Saturday, June 22, 2024

June 22, 1928: Doctor Implicated in Woman's Death

An inquest into the death of 21-year-old Rose Hanover of West Washington, Boulevard, Chicago, led to a recommendation to arrest Dr. Lester L. Ofner, of West Madison Street, on a charge of murder by abortion. The coroner's jury concluded that Ofner perpetrated the abortion on June 11, 1928. Rose died of peritonitis at University Hospital on June 22.

Rose's "sweetheart," Edwin Block, had identified Ofner as the abortionist. Block was held by police but released.

Source:




Thursday, June 20, 2024

June 20, 1989: Fatal Uterine Perforation

Dr. William Fitzhugh
Margaret Paula Clodfelter, a 19-year-old secretary at an insurance agency, had an abortion at  Richmond Medical Center For Women on June 2, 1989. The abortion was performed by William Fitzhugh.

After she was discharged from the clinic, Margaret had pain and bleeding. She called the facility to consult with them, but they did not tell her that she needed any further care.

On June 4, she sought treatment at MCV Hospital in Richmond, where she was diagnosed with retained fetal tissue and a perforated uterus. She underwent a D&C. She developed infection, so doctors performed a hysterectomy. 

Their efforts were in vain. Margaret died of sepsis on June 20, 1989. She left behind a husband and a one-year-old son.

Sources: 


June 20, 1908: Who Was Guilty -- The Doctor or the Midwife?

On June 20 or 24, 1908, 36-year-old housekeeper Lillian "Lillie" O'Neill died in Dr. Albert C. Davis's Chicago office from complications of an abortion performed June 20. Davis was acquitted for reasons not given in the source document. A midwife named Cornelia Meyers was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to Joliet. Lillie's abortion was typical in that it was involved medical professionals, including a physician. This was especially true in Chicago during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The coroner also recommended the arrest of Dr. Joseph Mienczak, who assisted Zwieniczak, as an accessory. It was common for non-physician abortionists to have a doctor who provided training, equipment, and medications, and who would provide aftercare if a woman suffered complications -- much like the arrangement that the abortion lobby is currently pursuing of allowing non-physicians to practice abortion as long as they have physician back-up.

June 20, 1929: Midwife's Efforts Leave Woman Dead

 On June 20, 1929, 28-yaer-old Jennie Kuba died at Chicago hospital from an abortion performed there that day by midwife Mary Zwieniczak.

Zwienczak was arrested July 13. The grand jury handed down an indictment of homicide.

The coroner also recommended the arrest of Dr. Joseph Mienczak, who assisted Zwieniczak, as an accessory. It was common for non-physician abortionists to have a doctor who provided training, equipment, and medications, and who would provide aftercare if a woman suffered complications -- much like the arrangement that the abortion lobby is currently pursuing of allowing non-physicians to practice abortion as long as they have physician back-up.

June 20, 1974: Abortion Rights Hero Kills Teen

Dr. Milan Vuitch

Dr. Milan Vuitch was a hero among abortion advocates. He had deliberately been arrested performing criminal abortions so that he could challenge the Washington, DC abortion law, and he succeeded in changing the way the law was enforced, effectively nullifying it.

On June 15, 1974, seventeen-year-old Wilma Harris of West Virginia went to Vuitch's Laurel Clinic for a safe and abortion. Five days later, on June 20, she was dead. During interrogatories, Vuitch said that anesthesiologist Strahil Nacev described Wilma as "so quiet" during the abortion. Although he had begun a vacuum abortion, Vuitch said that the fetus had been too big to pass through the suction tube. He said he used instruments to remove the remaining fetal parts.

Although the abortion was done at around 2:00 PM, Vuitch didn't transfer Wilma to a properly equipped hospital until after midnight. Wilma's family sued, claiming that Vuitch and his staff had allowed Wilma to lapse into a coma and lie unattended for 12 hours before transferring her to the hospital. The suit also claimed that Vuitch and his staff falsified records to cover their tracks. The family won a judgment on December 23, 1976, but the settlement was sealed by court order.

Georgianna English also died after an abortion by Vuitch. WDVM-TV won a Peabody Award for their expose of Vuitch after her death.

Vuitch isn't the only abortionist who kept his nose clean as a criminal abortionist, only to kill two patients after legalization. Jesse Ketchum managed to kill Margaret Smith and Carole Schaner in a four-month period after New York put out a welcome mat for carpetbagging abortionists in 1970. Benjamin Munson of South Dakota killed Linda Padfield and Yvonne Mesteth.

Watch "Permission to Take Lethal Risks" on YouTube.

Wednesday, June 19, 2024

June 19, 1908: An Abortion and a Murder

On June 19, 1908, undertaker Thomas Graham went to the house of William C. Patterson in West Philadelphia. There he picked up the body of Patterson's 27-year-old sister-in-law, Elizabeth "Bess" Alexander Geis. The young woman, Graham was told, had died that day of Bright's disease, a disorder of the kidneys. 

