1975-1978: Red Flags Ignored Leads To Death For Mystery Woman

A study published in the Southern Medical Journal documented multiple deaths from myocarditis after legal abortion between 1975 and 1978 (all of which were counted through the CDC’s abortion mortality data). One of them was a 29-year-old whose warning signs were ignored until it was too late.

“Collette” had suffered from tuberculosis as a child (although she had recovered since then). Three months before her fatal abortion, she’d been diagnosed with early-onset rheumatoid arthritis. But what should have made any medical professional reconsider an elective operation was what had happened only a month before the abortion date: Collette had been in the emergency room for a lung inflammation known as pleurisy.

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When the abortion was about to take place, Collette reported chest pain again. She should have been thoroughly examined to be sure that she was a candidate for elective surgery and to check the cause of her pain, especially given her recent and lifelong medical history. But instead of being treated as the alarming red flag that it was, Collette’s chest pain was written off as merely a sign that she was anxious— not over the operation she was about to have or even her recent ER visit, but assumed to be about the pregnancy itself. Her pain should have been seen as a genuine health concern, not dismissed as a figment of her imagination.

Collette was given paracervical anesthesia and the abortion was carried out. Immediately after, she had trouble breathing and orthopnea, which is a known sign of heart failure or other serious problems. She became tachycardic and was given the working diagnosis of a pulmonary embolism. Treatment was started, but Collette went into full cardiorespiratory arrest only five hours after the abortion. All attempts at resuscitation failed.

It was no wonder that Collette had been in so much pain. The autopsy showed she had suffered pericarditis, prominent myocarditis, focal myositis and interstitial pneumonitis. Myocardial edema was present with fiber necrosis. Her pericardial cavity contained about 150 ml of bloody fluid. However, there was no evidence of a pulmonary embolism. Not only were the red flags ignored, but Collette had also been misdiagnosed and treated for the wrong complication in her last day of life.

Before any elective operation, let alone one with so many serious risks, any client should have received a careful pre-op examination before they were put on the operating table. Collette needed real medical attention, not abortion.

Case report(see Case 3)