Abortion Deaths, 1920s and 1971

Safe and Legal in 1971

Doris Grant, age 32, was admitted by W. W. Williams to Doctor's Hospital in Los Angeles for a safe and legal abortion February 11, 1971. After the abortion, Doris was bleeding. Doris' fallopian was tube removed due to ectopic pregnancy. Her bleeding persisted, and Doris remained hospitalized with massive abdominal adhesions. On February 15, an emergency hysterectomy was performed to attempt to stop the bleeding. Doris went into cardiac arrest during surgery. Doris' death was originally classified as natural due to cardiac arrest. However, after her autopsy, the cause of death was changed to excessive bleeding, and her manner of death deemed accidental. The autopsy also includes a note that "Dr. does not want to sign certificate."


One of the Many Victims of Dr. Lucy Hagenow

Nina Harding Pierce

On February 10, 1925, Nina Ruth Harding and Logan Franklin Pierce, university students from prosperous families, ran away to Chicago and were married in a private ceremony performed by Rev. S. D. White of St. Paul's Methodist Church. They took up lodging in a small furnished room.

Four days later, late in the evening of Valentine's Day of 1925, Logan Pierce took a gravely ill Nina the Chicago Lying-In Hospital and promptly disappeared, leaving her to die the following night, alone but for the strangers who had fought in vain to save her life. Warrants were quickly issued for the arrest of the flighty husband, and for notorious Chicago abortionist Dr. Lucy Hagenow.

Logan was lying low, fully aware that he was in big trouble. The only immediate traces of him were telephone messages to a private club and his rooming house, asking if a telegram had come from his father.

Logan Pierce

The elder Pierce hurried to Chicago from LaCrosse, Wisconsin, where he had been establishing a commercial loan bank. He arranged an attorney for his son. Young Logan, accompanied by the lawyer, turned himself in but utterly refused to answer any questions and at first even to identify the 80-year-old Hagenow, who had already been arrested. At last he admitted that he had accompanied his bride to Hagenow's practice, but insisted that he hadn't known about the abortion until she became ill.

Hagenow's whereabouts, it seems, were never much of a secret, and she was quickly brought in.

For her part, Hagenow admitted that Nina had come to her practice the previous Tuesday or Wednesday, but denied having performed an abortion on her.

Hagenow was held to a Grand Jury on $35,000 bond, and Pierce on $7,500. Hagenow was charged with murder, and Logan as an accessory.

Meanwhile, a heartbroken Robert Harding came to Chicago to collect his daughter's body and bring her back to East St. Louis for burial.

Dr. Lucy Hagenow

Hagenow, who had already been implicated of the abortion deaths of Louise Derchow, Annie Dorris, Abbia Richards, and Emma Dep in San Francisco, would go on to be linked to over a dozen Chicago abortion deaths:

• 1891: Minnie Deering
• 1892: Sophia Kuhn and Emily Anderson
• 1896: Hannah Carlson
• 1899: Marie Hecht
• 1905: May Putnam
• 1906: Lola Madison
• 1907: Annie Horvatich
• 1925: Lottie Lowy, Nina H. Pierce, Jean Cohen, Bridget Masterson, and Elizabeth Welter
• 1926: Mary Moorehead

Hagenow was typical of criminal abortionists in that she was a physician.


A Home Abortion Gone Wrong, 1920

On May 28, 1920, Dr. E. Anderson was convicted of manslaughter in the death of Mrs. Margaret Ann Marts. He was a practicing physician in Kansas City, Missouri.

Margaret had given birth on August 19, 1919. She recovered well, bottle-fed the baby, and began menstruating again about four weeks after the birth.

On January 19, 1920, the family physician, Dr. Davis, was called to examine Margaret. She'd stopped menstruating about six weeks earlier, had concluded that she was pregnant, and had attempted to perform an abortion on herself with a catheter. She said that if Dr. Davis didn't do an abortion, she'd find somebody else who would because she'd rather die than give birth again.

Upon examining Margaret, Dr. Davis found some irritation caused by the catheter, and an enlarged uterus which he attributed to pregnancy. However, in order to divert Margaret away from the idea of trying to abort, he told her that she wasn't pregnant.

