40 Years, 40 Faces of Choice (2003 - 2012)

2003: Holly Patterson

Holly Patterson, age 18, died September 17, 2003, from sepsis caused by a fetus incompletely expelled in a safe and legal medical abortion. Holly got the drugs for the fatal abortion at a Planned Parenthood in Hayward, California, on September 10. Monty Patterson, Holly‘s father, became an anti-RU-486 activist. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, "The medical community treats this as a simple pill you take, as if you're getting rid of a headache. The procedure, the follow-ups, it's all too lackadaisical. The girl gets a pill. Then she's sent home to do the rest on her own. There are just too many things that can go wrong."For an extensive, in-depth look at Holly's death and the surrounding political firestorm, see: The Making of a Martyr, Holly Patterson‘s death.Other women were identified as dying after RU-486 abortions include: Chanelle Bryant, Oriane Shevin,  Vivian Tran, Cherish Roe, Tara Roe, Wanda Roe, and Brenda Vise.

2004: Abraham Alberto Hodari

Dr. Abraham Alberto Hodari worked at Northland Family Planning Clinic, a National Abortion Federation member in Michigan. He also worked at Womancare Clinic and Detroit Memorial Hospital. On January 7, 2004, Hodari initiated an abortion on 15-year-old Tamiia Russell, who was so far advanced in pregnancy that another abortion clinic had offered her prenatal vitamins. Tamiia was brought for the abortion by her abuser's sister, using a fake ID, and in violation of parental consent laws. After the abortion was begun by inserting laminaria, dried seaweed sticks that absorb moisture and expand overnight to dilate the cervix, Tamiia's mother got wind of the abortion, which Tamiia hadn't wanted. They went to the clinic and asked that the laminaria be removed, but Hodari, who once told Medical Students for Choice that abortion doctors have a "license to lie," availed himself of that license and told them that she'd die if they halted the abortion, Hodari completed the abortion and sent Tamiia home to bleed to death. Hodari also perpetrated a fatal abortion on and Chivon Williams, and was implicated in the abortion death of Regina Johnson.

2005: Christin Gilbert

Christin Gilbert, a 19-year-old woman with Down syndrome, was brought from Texas to George Tiller's Wichita abortion facility for a presumably safe and legal late abortion on January 10, 2005. Like all Tiller late abortion patients, ostensibly so sick that their pregnancies endanger their lives or health, Christin spent the bulk of her time during the abortion process at a motel, in the care of her family. She would be brought back to Tiller's facility each day for procedures to kill the fetus and dilate her cervix, then returned to the motel and the care of her family. On January 12, Tiller's staff diagnosed Christin as being "dehydrated". She was given IV fluids then sent back to the motel. She had numerous episodes of vomiting, and lost consciousness several times. Rather than call an ambulance or take her to the hospital, Christin's family waited until morning and took her to Tiller's clinic, where she went into cardiac arrest. Tiller's staff gave false information to 911, telling them that Christin was awake and alert even as Dr. LeRoy Carhart was attempting to resuscitate her. When medics arrived, they mistook Carhart for a bystander because of how unprofessionally he was administering CPR.Ambulance staff resuscitated Christin, then transported her to the hospital. She was pumped full of antibiotics to try to treat the underlying sepsis that evidently had caused the cardiac arrest, but to no avail. She died that day of systemic organ failure.

2006: Romeo Ferrer

Like many abortion "clinics", Dr. Romeo Ferrer's private practice, Gynecare Center, would look to the untrained eye like an outpatient clinic. A patient making an appointment there would likely believe she was in a licensed clinic, not a doctor's office. In 2006, 21-year-old "Peggy"  went to Ferrer's clinic-looking office for an abortion on February 3, 2006. Ferrer started the abortion, a D&E abortion, at about 1:00 p.m., using ultrasound to help him visualize the baby as he dismembered it. It took 45 minutes and repeated doses of drugs to complete what is typically an abortion that takes less than 20 minutes. After being moved to recovery, Peggy turned a bluish color, and staff were unable to detect pulse or blood pressure. Ferrer used lay rather than professional CPR techniques. Medics arrived to find Peggy still unresponsive and without a pulse. The medics used an oxygen mask and additional drugs as they transported Peggy to Anne Arundel Medical Center. There, emergency room staff continued the attempts to resuscitate Peggy, to no avail. She was pronounced dead at 2:57 p.m. An autopsy found that Peggy had been overdosed with Demerol. The medical board found that  Ferrer had given Peggy too much medication too quickly, causing her to stop breathing, and failed to monitor her closely enough to notice in a timely manner. He then failed to adequately resuscitate her. They suspended his license. They had learned of the incident when Peggy's family sued.

2007: Rapin Osathanondh

Laura Hope Smith was accompanied by a friend for an abortion to be performed by Rapin Osathanondh on September 13, 2007. By the end of the day, she was dead. Her grief-stricken and bewildered parents began a campaign to find out how their daughter had died. Once they learned the truth, they fought to get her abortionist prosecuted in her death. A medical board investigation found that Osathanondh had placed Laura under sedation without any means to monitor her heart rate, blood pressure, or the oxygen level of her blood. He had no qualified person assisting him while Smith was under anesthesia. The only other person in the room was an office worker who had no training in CPR or other life-saving procedures. After Laura stopped breathing, Osathanondh delayed calling 911. Once Osathanondh found out he was being investigated, he hired a CPR instructor to train him and his staff and to back-date the documents to make it appear that they'd been trained prior to Laura's abortion. He also rushed out and bought appropriate resuscitation equipment to try to fool investigators into believing that the facility had been properly equipped the day of Laura's abortion. Charged with manslaughter in Laura's death, Osathanondh plead out and got a six month sentence in a minimum security prison.