Elizabeth's brother, Leslie Alexander, knew that Bess had not died from Bright's disease. He went to the police, telling them that she had died from a botched abortion and demanding that they arrest Dr. William H. Heck, who had cared for Elizabeth during her final illness.

Police questioned Heck, who said that he had given Bess some medication, then came back the next morning and found that her condition had deteriorated. "I did what I could for her," he said, "but when I was called four and a half hours later she was dead. I was told that a child had been born before she passed away." 

Supporting the idea that Bess had died from an abortion, her body had been removed from the house and taken to undertaker Sarah Elliot, who had already buried the baby under the name Elizabeth A. Wilson, child of Fred Wilson and Elizabeth Alexander Wilson. "in an obscure corner of the Franklin Cemetery." Elliot sent Bess's body to another undertaker, George Graham, who buried her in Mt. Moriah Cemetery.

The investigation was complicated, and in some ways derailed, on June 26, when Wilson died after drinking poisoned ale that had been sent to him via an express office. Police theorized that Bess's husband, Frederick Geis, Jr., had poisoned Heck in revenge for having caused his wife's death. However, after sorting through testimony and dates, it became clear that the poisoned ale had been purchased before Bess's death.

My sources were lost when the Wikispaces website closed. Since then, I have retrieved the death certificate




June 19, 1922: A Chicago Midwife's Fatal Work

On June 19, 1922, homemaker Veronica Maslanka, a 26-year-old Polish immigrant, died in her Chicago home from complications of an abortion performed there that day. The coroner identified midwife Mary Pesova as the person responsible for Veronica's death. Since there were many midwives in addition to physicians practicing abortion in Chicago at the time, Veronica's abortion was typical of those perpetrated in that era.

Source: Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database

June 19, 1984: Mom Finds Teen Dead on Bathroom Floor

After awakening from a nap on June 19, 1984, 14-year-old "Gwen Newhart's"* mother found her dead on the bathroom floor.

Dr. E. Wyman Garrett

Just five days before, Gwen had undergone a second-trimester abortion performed by 46-year-old Dr. E. Wyman Garrett** in Newark, New Jersey. She was 22 weeks pregnant.

At home after her abortion, Gwen began vomiting and suffered from abdominal pain and a high fever. Her mother called Garrett, who told her that the symptoms were normal and prescribed antibiotics. She seemed to improve briefly, but took a turn for the worse on June 18.

Gwen's mother called the next morning and Garrett said to bring Gwen in to the office. Mrs. Newhart took a nap and awoke to find her daughter dead on the bathroom floor.

The massive infection that was causing her symptoms killed her.

An autopsy found that Gwen's uterus had been punctured, and her abdomen was full of pus and adhesions.

When the New Jersey medical board investigated Dr. Garrett, they noted that he had illegally altered Gwen's medical records. He had also performed Gwen's abortion in violation of state regulations, since New Jersey required that abortions past the first trimester be performed in a hospital.

They noted other, non-fatal injuries including:

  • A 16-year-old girl who had to be hospitalized with a 1-inch tear in her uterus and a pelvic infection from a second-trimester abortion Garrett performed in his office rather than a hospital
  • A baby boy born alive at University Hospital in Newark after Garrett had initiated a saline abortion; the baby died 15 weeks later.
  • A baby girl who suffered birth injuries leaving her severely brain damaged after Garrett failed to diagnose intrauterine growth retardation
  • A woman who was discharged from the clinic with a fetal head left in her uterus

Garrett argued that he was suffering from ''burnout syndrome,'' caused by performing more than 2,600 second-trimester abortions between 1982 and 1986. He asserted, "If any man has this much work, he's going to have complications." He pleaded no-contest in the state case.

In 1986 the board concluded that Garrett was guilty of gross negligence, abandonment of patients, and professional misconduct. He failed to recognize and treat complications in a timely manner, they found. banned Garrett from performing abortions or other outpatient surgery. In 1987 they revoked his license. They cited a total of 26 abortions performed in a "grossly improper" manner. As of 1994 he still owed over $175,000 in fines and court costs from the medical board suspension proceedings.

Garrett had other unsavory run-ins with society. In 1971, during a teacher strike, Garrett (who was then a school board member) told a school trustee "We know where you live. We're going to get you." He then turned to a reporter who was taking notes and said, "You'll have to give me your notebook or you won't get out of this building alive." Garrett then, according to the reporter, summoned two men to beat the reporter up and take his notebook and wallet. Two weeks into the trial Garrett plea-bargained down to interfering with people at a public meeting and paid $2,000 in fines and costs. 

In 1983 he started refusing to do second-trimester abortions at University Hospital in Newark because they would no longer pay him $250 to $300 per abortion instead of the Medicaid physician fee of $79. (In 2022 dollars, he had been getting $734 - $880 per abortion when the Medicaid fee was $232.) Garrett publicly said that since the hospital was reimbursed $1,334 ($3,915 in 2022 dollars) per abortion and he performed 851 abortion there in the previous year, he'd brought the hospital more than $1.2 million in Medicaid dollars (about $3.5 in 2022 dollars). Garrett argued that he was entitled to more than $79 because his usual abortion fee was from $400 to $900 ($1,174 - $2,641 in 2022 dollars). 