I'll go ahead right now and fault the man for lying to his patient. Refusing to do the abortion is absolutely right, as would be pointing out to his patient the evils inherent in the act -- not just killing the unborn baby, but risking injury to herself and thus risking the security of her family. But a flat out lie is just not ethical. Davis also failed to address his patient's clear state of emotional distress in any way. She was if not suicidal, certainly in a dangerous mental state that David didn't treat.

That afternoon, Margaret turned to a Dr. Anderson, whom she'd previously never seen. He did not examine her, but made arrangements to go to her home around noon the following day, January 20, to perform "an operation." Margaret called some friends to come and assist. This wasn't nearly as shocking to people of that era as it is now. Just a year after Margaret's death a surgical textbook included a chapter on how to prep a private home for surgery.

Dr. Anderson showed up with an assistant of his own and sterilized his instruments by boiling them at the kitchen stove. One of the Margaret's friends helped with administering the chloroform. Dr. Anderson used water and cotton during the procedure, which took about fifteen minutes.

Four days later, Dr. Davis, the family physician, was called in to examine Margaret, who had taken to her bed and was in serious condition. She was expelling a foul-smelling mix of blood and pus. Dr. Davis found damage to her uterus, clearly from an abortion, and treated her for her infection.

Margaret spoke to her husband of what had happened. The conversation took place shortly before she was taken to the hospital on January 24 or 25. She told him she was sure she was dying, and that she blamed Dr. Anderson. She said that Dr. Anderson had lied to her, telling her that the operation wouldn't be "very severe," and that she'd only be sick three or four days. She said she was sorry she'd gone to Anderson. She also gave her husband instructions regarding the care of their children.

Margaret was discharged from the hospital for reasons that aren't clear in the source documents. She died in her home on February 15, 1920, two or three days after her discharge from the hospital. Dr. J.S. Snider performed an autopsy that day, and concluded that she'd died of sepsis.

Anderson admitted that he had chloroformed and operated upon Margaret  on the 20th of January, but insisted that he'd only been treating her for the infection and damage she'd done to herself with the catheter. He also said that Mr. Marts had assaulted him, choked him, and tried to shake him down for $500.

The jury found Dr. Anderson guilty, and he was fined $500.

Black Women's Lives on the Abortion Table

Blacks comprise about 12 percent of the US population, yet Black woman are sold roughly 25 percent of abortions. More disturbing is this fact: Black women account for at least 50 percent of known abortion deaths. 

Charisse Ards

This bears repeating: A young Black woman is twice as likely to be sold an abortion as a young white woman, and once she gets on the abortion table, she is at least twice as likely to suffer fatal complications as a white woman. More to the point, a Black woman coming of age in the US is at least four times more likely to die from abortion complications than a white woman coming of age.

Charisse Ards is one of the women Life Dynamics lists on the Blackmun Wall of women killed by safe and legal abortion. Life Dynamics indicates that Charisse was 20 years old, single, and a mother of one. According to Life Dynamics, Charisse died July 28, 1989, from a pelvic infection after a legal abortion.

Thirty-two-year-old Mary Ann Dancy was a mother of five children ranging in age from 2 to 17 when she went to Fleming Center in North Raleigh, North Carolina for a safe and legal abortion on July 27, 1990. She was accompanied by a male friend and her sister, Carolyn.

The abortion was performed by Clarence J. Washington at around 4:00 p.m. He documented no complications. "She seemed all right," Carolyn told the Raleigh News & Observer. "She walked to the car.

After Mary Ann went home, she took a bath and went to bed. However, she bled heavily, and the next day, July 28, she was taken to Halifax Memorial Hospital. She died that night during emergency surgery from hemorrhage due to a lacerated cervix.

Lethal Doctors, 1914 and 1988

A Doctor's Work in 1914

In 1914, when Mrs. Julia Reed's eighteen-year-old daughter Ester reported that her period did not arrive, Mrs. Reed took her to two people to find out whether she was pregnant, then bought pills to induce an abortion. These didn't work, so she took Ester to Dr. J.L. Neuman, who demanded payment of $150 for an abortion. Julia protested, and Neuman told her to sell furniture and clothes to get the money. She dickered him down to $50, though he complained about it. He started the abortion at his practice, then completed it two days later at the family's home.

His efforts clearly weren't even worth the $50, much less then $150 he'd wanted, since he managed to fatally injure Ester, who died of septicemia on June 8, 1914 at Park Avenue Hospital. The secret abortion intended to keep Esther's father from kicking her out of the house thus removed her from the family permanently. Neuman was arrested January 11, 1917, and though the case went to trial, the source does not indicate the outcome.

