August 2, 1981: Screwed Up Anesthesia and Resuscitation

Twenty-seven-year-old Robin Renee Wells, nee Johnston, was a divorced mother of three children ages 6, 4, and 2. She went for an abortion under general anesthesia by Max Pierre Gaujean at Akron Center for Reproductive Health on July 15, 1981. Robin had just gotten a job three months earlier, which might be one of the reasons why she decided to abort this baby rather than add to her family. 

Akron Center for Reproductive Health advertised itself as "Akron's most competent and discrete abortion clinic" and promised "personalized gentle care."

Robin went into cardiac arrest in the recovery room, and was transferred by ambulance to a hospital. She remained in a coma until her death on August 2, 1981.

Both Gaujean and the anesthesiologist were independent contractors and did not maintain private practices.  The suit filed by Robin's survivors alleged that she was overdosed on anesthesia and not properly monitored. It also alleged that staff at Akron Center for Reproductive Health failed "to resuscitate her after her condition had been discovered."  The case was settled out of court.

Gaujean was born in Haiti on June 11, 1929, the youngest child of Pierre Gaujean and Octavia Jean Pierre Gaujean. He moved to the United States in 1966 and settled in Cleveland. He and Akron Center for Reproductive Health were plaintiffs in a 1983 suit fighting to be able to perform abortions on underage girls without parental consent. That same year, Gaujean was a signatory on a Mothers' Day ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: 

We're Feminists.
We Believe In Motherhood
We have the highest respect for mothers ..... We are working hard to support all the choices that women make in their lives, including motherhood.

Clearly the ad was ghoulishly drafted to paint a decision to abort a baby as an admirable, motherly act.

Gaujean died on November 21, 2008. Robin would have been 54 years old, and her aborted baby would have been 27.

Watch "Did They Even Try?" on YouTube.

Sources:

• Summit County, OH, Court of Common Pleas Case No. CV 82 4 1036
• Robin's obituary
• "State to appeal abortion-notice ruling to top court," (Cleveland) Plan Dealer, October 26, 1988
• Gaujean's obituary