October 4, 1984: The Survivor

Today's anniversary is an intended death that failed -- a baby meant to die, who didn't.

Ruth Ann S. was sent to Detroit Memorial for an abortion performed October 3, 1984 by Enrique Gerbi. 

Who Was Gerbi?

Enrique Gerbi

Enrique Benjamin Gerbi was born in Argentina, graduated from medical school in the 1960s, and was a circuit-riding abortion in Michigan in the 1970s and 1980s. Among those who had him working at their clinics was "license to lie" National Abortion Federation member Abraham Alberto Hodari, who perpetrated fatal abortions on Tamiia Russell and Chivon Williams  and who hired Dr. Milton Nathanson, who perpetrated a fatal abortion on Regina Johnson.

Gerbi's career was marked with malpractice suits, most often for botched abortion, and working at facilities that were cited for safety violations. 

Background on Detroit Memorial Hospital

Detroit Memorial Hospital was part of the Detroit-Macomb Hospital Corporation. Though it was a general hospital, it was known in the 1980s for hosting abortionists who, like Gerbi, had less-than-stellar backgrounds. 

The Risky Procedure

Gerbi elected to kill Ruth Ann's baby with a saline instillation abortion. The idea was that the fetus would inhale and swallow the fluid, which would cause massive internal hemorrhaging and death. this would then trigger labor. 

Saline abortion was hardly a pleasant experience. The abortionist would remove as much amniotic fluid as he could using a needle and syringe. He would then replace the amniotic fluid with a concentrated saline (salt) solution that would poison and kill the fetus. The woman would then go into labor and expel the fetus.

Saline abortions became very popular in Japan following WWII. Within the Japanese medical community, however, word quickly spread: this method was unsatisfactory. Too many women were being injured and killed. Over 70 papers were published in the Japanese medical community reporting hazards of saline abortions, including at least 60 maternal deaths. The Japanese Obstetrical and Gynecological Society condemned the technique, and it was quickly abandoned. But the Japanese abortionists kept news of the trouble among themselves -- until Western nations discovered instillation abortions and embraced them with great enthusiasm.

Two Japanese doctors, Takashi Wagatsuma and Yukio Manabe, broke the silence. Wagatsuma wrote, "It is, I think, worthwhile to report its rather disastrous consequences which we experienced in Japan." Manabe wrote, "It is now known that any solution placed within the uterus can be absorbed rather rapidly into the general circulation through the vascular system of the uterus and placenta. Thus any solution used in the uterus for abortion must be absolutely safe even if given by direct intravenous injection. ... A solution deadly to the fetus may be equally toxic and dangerous to the mother. ... In spite of the accumulating undesirable reports, the use of hypertonic saline for abortion is still advocated and used ... in the United States and Great Britain. I would like to call attention to the danger of the method and would predict the further occurrence of deaths until this method is entirely forgotten in these countries."

As western abortionists gained experience with saline abortions, other grim reports arose. A British study published in 1966 found that the saline would enter the mother's bloodstream and cause brain damage. Swedish researchers noticed an unacceptably high rate of complications and deaths. Sweden and the Soviet Union abandoned saline abortion as too dangerous for women in the late 1960s.

For whatever reasons, American abortionists were deaf to these warnings. When New York had completely repealed its abortion law, doctors had tremendous leeway in abortion practice. In New York City in particular, it became popular to inject the woman with the saline in the office, then send her home with instructions to report to a hospital when she went into labor. This was, to say the least, a highly irresponsible way to use an abortion technique that was risky even when performed in a hospital under close medical supervision. Women started dying from these reckless saline abortions.

A Child's Survival is A Failed Procedure

The saline was injected to kill the fetus, but the procedure didn't go as planned. At 12:30 AM on October 4, instead of expelling a dead baby, Ruth Ann delivered a live infant girl.

Rather than immediately providing the infant with medical care, hospital staff put her in a bucket and left her crying, cold and alone. She was "left to languish without the care of an obstetrician and/or a pediatrician." 

At some point, somebody finally did get the child care. Her mother named her Vanessa.

Vanessa suffered brain damage, required heart surgery due to saline damage, and required surgery "to relieve hydrocephalic conditions produced by the result of the salt injection." Vanessa suffered blindness, mental retardation, severe scarring and burning of her feet, growth retardation, and "Lack of coordination, ambulation and other dysfunctions not yet manifest."

The Lawsuit

A lawsuit filed on Vanessa's behalf charged Jack Ryan, President/Chief Medical Officer, with failing to "require the checking of the eleven malpractice suits in claims filed against abortionist ENRIQUE GERBI," and with failing to require Gerbi "to present evidence of knowledge and skill" for performing abortions. The suit also faulted the hospital with failing "to require that physical evaluations would be made on patients to determine the gestational age of the fetus before an effort was made to kill the same by abortion techniques," failing to have arrangements for care of live-born infants after abortion, and failure to have Gerbi placed under adequate supervision.

But why would an abortion hospital have a doctor on hand to care for babies like Vanessa? After all, as Obama said, "[A]dding an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion."

Sources: 

• Wayne County Circuit Court Case No. 85-529757
• "Abortion attempt triggers suit," (Port Huron, MI) Times Herald, July 3, 1985
• "Claim Infant Survived Abortion," (Benton Harbor-St. Joseph, MI) Herald-Palladium, July 6, 1985
• Background information provided by Grok, October 1, 2025