A reminder of how much we can trust the National Abortion Federation

The story of how Delores Smith died on October 24, 1979 began on June 2 of 1979, when National Abortion Federation member Atlanta Women's Pavillion rose to new levels of incompetence. On that day, when staff there managed to fatally injure two teenage abortion patients in less than an hour.

It all began when 19-year-old Angela Scott stopped breathing in the recovery room. An unregistered nurse-anesthetist was administering anesthesia to 14-year-old Delores Smith while Dr. Jacob Adams was performing her abortion. The nurse-anesthetist ran to assist in efforts to revive Angela, leaving Delores unattended with her anesthesia drip still running.

After staff had resuscitated Angela and loaded her into an ambulance, they returned their attention to Delores, who had gone into cardio-respiratory arrest. Adams had accompanied Angela to the Grady Memorial Hospital, and staff refused to release Dolores to an ambulance until the physician had returned to discharge her. This resulted in a 30-minute delay, during which the ambulance crew was unable to attend to Delores or begin transporting her.

Angela lingered for a week in a coma before dying on June 11. Delores never regained consciousness and eventually was admitted to a nursing home, where she died of adult respiratory distress syndrome on October 24, shortly after her fifteenth birthday.