In 1986 a whistleblower claimed that she discovered that Garret was preparing post-operative reports prior to surgery he was performing at University Hospital.

*Source failed to redact name in original, but out of privacy respect I use a pseudonym. 

** "John Roe 268" in Lime 5

Watch "Stopped Before He Could Kill Another Patient" on YouTube.

Sources: 



Deceived or lying?
Abortion advocates argue that although legal abortion deaths like Gwen's are indeed sad, they're only a pale shadow of the carnage that would ensue were legal protection restored to unborn children. They use these claims to garner support among those otherwise reluctant to support legal abortion as well as to slander life advocates.

There are two approaches Big Abortion takes when trying to scare people into supporting legal abortion as a means of protecting women's lives:

Outright lying. They will trot out the long-disproven claim that 5,000 to 10,000 women were dying every year from abortion before legalization.

Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of NARAL,* admitted that he and his associates knew that the claims of 5,000 to 10,000 criminal abortion deaths were false. They bandied them about anyway, Nathanson confessed, because they were useful. This, too, is old news -- Nathanson came clean in 1979 when he published Aborting America.

Lying by omission. They will use numbers that are accurate, but will totally remove them from context in order to draw a conclusion that is demonstrably false. which typically involves taking fairly reliable abortion mortality numbers from before and after legalization then crediting legalization for the drop. No less prestigious organization than the Alan Guttmacher Institute uses this statistical legerdemain: "As the availability of legally induced abortion increased, mortality due to abortion dropped sharply: The number of abortion-related deaths per million live births fell from nearly 40 in 1970 to eight in 1976."

The truth is that you can take virtually any time period from when public health officials first started collecting the data and you'll find that abortion mortality fell. The only exception is a strange leveling-off in the 1950s that I've been unable to account for:

Milan Vuitch
What caused abortion mortality to fall precipitously wasn't legalization. Legalization didn't even make a blip in the trends, likely because for every non-physician whose business fell away, a physician abortionist became sloppy once the risk of a prison sentence for botching an abortion was gone. I know of three erstwhile criminal abortionists -- Jesse KetchumMilan Vuitch, and Benjamin Munson -- who kept their noses clean prior to legalization but each went on to practice appallingly sloppy abortions that killed two patients after legalization.

*National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, later renamed National Abortion Rights Association, now called NARAL Pro-Choice America

Tuesday, June 18, 2024

June 18, 1891: Died on her Wedding Day

May E. Parmenter's memorial at Find-a-Grave includes an 1891 clipping that reads:

Died on Her Wedding Day. Athol, Mass., June 19. -- Miss May Parmenter, one of Athol's prettiest and brightest girls, was to have been married yesterday to Leroy Felton, a well-known young man of Orange. on the morning of the wedding she was taken violently ill, and died during the afternoon. It now transpires that Miss Parmenter was the victim of malpractice, performed by a well-known physician. She was urged to take the step by a very near relative, against the wishes of her intended husband.

June 18, 1972: Taking Advantage of Liberalization in New York

"Sara" underwent a second trimester abortion in New York City in May of 1972. She was 18 weeks pregnant. She had problems with retained tissue, so three weeks after the abortion she had a D&C to remove the tissue. Sara had developed infection from the retained tissue, and on June 18, 1972, the infection took her life. She left one child motherless.

I am not asserting that Sara's doctor did anything that constituted malpractice or lawbreaking. If we give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he really did think a dead baby is a good thing, we don't have enough information to say he went about killing Sara's baby in a particularly inexcusable way. We don't even know which technique he used to be able to pass judgment on that decision. We don't know why he didn't get all of the tissue out of Sara's uterus. We don't know why he didn't notice that he hadn't removed the entire fetus and all of the placenta. We don't know why it took three weeks for anybody to notice the retained tissue. We don't know why the attempts to correct the problem were ineffectual. And, Tlaloc, you will note that in all the years that I've blogged Sara's death on the anniversary of that sad event, I've not called her doctor a quack or a butcher, I've not demanded that his license be yanked, I've not said he belongs in jail.

I'm capable of giving even an abortionist the benefit of the doubt if I don't have evidence that he did anything wrong other than make the perfectly legal judgment that a dead baby is a good thing. And I've conceded that there are no doubt some doctors that really do agree with you that dead babies are just as good as live ones, and often far superior.