2008: Barack Obama

During the 2008 Presidential campaign, much was made of then-Illinois Senator Barack Obama's repeated choice to vote against the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Obama stated that he objected to requiring a second doctor to assess a baby that survived an abortion would "burden" decisions by women and doctors to go ahead with abortions. In retrospect, the decision was probably a very canny political move. It garnered unbridled and enthusiastic support from the abortion lobby, since he'd earned his credentials by supporting even their most extreme position of allowing abortion survivors to die on the grounds that by agreeing to do an abortion the doctor has legally placed the baby in the category of "non-viable" regardless of the child's actual health or gestational age. But the vote also served to discredit his opponents. Anybody pointing out that Obama had opposed something as basic as providing care to a tiny newborn would be accused of lying, on the grounds that nobody could truly be so heartless as to vote in favor of wrapping a gasping baby in a towel and leaving it in a closet to die. Thus, those who simply pointed out the truth could be painted as bald-faced liars, effectively neutralizing any criticism they made of him in the future. It was, in short, a brilliant move.

2009: Abby Johnson

In 2009, after seeing a 13-week abortion on ultrasound as she was assisting, Planned Parenthood clinic manager Abby Johnson became revolted by her work. She reached out to the prolifers who had been praying outside her facility, and became a staunch life advocate. She wrote a book, Unplanned, about her experience. She is now an outspoken opponent of Planned Parenthood. She has established a project, And Then There Were None, to provide outreach to abortion employees, providing them with emotional support and transitional money as they seek new jobs. The goal is not merely to give hope and better lives to former abortion workers, but also to cause the abortion industry to collapse from within as they find that nobody wants to devote their lives to a practice that purports to help women by killing their children.

2010: Alexandra Nunez

Alexandra Nunez, age 37, died after an abortion performed at A1 Medicine in Jackson Heights, Queens. Operation Rescue describes the facility as "located in a run-down building in a predominately Hispanic neighborhood," and was operated by Salomon Epstein. The abortion was performed at 3:30 p.m. on January 25, 2010. Alexandra began bleeding heavily and was transported by ambulance to Elmhurst Hospital Center, where she died. The source of the fatal bleeding was traced to a severed artery. An employee at A1 insisted that all had gone well at their facility. "The patient was transferred to the hospital, she didn't die at the clinic. Nothing happened here." Nothing happened. Except that a woman was fatally injured. It's like the thank you note that Steve Lichtenberg sent for the referral after Deanna Bell's death: "Uneventful D&E". A dead patient. "Uneventful." "Nothing happened."

2011: Kermit Gosnell

A bombshell Grand Jury report was released in 2011. It all had begun on February 18, 2010, when the FBI and Philadelphia detective executed search warrants at the Women’s Medical Society, a clinic operated by Dr. Kermit Barron Gosnell, after an investigation into reports of  illegal prescription drug activity. When the team members entered the clinic, they were appalled, describing it to the Grand Jury as “filthy,” “deplorable,”  and “by far, the worst” that these experienced investigators had ever encountered. There was blood on the floor. A stench of urine filled the air. A flea-infested cat was wandering through the facility, and there were cat feces on the stairs. Semi-conscious women were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets. All the women had been sedated by unlicensed staff – long before Gosnell arrived at the clinic. One FBI agent described the procedure rooms as resembling “a bad gas station restroom." The search team discovered fetal remains haphazardly stored throughout the clinic – in bags, milk jugs, orange juice cartons, and even in cat-food containers. Two patients had been drugged to death by the unlicensed staff. Viable infants were being born alive and then killed by severing their spinal cords with surgical scissors. Most shocking of all was that the state had been notified multiple times of how bad things were, but because of a political devotion to abortion rights, officials had deliberately looked the other way. Gosnell is now in jail pending trial on capital murder charges for the deaths of Karnamaya Mongar and some of the murdered infants.

2012: Tonya Reaves

Tonya Reaves, age 24, was rushed to Northwest Memorial Hospital in Chicago and pronounced dead at 11:20 p.m. on Friday, July 21, 2012. She was taken there from the Planned Parenthood facility at 18 S. Michigan Avenue. Tonya had undergone a D&E abortion,  performed at 11:00 a.m., but she remained at the facility for hours until finally an ambulance was called, taking her to the hospital at 4:30 p.m. The Planned Parenthood doctor performed a second D&E procedure there, then emergency surgery, to no avail. Tonya bled to death, pronounced dead at 11:20 p.m. The Centers for Disease Control published back in 1983, "Deaths from hemorrhage associated with legal induced abortion should not occur." In every hemorrhage death they investigated, "Lack of adequate postoperative monitoring or treatment of hemorrhagic shock" was a factor. The CDC's article noted, "Deaths from hemorrhage can be eliminated by preventing uterine trauma during abortion and by rapidly diagnosing and treating hemorrhage if it occurs." Planned Parenthood, for some reason, failed to prevent the uterine trauma and failed to rapidly diagnose and treat Tonya's hemorrhage. The abortion giant has a lot of explaining to do.