One of Many Victims of a Reputable Chain of Clinics, 1988

The survivors of 32-year-old Joyce Ortenzio filed suit against Edward Allred, his Family Planning Associates Medical Group (FPA), the San Vicente Hospital FPA facility, and abortionist Ruben Marmet. Joyce went to San Vicente for laminaria insertion by Marmet on June 7, 1988. Later, Marmet performed a safe and legal abortion, but did not remove all of the fetal parts from Joyce's uterus. The next day, June 8, Joyce was found dead in her home. The cause of death was an overdose of the drug amitriptyline, infection from fetal parts that were not removed during the abortion and septic shock. Joyce left three children motherless.

Joyce is one of many women to die at this NAF facility after theNational Abortion Federation was founded. Other patients known to have died after abortion at Allred's facilities include:

• Denise Holmes, age 24, 1970
• Patricia Chacon, age 16, 1984
• Mary Pena, age 43, 1984
• Josefina Garcia, age 37, 1985
• Lanice Dorsey, age 17, 1986
• Tami Suematsu, age 19, 1988
• Deanna Bell, age 13, 1992
• Susan Levy, age 30, 1992
• Christina Mora, age 18, 1994
• Ta Tanisha Wesson, age 24, 1995
• Nakia Jorden, 1998
• Maria Leho, 1999
• Kimberly Neil, 2000
• Maria Rodriguez, age 22, 2000
• Chanelle Bryant, age 22, 2004

I suspect that the reason the deaths appear in clusters is because those are years that researchers checked for lawsuits, rather than that these are all the women and girls who died at Allred facilities. Anybody with the time and resources to do so could probably uncover other deaths Allred and his staff have managed to sweep under the carpet.

Typical Abortion Deaths, Different Times and Places

Each of the deaths we commemorate today was a fairly typical example of how abortion was practiced in different times and places in the United States during the 20th century.


Typical Chicago Abortion Death, Early 20th Century

On February 29, 1916, Dr. Nels Meling was summoned to the home of 43-year-old homemaker Augusta Bloom on North Kedzie Avenue in Chicago. The next day he sent her to Norwegian Deaconess Hospital. While there she made a deathbed declaration that she was suffering from the effects of an abortion perpetrated by Dr. James R. Struble at his office. On March 3, 1916, Augusta died from massive infection. Struble was indicted by a Grand Jury on March 21, but the case never went to trial. 

Two years earlier, Struble had been implicated in the abortion death of 24-year-old Frances Fergus, but that case had not gone to trial either. This was fairly typical for Chicago abortions of that era: a doctor or a midwife, often running very thinly-veiled abortion ads in newspapers, would send multiple women to the grave without losing either their license or their freedom.

Typical Pittsburgh Abortion Death, Early 20th Century

Nikola Wojnovich of Pittsburgh said that on Saturday, February 16, 1918, his 26-year-old wife, Mary Wojnovich, seemed unwell after dinner, very unstable on her feet. Nikola asked her what was wrong, and she said she didn't know, perhaps she had caught cold while washing the windows. She asked him to help her to bed. He then sent for Dr. Zabaranko, who examined her and prescribed some medication.

The next day Zabaranko returned and diagnosed her with inflammation of the uterus and instructed Nikola to put an ice pack on her abdomen. On Thursday, February 21, Mary's condition was worse, and Nikola summoned Zabaranko again. When he examined her, he called an ambulance and sent her to Pittsburgh's South Side Hospital, where Dr. S. A. Beddall admitted her for treatment for “incomplete abortion and pelvic peritonitis due to self inflicted abortion at home 2 weeks ago.”

After Mary's death, at about 2:00 on the morning of Saturday, March 3, Dr. Henry Klinzing jotted a note to the coroner on a prescription pad saying that Mary, a homemaker and Croatian immigrant, had made a deathbed statement to him on March 1, saying “she inserted a stick of wood into the uterus to bring on menstruation feeling she was pregnant. From this she developed a pelvic peritonitis and subsequently a septic pneumonia from which she died.”

Mary's abortion is in keeping with turn-of-the-20th-century Pittsburgh abortion deaths, which heavily inclined toward self-induced, in contrast to Chicago abortions of the same period, which were predominately perpetrated by doctors and midwives.