The 1970 liberalization of abortion had made New York an abortion mecca until the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling that abortionists could legally set up shop in any state of the union. In addition to "Sara," these are the women I know of who had the dubious benefit of dying from the newfangled safe-and-legal kind of abortion in pre-Roe New York:

  • Pearl Schwier, July, 1970, cardiac arrest during abortion
  • Carmen Rodriguez, July, 1970, salt solution intended to kill the fetus accidentally injected into her bloodstream
  • Barbara Riley, July, 1970, sickle-cell crisis triggered by abortion recommended by doctor due to her sickle cell disease
  • "Amanda" Roe, September, 1970, sent back to her home in Indiana with an untreated hole poked in her uterus
  • Maria Ortega, October, 1970, fetus shoved through her uterus into her pelvic cavity then left there
  • "Kimberly" Roe, December, 1970, cardiac arrest during abortion
  • "Amy" Roe, January, 1971, massive pulmonary embolism
  • "Andrea" Roe, January, 1971, overwhelming infection
  • "Sandra" Roe, April, 1971, committed suicide due to post-abortion remorse
  • "Anita" Roe, May, 1971, bled to death in her home during process of outpatient saline abortion
  • Margaret Smith, June 1971, hemorrhage from multiple lacerations during outpatient hysterotomy abortion
  • "Annie" Roe, June, 1971, cardiac arrest during anesthesia
  • "Audrey" Roe, July, 1971, cardiac arrest during abortion
  • "Vicki" Roe, August, 1971, post-abortion infection
  • "April" Roe, August, 1971, injected with saline for outpatient abortion, went into shock and died
  • "Barbara" Roe, September, 1971, cardiac arrest after saline injection for abortion
  • "Tammy" Roe, October, 1971, massive post-abortion infection
  • Carole Schaner, October, 1971, hemorrhage from multiple lacerations during outpatient hysterotomy abortion
  • "Beth" RoeDecember, 1971, saline injection meant to kill fetus accidentally injected into her bloodstream
  • "Roseann" Roe, February, 1971, vomiting with seizures causing pneumonia after saline abortion
  • "Connie" Roe, March, 1972, cardiac arrest during abortion
  • "Julie" Roe, April, 1972, holes torn in her uterus and bowel
  • "RoxanneRoxanne," May, 1972, convulsions and death at start of abortion
  • "Robin" Roe, May, 1972, lingering abortion complications
  • "Danielle" Roe, May, 1972, air in her bloodstream

Sources: 

  • "Maternal Mortality Associated With Legal Abortion in New York State: July 1, 1970 - June 30, 1972; Berger, Tietze, Pakter, Katz, Obstetrics and Gynecology, 43:3, March 1974, 320

June 18, 1953: Dumped in the Bushes

 The Journey

In June of 1953, Bettye Porter, 24, lived in Anchorage, Alaska with her husband, Herbert, and their two children. This young black woman flew to Washington state with the boys, ages 11 months and 3 years, on June 14.

As Herbert, a young bartender, saw his family off, he had no way of anticipating what would follow. 

After arriving in Washington, Bettye Porter left her children with friend Anna Barzar in Tacoma. Bettye then went to Seattle on her own to visit friends there. Days later those friends called Herbert to tell him that his wife was missing. They hadn't seen her since June 18. Herbert contacted Seattle police and flew down himself.

The Grim Discovery

On June 29, Alfred and Dwight Aronson, ages 10 and 18 respectively, went out picking blackberries with their friend, 15-year-old Richard Hook. As they foraged near the south end of Midway Road near the Gig Harbor end of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, they spotted the body of an attractive young black woman. 

At around 5:20 pm, Deputy Sheriffs Chet Jones and E. E. Bathke arrived and took charge. Officers Lyle Lanthrop and Ed Dahl photographed the scene. The woman was fully clad, dumped face-down about 300 feet east of the south end of Midway road and 12 feet south of an old logging road.

Care had been taken to remove tags from the woman's expensive clothing before her body was dumped. Police theorized that this had been in an attempt to make her harder to identify. 

The person or persons who did this, however, didn't realized that police would be able to tentatively identify the body from fingerprints. Believing that the corpse was the missing Bettye Porter, they contacted Herbert. He was able to make a positive identification.

How Bettye Died

An autopsy concluded that Bettye had bled to death internally from a criminal abortion. She had been dead between 7 and 14 days. 

After an investigation, police arrested 34-year-old mechanic Norman Wade Austin. He was charged with attempted abortion, second degree murder for Bettye's death, and manslaughter for the death of her 5-months unborn child. Police concluded that he had perpetrated the abortion in a massage parlor he had recently opened in the Savoy Hotel at 1214 2nd Avenue.

The hotel's operator, Harry A. Howard, and 23-year-old Geraldine Lowe were charged with second-degree murder for their roles in arranging the fatal abortion. All three parties were held pending posting of $10,000 bail each.

Bettye's date of death was determined to be June 18.

And... That's All.

I can't find any evidence of a successful prosecution, just an article noting that by November of 1953, when they were arrested for running an auto-theft ring, Geraldine and Norman were identified as a married couple.

The fact that Bettye went to a lay abortionist made her choice highly unusual. 

Who performed abortions before legalization?

Mary Claderone (then Medical Director of Planned Parenthood) and Nancy Howell Lee (a pro choice researcher) both investigated the practice of criminal abortion in the pre-legalization era. Calderone estimated that 90% of all illegal abortions in the early 1960s were being done by physicians. Calderone further estimated that 8% were self-induced and that 2% were induced by someone other than the woman or a doctor. Lee estimated that 89% of pre-legalization abortions were done by physicians, an additional 5% by nurses or others with some medical training, and 6% were done by non-medical persons or the woman herself.

