints a thousand words. A well-chosen image can convey an entire story. It serves as shorthand to convey a useful narrative. The narrative itself might be true or false.

These images, gathered easily from activist web sites, convey a singe overarching narrative. Can you fill in the blank?

"___________ kill women."

If you don't follow political or social-issues news, I'll give you a hint: The images of Becky Bell and Rosie Jimenez are from the web site of the National Organization for Women.

These women's images are used to rally people to the cause of abortion-rights activists. The overarching narrative, in a nutshell, is, "Abortion laws kill women." Each specific image is used to convey a specific piece of that narrative.

The first women, Geraldine "Gerri" Santoro, is the woman in the infamous photo first published in Ms. magazine in 1973. The photo, taken by police, showed Gerri, nude, face-down with her knees under her, on the floor of the motel room where she died on June 8, 1964.  Gerri had arranged the abortion out of fear of a violent estranged husband that the law had failed to protect her from. In 1995, Boston filmmaker Jane Gillooly produced a film, Leona's Sister Gerri, to spell out the narrative in specific detail: Laws banning abortion never  prevented women from seeking abortions; they only forced women to resort to desperate, amateur abortions that inevitably killed them.

The second woman is Rosie Jimenez. On September 26, 1977, 27-year-old Rosie had shown up at the emergency room of McAllen General Hospital in the Texas border town of McAllen, with septic shock. She was put in intensive care, but died on October 3 from renal and cardiac failure caused by complications of a criminal abortion. This criminal abortion cost $5 less than legal abortions being arranged for poor patients by the same Planned Parenthood that had arranged an earlier, tax-funded abortion for Rosie.  The narrative in Rosie's death, put forth not only by abortion-advocacy organizations but also by their supporters at the Center for Disease Control, was that the newly-enacted "Hyde Amendment," banning use of federal tax dollars for any more elective abortion, forces women to forgo the prohibitively expensive safe, legal abortions and instead resort to cheap but dangerous criminal abortions.

The next image is that of Becky Bell, a 17-year-old Indiana girl who died of pneumonia on September 16, 1988. Becky's story is a bit different from those of Gerri and Rosie. There is no doubt whatsoever that Gerri and Rosie had died as a result of botched abortions, however much one might argue about the causal role played by criminal law or funding restrictions. On the other hand, the only abortion connected with Becky's death is a "spontaneous abortion" -- the medical term for a miscarriage. This inconvenient little fact did not stop abortion-rights activists from latching on to the word "abortion" on Becky's autopsy report and using it to convince her parents that she had not simply miscarried while dying of pneumonia, but had instead developed the infection because she had undergone a criminal abortion. The specific narrative put forth using Becky's image is that laws requiring parental involvement in abortions performed on underage girls force teens to resort to deadly illegal abortions.

The final image is that of Savita Halappanavar. Like Becky Bell, Savita did not undergo an induced abortion. Rather, she died in an Irish hospital of massive infection related to a miscarriage during a wanted pregnancy. If the events recalled by her husband are correct, Savita was not given antibiotics until after she had already collapsed from the raging sepsis. Given three days notice prior to publication of the story, Irish abortion-rights organizations latched onto Mr. Halappanavar's recollection that Savita had asked that doctors induce labor to complete the progressing miscarriage, and the doctor refused on the grounds that Ireland, being a Catholic country, would not permit taking any steps to remove or expel the fetus until the heart had stopped beating. Despite the fact that the type of induction Savita reportedly requested is legal in Ireland and sanctioned by the Catholic church, the narrative being attached to Savita's image is that laws against abortion, foisted off on society by the Catholic church, forbid doctors to save women's lives in the face of pregnancy complications.

The fit between the image and the narrative, as we have just seen, does not need to be a snug fit. The most tenuous link between image and narrative is sufficient. And once that link is established, the images are splashed across newspapers, magazines, web sites, posters and banners.

There are some images, however, that must be avoided like the plague, even though they depict women who died due to abortions.

Row 1: Marla Cardamone, Carolina Gutierrez, Diana Lopez,
Karnamaya Mongar, Belinda Byrd
Row 2: Alice Bowlsby, Alexandra Nunez,Sharon Hamplton,
Eva Swan, Laura Smith
Row 3: Tonya Reaves, Eva Shaver, Holly Patterson,
Christin Gilbert, Mary Parks
Row 4: Kris Humphrey, Edrica Goode, Barbara Covington,
Barbara Lofrumento, and Tamiia Russell

These abortion victims won't be featured in anything put out by those who hold themselves up as defenders of women's lives or champions of women's safety. These women's deaths must, at all costs, be ignored. Why?

They simply do not fit the abortion-rights narrative.

Alice Bowlsby, Eva Swan, Eva Shaver, Mary Park, Barbara Covington, and Barbara Lofrumento don't fit the narrative because they died from criminal abortions that would not fit into the modern "unsafe abortion" category. Their abortions were perpetrated by physicians with the same tools, training, and technology that would have been available had abortion been legal. Admitting that such deaths happened prior to legalization would detract from the narrative that pre-legalization abortion was an age of "back alley butchers," of abortions perpetrated by rank amateurs. Admitting that such deaths were happening would open the door to thought about what it was that was making pre-legalization abortions deadly. Those thoughts, leading off the safe path of the "legalization saves women's lives" narrative, threaten the abortion advocacy establishment.

Kris Humphrey, after feeling mistreated by Planned Parenthood staff during an abortion there, opted to go "natural" for her next abortion, and poisoned herself with pennyroyal tea recommended to her by friends who likewise embraced herbal abortions. Looking too closely at Kris's death would also open a can of worms the abortion establishment would prefer kept tightly shut.

But it's the last group of women whose deaths pose the greatest threat to the narrative. Marla Anne Cardamone, Carolina Gutierrez, Diana Lopez, Karnamaya Mongar, Belinda Byrd, Alexandra Nunez, Sharon Hamplton, Laura Hope Smith, Tonya Reaves, Holly Patterson, Christin Gilbert, Edrica Goode,  and Tamiia Russell died from supposedly safe, legal abortions under circumstances that call the claim that legalization improved safety into serious question. Even worse, they raise questions about how much the abortion-rights establishment can really be trusted to look after women's lives.

They must, absolutely must, be hushed up.

Narrative is all.