Typical Newly Liberalized New York Abortion Death

"Connie" was 31 years old when she took advantage of the liberalized law and underwent a safe and legal abortion in New York on March 3, 1972. She went into cardiac arrest during the abortion. Attempts to save her life were futile; she died on March 8, five days after her abortion. She left behind one child. 

The 1970 liberalization of abortion 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 "Connie," these are a few of 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:

• Carmen Rodriguez, July 19, 1970, salt solution intended to kill the fetus accidentally injected into her bloodstream
• Barbara Riley, July 20, 1970, sickle-cell crisis triggered by abortion recommended by doctor due to her sickle cell disease
• "Amanda" Roe, September 22, 1970, sent back to her home in Indiana with an untreated hole poked in her uterus
• Maria Ortega, October 10, 1970, fetus shoved through her uterus into her pelvic cavity then left there
• Margaret Smith, June 16 1971, hemorrhage from multiple lacerations during outpatient hysterotomy abortion
• "Roxanne" Roe, May 13, 1972, given overdose of abortion sedatives
• "Danielle" Roe, May 17, 1972, air in her bloodstream

With the proliferation of fly-by-night outpatient abortion in the state, New York City Chief Medical Examiner Milton Helpern expressed concern that ill-equipped and poorly-staffed freestanding legal abortion facilities were posing a danger to women. Certainly they were not reducing the real danger to women, merely the perceived risk. As you can see from the graph below, abortion deaths were falling dramatically before legalization. This steep fall had been in place for decades. To argue that legalization lowered abortion mortality simply isn't supported by the data. The women's deaths were just demoted from homicide, punishable by law, to mere medical mishaps not worth anybody's concern. What ended with legalization wasn't women dying from abortions; it was society caring if they died.

Typical National Abortion Federation Abortion Death

Abortion entrepreneur Edward C. Allred

Sixteen-year-old Patricia Chacon had no way of knowing that she would become the second of more than a dozen women for whom a safe, legal abortion at one of Edward "Fast Eddie" Allred's chain of abortion mills would be the last choice she would ever make. Patricia underwent a safe and legal second-trimester abortion at the hands of either Allred or Leslie Orleans at Allred's Avalon Hospital in Los Angeles on the morning of March 3, 1984. Patricia retained fetal tissues, so she was scheduled for a second procedure that afternoon to complete the abortion.

There are conflicting stories as to what happened next. Allred claimed that Patricia died of an embolism during the second surgery. (He pronounced her dead at 4:30 PM.) Patricia's parents claim that the child bled to death while left unattended. An autopsy found numerous catgut sutures in Patricia's vagina and hemorrhage in her uterus. Death was attributed to disseminated intravascular coagulopathy (a clotting disorder) due to abortion-induced amniotic fluid embolism (amniotic fluid in the bloodstream). Patricia's parents sued Allred and Orleans for their daughter's death.

Other women known to have died after abortion at Allred's facilities include Denise Holmes, Mary Pena, Josefina Garcia, Laniece Dorsey, Joyce Ortenzio, Tami Suematsu, Susan Levy, Deanna Bell, Christine Mora, Ta Tanisha Wesson, Nakia Jorden, Maria Leho, Kimberly Neil, Maria Rodriguez, and Chanelle Bryant.

New Years Eve in Chicago, 1917 and 1986

Chicago, 1917

On December 31, 1917, 40-year-old homemaker Victoria Chmileuski died in her Chicago home from an abortion perpetrated by Wilhemena Benn, whose profession is given only as "abortion provider," though she was actually a licensed midwife. Benn was acquitted on March 7, 1918. Benn had been previously charged but later acquitted in the June, 1916 abortion death of Rosie Kawera, and implicated the March 2, 1906 abortion death of Otilia Winker. I don't know the outcome of the Winker case.

Chicago, 1986

Arnold Bickham

Eighteen-year-old Sylvia Moore underwent a safe and legal abortion at the hands of Arnold Bickham on December 31, 1986 at his Urgent Medical Care Clinic in Chicago. She was in the second trimester of her pregnancy, but Bickham used a suction technique suitable for a first-trimester pregnancy. After the abortion, 48-year-old Bickham gave Sylvia repeated injections of Demerol because she was reporting severe abdominal cramps.

