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.