Calderone's numbers came from "43 men and women from the various disciplines of obstetrics, psychiatry, public health, sociology, forensic medicine, and law and demography." Lee interviewed women who had undergone pre-legalization abortions. The discrepancy between Lee's and Calderone's breakdowns of non-physician abortions is probably due to sampling errors.

Lee, who spoke with women who survived abortions, would of course not encounter women whose abortions killed them. Therefore she would not be exposed to the proportionate number of women who chose the most dangerous alternative. Lee's sample also included only willing survey participants, who would be more forthright and complete in divulging information, such as who really performed the abortion, than women being interviewed by health or law enforcement officials.

Calderone, on the other hand, spoke with those likely to see the botched and fatal abortions, and therefore they would be exposed to a higher percentage of the most dangerous, self-induced abortions. Also, Calderone's informants would have been investigating botched abortions that could be subject to a criminal investigation. Therefore, women speaking to them would be likely to withhold the true identity of their abortionists to protect them. Also, should the woman die, her family and friends might identify the woman herself as the abortionist, rather than admit their own roles in arranging or performing abortions, in order to close the investigation.

Anecdotal data tends to support Lee's research. Stories of abortions by midwives, orderlies, chiropractors, and assorted lay practitioners like Harvey Karman and the Jane Syndicate are far too common to represent only 2% of criminal abortions. We would probably not err too far if we relied primarily on Lee's numbers and adjusted them slightly to reflect the slight under-reporting of amateur abortions. Thus, a fair estimate of the breakdown of criminal abortions would probably look like this:


Additional sources: 

June 18 in 1910, 1914 and 1917: Mysterious Deaths in Chicago

"Clara," identified as "Miss F." in the source document, was 21 years old when she used a catheter to perform a self-induced abortion in mid-May of 1910. Five days later, Clara began suffering chills, fever, and abdominal pain. She passed the fetus the nest day but did not pass the placenta. Her condition deteriorated, so on June 12, 1910 she went to Cook County Hospital. Her admission notes indicate, "Very weak and sick. Face drawn and anxious. Abdomen distended and tender. Muscles rigid." The following day, Clara's temperature began to fall below normal and her pulse became more rapid. She died on June 18 from streptococcal peritonitis.

On June 18, 1914, 39-year-old Bridget Murphy died at Post Graduate Hospital in Chicago from an abortion performed that day by an unknown perpetrator. 

The Coroner was never able to identify the abortionist responsible for the death of 19-year-old Julia Suchora June 18, 1917, at her Chicago home. Given the plethora of physicians and midwives running abortion practices in Chicago, it is likely that she availed herself of one of them.

June 18, 1973: Abortion Rights Folks Side With Deadly Doc

 Dr. Hugh Benjamin Munson had been practicing criminal abortion in Rapid City, SD as early as 1967. In 1969, he was convicted of performing an abortion on a 19-year-old patient. Munson, who went by his middle name, won an appeal in circuit court. When the state appealed, the South Dakota Supreme Court upheld the conviction. Munson was in the process of appealing this decision when Roe vs. Wade was handed down, making the case moot. Munson was free to practice abortion at-will.

Into this situation walked 28-year-old Linda Padfield.

Linda's Last Days

Linda Padfield

On June 14, 1973, Linda traveled about five hours to Munson's Rapid City clinic from her home in Groton, SD with her three small children and a friend. 

The following day Linda went to Munson's clinic, where  the 57-year-old doctor performed an abortion. Linda, her friend, and her children went to spend the night at a nearby hotel.

According to Linda's friend, Munson was supposed to come to the hotel the next day to check on Linda, but he never arrived. The two women were unable to reach him by phone, so they took Linda's children to do some sightseeing and then headed home to Groton. 

When arrived on the 17th, Linda was already sick with nausea and high fever. She told her mother about the abortion, and her mother took her to St. Luke's Hospital in Aberdeen for emergency surgery, but the infection had progressed too far and Linda died on June 18.

Three Years Later

Not a word about Linda's death appears in the media until three years later, almost to the day. Munson was arrested and charged with manslaughter on June 17, 1976.

Legal Wrangling and Taking Sides

Dr. H. Benjamin Munson
Munson asked that the manslaughter charge against him be dismissed because the statute of limitations had run out. The judge ruled that the clock began running not on the day Linda had been injured but on the day she had died. Thus, he ruled, charges were filed one day short of the expiration of the statute of limitations.

Munson also alleged that the decision to prosecute was made in bad faith because Attorney General William Janklow was opposed to abortion. Munson's attorney noted that since his client performed almost all the abortions in South Dakota, taking him out of circulation would put a virtual halt to abortions in the state. 

Abortion-rights activists with the National Abortion Rights Action League started a defense fund for Munson, raising over $40,000 (over $200,000 in 2022 dollars). The National Organization for Women took out a large newspaper ad offering public support for Munson. Given the choice between a dead patient and the person who had caused her death, they chose the latter.