According to Sylvia's mother, Sylvia was bleeding, weak, and unable to walk. When Sylvia tried to get to her feet and collapsed, Bickham called her "lazy," put her in a wheelchair, and physically ejected her from his Chicago clinic. Sylvia's mother took her to a nearby hospital, where staff tried in vain to save Sylvia, who had arrived with no pulse and no blood pressure. An emergency hysterectomy was done to remove her lacerated uterus, which still had a plastic instrument embedded in a 6.5 cm laceration. Sylvia also had a 2.2 cm laceration of her vagina. Despite the surgery, she bled to death.

Bickham claimed that he "didn't think there was anything wrong" with Sylvia, and said that he'd merely been helping her with the wheelchair. He blamed Sylvia's death on the hospital, saying, "They were successful in repairing the damage done in the abortion, but in doing that, they perforated an artery causing there to be blood loss in the chest cavity. That was something she was not able to survive."

The autopsy report, however, noted the chest tube incision but noted "lungs are well expanded and the pleural cavities are free of fluid and adhesions." An attorney with the Department of Professional Regulation said, "This patient should never have been allowed to leave Bickham's clinic with her mother."

The postmortum report said: "The circumstances of injury, review of the Medical records, the findings at autopsy examination, and subsequent investigation of the circumstances of the case provide evidence of gross negligence and abandonment on the part of the original treating physician. In consideration of the above, the manner of death is determined to be Homicide." However, no charges were pressed against Bickham.

The suit filed by Sylvia's survivors noted that Bickahm had failed to perform an ultrasound, and failed to have adequate staff or equipment. The specimen of abortion tissue sent from clinic contained segments of placental tissue, umbilical cord, and fetal intestinal parts and liver.

Sylvia left one child motherless.

Bickham's license was revoked by Illinois in October of 1988 due to Sylvia's death. He was arrested in September of 1989 for practicing medicine without license, and sentenced to 30 months probation and 2,600 hours of community service in lieu of 6 months jail, in addition to a $10,000 fine.

Deadly Illinois Abortion Doctors, Pre- and Post-Roe

On December 5, 1905, 19-year-old laborer Annie Killhoff died at her home on Ashland Avenue in Chicago from an abortion. Two physicians, Joseph Vassumpaur and Charles Boddiger, were arrested, Vassumpaur as the principle and Boddiger as an accessory. Patrick Dillon was also held as an accessory. The case, however, never went to trial. Annie's abortion was typical of pre-legalization abortions in that it was performed by a physician.

Seventeen-year-old Janice Gumm of Beach Park, Illinois, went to Dimensions Medical Center at 1455 Golf Road in Des Plaines, Illionis, for an abortion on December 5, 1998, to be performed under anesthesia. Her abortionist was Dr. Jesse Chandler, and the anesthesiologist was Dr. Murray Rosenberg of Hospital Anesthesia Group. The suit by Janice's survivors held that Dimensions failed to perform an adequate physical examination prior to the abortion, particularly in that they did not properly assess her increased risks due to the fact that she had asthma. As a result, Janice suffered an anesthesia-related complication that resulted in her death that day.

Four Safe and Legal Deaths in the 1970s and 1980s

On December 2, 1977, 29-year-old Jacqueline Bailey was injected with saline by Dr. Eboreime for an instillation abortion at Pacific Glen Hospital in Los Angeles County. Five hours after Jackie expelled the dead baby, her condition appeared grave. Shortly after midnight, she was transferred to Memorial Hospital of Glendale. Doctors at Memorial suspected a uterine laceration, so they performed exploratory surgery. The bleeding was so profuse that they then performed a hysterectomy in a last-ditch attempt to save her life. Jackie died just before sunrise on December 3. The autopsy report found that Jackie's uterus had ruptured during the abortion, and that her uterine artery had been lacerated. She had bled to death from her injuries. Two years earlier, Cheryl Tubbs had also bled to death from a ruptured uterus caused by a saline abortion at Pacific Glen.

Cora Lewis is one of six abortion deaths currently attributed to Inglewood Women's Hospital (aka Inglewood Women's Clinic) in Los Angeles County. Twenty-three-year-old Cora had her safe and legal abortion at Inglewood on November 4, 1983. She had gonorrhea at the time of the abortion, which led to inflammation of the cervix and uterus. Cora developed fever and chills after her abortion, and was finally admitted to a hospital on November 11. She was aggressively treated for pneumonia, including surgery, but died December 3. The coroner attributed her death to pneumonia and lung abscess contributed to by the uterine and cervical inflammation. Other abortion deaths at Inglewood include Yvonne Tanner, Kathy Murphy, Belinda Byrd, Lynette Wallace, and Elizabeth Tsuji.