The Trial Begins

Jury selection was held behind closed doors. Circuit Court Judge Merton Tice Jr. said that he wanted to have prospective jurors "free from influence outside of those which are proper." The Rapid City Journal sought to have the closure lifted so that they could cover jury selection. They lost their bid to open the procedure.

The jury was sequestered during the trial. Judge Tice asked the attorneys for both the prosecution and the defense not to talk to the press. 

Jurors were taken for a tour of Munson's clinic on the first post-selection day of the trial. 

Testimony From Doctors

One of the doctors who had treated Linda at the hospital, Dr. James Hovland, said that Linda had been conscious when she first arrived but that she deteriorated rapidly. She seemed to be going into kidney failure, and didn't even bleed from the incision made for exploratory surgery. When asked if an immediate hysterectomy would have saved her, Hovland expressed his doubts, given how gravely ill Linda was from the results of the infection raging through her entire body.

Dr. A. C. Vogele, another doctor who treated Linda, agreed with Dr. Hovland that Linda had been conscious and alert but was showing low blood pressure, abdominal pain, bleeding, and signs of shock. The exploratory surgery found no perforation of the uterus or bowel. The doctors halted any further surgery, Vogele said, because Linda was so sick that she'd have died during surgery. When asked if he would have performed a hysterectomy had he known how much of Linda's fetus was still inside his body, Vogele responded that he probably would have. 

The only person who knew how much of Linda's fetus was still in her body was Benjamin Munson, and he evidently had not bothered to tell anybody.

How much of Linda's unborn baby had been left in her uterus? A pathologist found the remains of a five-month fetus, missing the left leg, right arm, part of the skull, and part of the front of the torso. A five-month fetus typically weighs about 360 grams; Munson had left 240 grams behind. He had only removed about a third of Linda's baby.

The 240 grams of retained fetus were, the pathologist believed, the source of the problem. The retained fetus caused sepsis, which caused hemorrhage, which caused the adrenal failure that killed Linda.

The prosecution focused on the fact that infection will inevitably result from that much retained tissue and that there was simply no way Munson could have been unaware that he had failed to complete the abortion. The Attorney General commented, "You take a three-inch leg off something, you have to know that there's more in there than just the leg." 

Munson's Attorney's Argument

The defense argument was basically this:

  1. Lots of abortion doctors send patients home with retained tissue, figuring that the woman will just expel it later.
  2. Yes, retained tissue can cause infection, but infection is an accepted risk of abortion.
  3. The prosecution didn't prove that Munson was aware of how much of Linda's fetus had been left in her womb.
  4. The prosecution didn't prove that Munson had intended to cause Linda any harm.
  5. The only standard of care that can apply is the local standard of care. Since Munson was the only local abortion provider, whatever he did constituted the standard of care and therefore he could never violate that standard.

In short, he argued that since Munson was the only abortionist in South Dakota, whatever he did was by definition the right thing to do. Unless you could prove that he wanted Linda to die, you couldn't hold him accountable for her death.

The Verdict and Aftermath

The judge agreed with Munson's attorney and directed the jury to return a verdict of "Not guilty."

Munson called the directed verdict "like Christmas in October."

Munson later became a member of the National Abortion Federation (NAF). He evidently didn't to much to change his standards of care, because in 1985 he sent a teenage patient, Yvonne Mesteth, home with retained tissue. She, like Linda Padfield, died of infection. Again Munson was prosecuted for manslaughter, and again he beat the rap. As the only abortionist in South Dakota, he was the ultimate arbiter of what was accepted practice.

Munson in Context

Munson is the third former criminal abortionist I've learned of who had a clean record -- no patient deaths -- as a criminal abortionist, only to go on to kill two patients in his legal practice. The others are Milan Vuitch (Georgianna English and Wilma Harris) and Jesse Ketchum (Margaret Smith and Carole Schaner).

Munson died at a ripe old age in a Vermont nursing home in 2003. Had Linda not turned to Munson but instead reached out to a pregnancy resource center, she would have been 57 years old, and her baby 30 years old. 

Watch "It Was the Right Thing to Do Because He Did It" on YouTube.

Sources:



Monday, June 17, 2024

June 17, 1918: Chicago Doctor Dies Before Trial

On June 17, 1918, 25-year-old Sophie Suida died at Chicago's St. Mary's Hospital from complications of an abortion reportedly perpetrated by Dr. L. D. Tucholska, who died at the county jail on June 28, before the case could come to trial. Physicians and midwives ran an abundance of semi-clandestine abortion practices in the Chicago of that era.

Sources: Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database

June 17, 1913: Doc Implicated but Never Prosecuted

On June 17, 1913, 36-year-old homemaker Freda Englehard died in Chicago, at the scene of an abortion reportedly perpetrated that day by Dr. Joseph A. Meeks. Meeks was held for murder, and Mrs. Mollie Flaherty was held as an accessory, but the case never went to trial.

Sources: Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database; Illinois death records

Sunday, June 16, 2024

June 16, 1993: Fatal Hemorrhage in Newark

Dr. Steven Berkman
A 20-year-old Newark college student, identified in prolife sources as "Jane Doe of Newark," underwent a safe and legal abortion by Dr. Steven Berkman at Metropolitan Medical Associates on June 16, 1993. She was in the second trimester of pregnancy.