Abortionist Andre Nehorayoff was disciplined over the 1983 abortion death of 18-year-old "Ellen."Nehorayoff performed a second-trimester safe and legal abortion on November 29, 1983. She was 18 years old and in the second trimester of pregnancy. Nehorayoff left the medical history section of her chart blank.Nehorayoff entered the following note in Ellen's chart: "Pt. is advised that she might pass some tissue, contact me at any time or if she bleeds heavily." So evidently he was aware that he'd preformed an incomplete abortion.Two days later, Nehorayoff recieved a lab report that detected only placental tissue in the specimen from Ellen's abortion, indicating that there was still a lot of fetal tissue in Ellen's body. He noted no attempt to notify Ellen of the incomplete abortion.At 5:10 AM on December 3, Ellen was rushed to an emergency room. She was already in a coma upon admission. An hour and 10 minutes later, she was pronounced dead. At autopsy there was a portion of the fetal left leg protruding from the uterus, and the cause of death was determined to be from hemorrhaging due to the incomplete abortion. Nehorayoff was also disciplined regarding Patient F, whom he left in a recovery room following her abortion on December 15, 1979, without any monitoring. She turned blue and no pulse could be detected. She was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Teresa Causey clutched her mother's hand during her safe and legal abortion by Joe Wesley McDaniel on December 3, 1988. Her mother later said that 17-year-old Teresa's last words were, "Oh, mama, mama, it hurts so much!" Then she lost consciousness on the abortion table. When McDaniel was unable to awaken her, he tried smelling salts, slapped her face, then tried to reach another doctor before finally calling an ambulance. Teresa had two perforations of her uterus and two lacerated veins. She died of massive hemorrhage the day of her abortion. An investigation found that McDaniel had been operating in an unlicensed facility, and that he had broken the law requiring abortions after 13 weeks be done in a hospital; Teresa had been 15 weeks pregnant with a little boy. No charges were pressed against McDaniel for Teresa's death, the illegal abortion, or the unlicensed facility. Teresa left behind two children.

Four Doctors' Deadly Work Over a Century

On February 3, 1912, 37-year-old homemaker Helen Imhoff died on the scene from blood poisoning caused by an abortion perpetrated by Dr. W. A. Beringer and midwife Margaret Meyer. They were indicted by a Grand Jury on March 1, but the case never went to trial.

Mary Strugnall, age 17, died February 3, 1929 from an abortion performed that a month earlier by Dr. Joseph A. Harter. Harter was held by the coroner on February 28. His brother, a student named Irving Harter, and Vernon Keyser, the baby's father, were arrested as accessories. Dr. Harter was indicted for homicide, but was acquitted on June 26.

Romeo Ferrer

Denise Crowe was 21 years old when she went to Dr. Romeo Ferrer's private practice, which looked like and advertised as a clinic, on February 3, 2006. She was 16 weeks pregnant. Ferrer started the abortion at about 1:00 p.m., using ultrasound guidance. The abortion took over 45 minutes, and Denise was administered multiple doses of Demerol and Versed because she was finding the procedure so painful. After Denise was moved to the recovery room, Ferrer's staff were unable to get a blood pressure or pulse reading on Denise, and told him. He gave a verbal order for 0.4 mg Narcan, a drug to counteract narcotics. At 1:50, Ferrer began efforts to resuscitate Denise. Staff called 911 while Ferrer continued resuscitation efforts, maintaining an open airway with the non-professional method of head tilt and chin lift rather than an airway or endotracheal tube. The medics arrived to find Denise still unresponsive and without a pulse. They used an oxygen mask and additional drugs as they transported Denise to Anne Arundel Medical Center. There, emergency room staff continued the attempts to resuscitate her, to no avail. She was pronounced dead at 2:57 p.m. The autopsy found that Denise had died from a Demerol overdose. The medical board faulted Ferrer for carelessly administering medications too rapidly and in excessive amounts, not appropriately monitoring Denise's vital signs, and not resuscitating Denise properly.