Jane reportedly felt dizzy in recovery. Berkman examined her, noted that she had a perforated uterus, and had her taken to a hospital by ambulance. She died in surgery about four hours later, leaving her four-year-old son motherless.

"We are intensely investigating this matter," said an attorney for Jane's family. "We know something occurred that shouldn't have. We had a healthy 20-year-old go into that clinic and not come out. And I think a delay had something to do with it." Her medical chart showed the injury occurring at 10 a.m., but the ambulance wasn't summoned until two hours later.

A state report cited "chaos and confusion" when the ambulance arrived at the clinic to find Jane lifeless. The ambulance workers were not given adequate information about her condition.

Berkman said that there was no delay in transporting Jane to the hospital. He also said he did not believe she died from blood loss. The Bergen County Medical Examiner found that Jane had died from hemorrhage from a perforated uterus. Jane also had developed a clotting disorder that made it difficult to stop any bleeding. He ruled the death accidental.

Jane Roe is "Tracy" on Life Dynamics' "Blackmun Wall".

Watch "Did They Wait Too Long?" on YouTube.

Sources: 

Friday, June 14, 2024

June 14, 1983: Death After Hospital Abortion in New York

A lawsuit filed by Eduardo Bermeo alleged that his wife, Ecuadoran-born Rosario Bermeo, age 30, died following abortion by Dr. Joseph B. Shapse at Prospect Hospital in New York June 14, 1983.

Shapse noted that no autopsy had been performed, so Eduardo could not prove that Rosario had die for any reason "beyond respiratory and cardiac arrest." He said that the abortion proceeded without incident, and that he had no responsibility for actions of the certified registered nurse anesthetist. 

The CRNA, Shapse noted, had been the one monitoring Rosario after the abortion, when her vital signs began to fail. Therefore, he said, he was not to blame for her death.

Eduardo's attorney countered with an affidavit by a physician that Shapse was indeed responsible for supervising the SRNA and that he had a duty to monitor and evaluate his patient's condition during and immediately after surgery.

Source: New York Appellate Court 162 A.D.2d 235

June 14, 1977: First Known National Abortion Federation Death

 Eighteen-year-old Barbaralee Davis had already lived an intense life. With her mother's permission, she had married David A. Davis II in September of 1973 at the age of only 15. She was separated from her husband and was caring for a 3-year-old son. Barbaralee had a history of irregular periods, but when she noticed symptoms of pregnancy she visited a local hospital for a pregnancy test, which came out negative. However, her symptoms continued so she returned to the hospital two weeks later and this time the pregnancy test was positive.

Hope Clinic for Women
Barbaralee requested an abortion referral. A local women's group sent her to Hope Clinic for Women in Granite City, Illinois. Hope Clinic, about a two-hour drive from Barbaralee's home, was a member of the newly founded National Abortion Federation. Her abortion was scheduled for about one week later.

When Barbaralee arrived at the clinic on June 14, 1977, it had been five months since her last menstrual period.

Hope Medical Director Hector Zavalos examined Barbaralee and concluded that she was 11 weeks pregnant. Zavalos performed a suction curettage abortion. 

Barbaralee was moved to the recovery room. The last recording of her blood pressure, taken about 45 minutes after the abortion, was low, at 100/68.

Barbaralee attended a post-abortion counseling session, during which she was pale and reporting lower abdominal cramping. She was kept for observation an additional half an hour.

At some point staff told Barbaralee's worried sister, Rita Tripp, that there had been complications but that everything would be fine.

About two hours after the abortion, Barbaralee reportedly told staff that she felt better and asked to be sent home. Barbaralee was not given a discharge examination. Zavalos simply discharged her, asserting that she seemed to be okay. However, according to the CDC's investigators, Barbaralee was showing symptoms "suggestive of internal hemorrhage."  Her sister, Rita Tripp, said that Barbaralee was pale and weak when she helped her out to the car.

Barbaralee lay in the back seat on the way home. When they arrived, Rita said, Barbaralee told her that she felt like something was wrong. 

Rita said that she tried to call Zavalos but was unable to reach him.

Barbaralee remained lethargic and seemed to go to sleep. About two hours after returning home she tried to stand up but fainted. She was rushed to the Pinckneyville hospital by ambulance, where an emergency hysterectomy was attempted to save her life. Barbaralee died during the surgery, leaving her child motherless.

The autopsy found the face and spinal column of Barbaralee's baby embedded in a hole in her uterus. There were two quarts of blood in her abdomen. Barbaralee had bled to death.

The medical examiner noted: "A very large retroperitoneal hematoma is present with dissection of blood along right ureter. A 4 mc. tear is noted on the right anterior surface of the lower third of the uterus and a large amount of blood, estimated at 2000 ccs. is present in the pelvis. Two fetal parts, the face and thoracic spinal column, are embedded in a 700 cc. fresh hematoma inside the uterus."

Illinois law placed a 12-week limit on outpatient abortions. Zavalos told CDC investigators that he thought Barbaralee had been only 11 weeks pregnant even though her last normal menstrual period had been five months earlier. The clinic records examined by CDC staff said that the gross examination of the fetal tissue removed during the abortion was consistent with an 11-week pregnancy. However, the medical examiner drew a different conclusion, based on the tissue that had been left embedded in Barbaralee's uterus:

In an attempt to estimate the length of gestation in the absence of the whole fetus, the two parts, namely the face, less the crown, and the thoracic vertebral column without the rump, are laid end to end. Together they measure 9 cm. A conservative estimate of the crown to rump length would be 10 to 11 cm. This will place the gestational age at 16 to 16 1/2 weeks.

Barbaralee's family sued both Zavalos and the clinic for $1 million. In particular, Barbaralee's family attorney brought up the following issues:

  • "Patients who receive abortions should be observed at the clinic 'for a period of time sufficient to ensure that no immediate post-operative complications are present'."
  • "Patients in whom any adverse condition exists or in whom a complication is known should be transferred to a hospital"
  • "Clinics should have a 'written agreement' with an approved hospital to provide 'prompt transfer' of persons requiring in-patient care."
Illinois law required that outpatient surgery centers have a written agreement with a hospital not more than 15 minutes away for transfer of patients needing care. Hope Clinic did not have any such written agreement.

A doctor reviewing the case for Barbaralee's family noted that it would be evident from the fetal remains whether Barbaralee's unborn baby was over 16 weeks or merely 11 weeks. For reference, an 11-week fetus is about 1.6 inches long and weighs about 1.6 ounces, while a 16-week fetus is about 7.3 inches long and weighs a little over 5 ounces. A foot measurement, which is commonly used in abortion facilities to verify fetal age, would be 7-8 mm in an 11-week fetus and 20 mm in a 16-week fetus.

The defendants tried to get the case thrown out on a technicality, because the family's attorney had sued both the facility and the doctor under the same count. In response, the attorney severed the two cases and asked for $1.4 million from each rather than $1 million for the two defendants.

Hope Clinic for Women was not only permitted to remain in operation, it was allowed to remain a member in good standing of the National Abortion Federation.

Sources: 

Watch "Lying or Clueless?" on YouTube.

 As I was updating the entry for Barbaralee Davis, the first known abortion death at a National Abortion Federation member clinic, I because disgusted as I always am by the cavalier attitude the abortion lobby -- and their media lapdogs -- take towards women's legal abortion deaths. I just want to take some time to call out a particularly infuriating example.

The September 1, 1977 Decatur Daily Review quotes attorney Frank Susman, who had defended Dr. Kenneth Edelin in an infanticide case related to a post-viability abortion. 

The face and spine of Barbaralee's fetus were found embedded in a rip in her uterus. But how did Susman characterize the failure to even notice that major parts of the fetus hadn't been removed? "[A]bortion, like all surgical procedures involves a risk, and possibly a risk of death. And this patient in this procedure was advised of that."

Was Barbaralee informed that it was possible that pieces of her dead fetus would be left embedded in a uterine tear, and that she might be sent home with an undiagnosed, life-threatening injury? And why is "Well, all surgery has risks" an excuse for an abortion death caused by such an egregious injury? Had Barbaralee's abortion been illegal, though still performed by a doctor, no doubt that same spokesperson for the abortion lobby would have been livid about how the legal status of abortion had forced Barbaralee to seek substandard care and suffer an injury she never would have died from had her abortion been legal. If it weren't for double standards, the abortion lobby would have no standards at all.

Then there's the misinformation: "I think we just have to put this in perspective and realize that -- for example -- well over a million abortions were performed last year in the United states and there were five deaths."

That statement simply wasn't true. According to the 1976 CDC Abortion Surveillance Summary, there were ten legal abortion deaths -- twice the number Susman claimed. To be fair, the CDC doesn't exactly leap out and announce abortion death numbers right away. The 1976 summary wasn't issued until August of 1978. Susman doesn't say where he got the lowball number. The CDC also admittedly missed one, since the 2019 Abortion Surveillance Summary notes 11 legal abortion deaths for 1976. Of course, that's assuming that the CDC actually knows -- or even cares -- how many legal abortion deaths there are. There's abundant evidence that their data collection on legal abortion deaths has been perfunctory at best since Willard Cates and David Grimes left the abortion surveillance branch.

The kicker, though, is the way Susman, the abortion lobby, and the media simply dismiss legal abortion deaths as nothing worth worrying your pretty little head about. Imagine if, after an airline crash, the NTSB and the airlines insisted that the concern was far out of proportion and started citing the overall safety of airline travel. Such a transparently self-serving attitude would be roundly condemned. For some reason, though, the abortion lobby is able to dismiss cases of fatal malpractice by reminding us that comparatively few patients actually die. 

The proper response to any death caused by mistakes, or slipshod procedures, or faulty equipment is to do a preventability study and to at least suggest corrective action. Why aren't abortion facilities held to this standard?