Jennifer McKenna-Morbelli

Jennifer McKenna-Morbelli, age 29, and her husband, TJ Morbelli, had eagerly anticipated the birth of their baby, named Madison Leigh. However, because of a prenatal diagnosis, Jennifer, accompanied by her parents, husband, and sister traveled from New Rochelle, New York to a late-term abortion facility in Germantown, Maryland on Sunday, February 3, 2013. Madison was 33 weeks gestational age. Germantown Reproductive Health Services is a National Abortion Federationmember facility, which means that it supposedly provides only the best and safest care. However, it is operated by Dr. Leroy Carhart, who had already had a less than savory history. The prolifers who gather outside report seeing Jennifer arriving for her appointments on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, appearing "pale and weak." Jennifer spent over nine hours at the facility on Wednesday. After she was discharged, Carhart and his wife left the state to work at another abortion facility. According to Operation Rescue's anonymous source, Jennifer started suffering chest pain early on Thursday morning. She was unsuccessful in her attempts to reach Carhart. Finally, at about 5:00 a.m. her family took her from the hotel to the emergency room. Hospital staff were unable to get in touch with Carhart either, though he eventually did return their calls. Jennifer was suffering from massive internal bleeding and coded six times as staff struggled to stabilize her. She finally died at around 9:30 a.m. The medical examiner indicated that Jennifer died from disseminated intravascular coagulopathy caused by an amniotic fluid embolism -- in other words, amniotic fluid and /or fetal tissue got into her blood stream and caused a cascading series of catastrophic problems including the inability of her blood to clot. This is the second third-trimester abortion patient to die under Carhart's care. The first was Christin Gilbert, who was being treated by Carhart at George Tiller's Wichita abortion facility in 2004.

"Safe and Legal" in Queens, 2010

Alexandra Nunez

Alexandra Nunez was a 37-year-old single mom from New Jersey. On January 25, 2010, she told her family that she was going to a doctor's office in Newark for a procedure to remove a cyst. Instead she went to A1 Medicine in Jackson Heights, Queens for an abortion. She was 16 or 17 weeks pregnant. The abortion was performed at 3:30 p.m. By the end of the day, Alexandra was at Elmhurst Hospital Center, dead from hemorrhage.

Her 19-year-old daughter, Daisy Davila, told the New York Daily News, "I'm upset because I never got a chance to say goodbye. She didn't want anyone to go with her. I made dinner and lunch ,,, hoping she would come back."

Eventually the medical board concluded that the doctor responsible for Alexandra's death was Robert F. Hosty. He had no hospital affiliation and hadn't taken any continuing medical education training since 2004.

Because of Alexandra's obstetric history, which included two c-sections, and the location of the placenta, Hosty should have known that it was unsafe to proceed with an abortion in an outpatient setting. Catastrophic complications are to be predicted, and the doctor must be certain that there is an adequate supply of blood for a possible transfusion, and a fully equipped operating room nearby in case an emergency hysterectomy is needed.

As a prudent physician would have suspected, the placenta had implanted deeply into the area of Alexandra's uterus that had been scarred by the prior surgery.

A1 Medicine in Queens

After the abortion, Alexandra began to bleed uncontrollably. Rather than seek the cause of the bleeding, Hosty administered medications, then stood by and did nothing while a nurse anesthetist intubated Alexandra and began providing oxygen. Nobody summoned an ambulance until over 45 minutes after blood began pouring out of Alexandra's body.

Paramedics arrived to find Alexandra still on the procedure table in stirrups, cold and gray and for all appearances already dead. Blood was still draining from her body into a pool on the floor. The only monitoring instrument in place was a pulse oximeter. The nurse anesthetist was administering oxygen, and because she was the only one who seemed to know what was going on, the emergency responders assumed that she was the physician. Nobody else was assisting the patient in any way.

The paramedics began a futile attempt to resuscitate Alexandra, but she was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Operation Rescue describes the facility where Alexandra's abortion was done as "located in a run-down building in a predominately Hispanic neighborhood," and was operated by Salomon Epstein. An employee at A1 insisted that all had gone well at their facility. "The patient was transferred to the hospital, she didn't die at the clinic. Nothing happened here." 

"Nothing happened." Except that a woman was fatally injured. It's like the thank you note that Steve Lichtenberg sent for the referral after Deanna Bell's death: "Uneventful D&E". A dead patient. "Uneventful." "Nothing happened."

A1 was an ambulatory surgical facility doing abortions and plastic surgery. They employed Hosty even though he had already allowed a gynecological patient to die by triggering massive bleeding then utterly failing to provide any effective lifesaving care.