January 17, 1912: Repeated Arrests for Dr. Klinetop

A coroner's jury concluded that on January 17, 1912, 38-year-old homemaker Minnie Miller died at Columbus Hospital in Chicago from septicemia caused by an abortion perpetrated on January 2 by Dr. Charles W. Klinetop. 

Klinetop was identified by Coroner's Verdict on January 26. Minnie's husband Julius named Klinetop as the guilty party. Minnie herself also identified Klinetop in a deathbed statement.

While Klinetop was awaiting trial in Minnie's death -- which was delayed due to a crowded docket -- a woman called the police from Lake Shore Hospital, reporting that there was a woman there "dying from an abortion." The police suspected that Klinetop was involved, but before they arrived at the hospital the woman, identified as Grace Smith, had been spirited away under mysterious circumstances. I have been unable to determine of she lived or died.

Klinetop was later implicated in the 1917 abortion death of Edna Lamb. During the inquest into Klinetop's role in the 1923 abortion death of Lydia Nelson, Emma Sales of South Morgan Street, Chicago, jumped to her feet and struck Klinetop in the face. Mrs. Sales said that the 1921 abortion death of her daughter, Harriet Grimm, was due to an abortion Klinetop had perpetrated.

He had already been arrested in 1909 when a young woman filed a complaint against him and her in-laws, reporting that they had forced her to undergo an abortion at Klinetop's hands.

According to census records, Klinetop decided to relocate to Pasadena, California.

Watch Dr. Klinetop's Bad Habit on YouTube.

Sources:

• "Girl is Doctor's Accuser," The Inter Ocean, July 31, 1909
• "Physician is Indicted," The Inter Ocean, February 20, 1912

January 16, 1987: Immediate Death on the Operating Table

1982 Ad Image of Shallowford Community Hospital

Thirty-eight-year-old Pamela Wainwright and her husband had two children living at home, one of whom had Down Syndrome. Pamela was admitted to Shallowford Community Hospital in Dunwoody, Georgia on January 15, 1987, for an abortion and tubal ligation. Pamela was 11 weeks pregnant. 

She was taken to the operating room for her surgery the next day. The abortion and tubal ligation were to be performed by Dr. Wendell Phillips. 

Phillips placed a needle into Pamela's abdomen to pump in carbon dioxide. He did not ensure proper placement of the needle. Instead of pumping carbon dioxide into her abdomen, he pumped it into her bloodstream. Pamela died almost immediately from cardiac arrest, due to vapor lock in her heart.

Watch Death on the Operating Table on YouTube.

Source: Fulton County (GA) Superior Court D-62259

January 16, 1982: The "Blood Money" Death

  The Story Carol Told

Former abortion entrepreneur Carol Everett, in Blood Money, tells of how the abortionist in one of her clinics sent a woman home to bleed to death over a pitcher of margaritas.

Carol opens her book with the story of the woman she calls "Sheryl Mason." At first believed to be 18 weeks pregnant, "Sheryl" turned out to be twenty weeks pregnant, according to the abortionist's estimate on examining her. The clinic held the $375 she'd already paid and gave her until that Friday to come up with another $125.

It was already after 7 p.m. when "Sheryl" arrived with the extra cash, Carol said. She knew "Sheryl" would be in recovery for a long time because of her advanced state of pregnancy, so she moved her to the head of the queue to speed up the process.

After "Sheryl's" safe and legal abortion was completed, Carol met the abortionist, Harvey Johnson, in the supply room to verify that all fetal parts were accounted for. As the fetus was verified complete, and Harvey ran the remains down the garbage disposal, they discussed their plans for the evening. Carol had a date; Harvey was going to have margaritas with his girlfriend, Carol recalled.

Carol proceeded to her office to tend to administrative work. Harvey resumed the evening's abortions.

Later that evening, Harvey called Carol to the recovery room; "Sheryl" was bleeding heavily. None of the staff had ever seen that much blood. They were all scared, but did their best to calm the patient and get on top of the situation. An aide massaged the patient's uterus to encourage it to contract and reduce the bleeding:

Harvey and I stepped outside the recovery room to talk. .... He looked at his watch. "I'm leaving to meet Fredi at Ninfa's," he said. "Ill call back, and I have my beeper on if you need me. Sheryl will be fine. Just be sure to keep massaging her uterus until the bleeding stops. When her vital signs are stable, dismiss her. I'll see you in the morning."

The staff cleaned "Sheryl" up as best they could, and brought her boyfriend back to keep her company. Carol finished up her administrative work, checked on "Sheryl," and called her boyfriend to cancel their date.

Carol Everett

Harvey assumed that the problem had corrected itself -- whatever the problem had been. And Carol sat by "Sheryl" and the boyfriend, waiting to hear from Harvey.

"Sheryl" wanted to leave, to go home and be in her own bed. Carol was uneasy, but decided to let "Sheryl" go home at about 11:00, admonishing her to call if there was any trouble. So it was Carol, an administrator, who ended up making what should have been a medical decision made by a physician -- a physician who had left the hemorrhaging patient in the care of untrained staff because the margaritas were waiting.

Carol was awakened at 6:00 the next morning by a phone call from Harvey:

"Her boyfriend called me this morning at about three and told me Sheryl was cramping heavily. I told him to put her in a tub of hot water. He called back a little later to say she was unconscious. I told him to get her to [the hospital] at once, and I would meet them there. When she arrived, I started intravenous fluids and a blood transfusion... but she's gone."

Stunned, Carol followed Harvey's instructions to just go about the day's business -- but to pull "Sheryl's" chart and keep it in her office.

They went about their normal routine at the clinic, but Carol's thoughts were elsewhere. At first those thoughts were of the woman's children, left orphaned. But then came near panic over what this death would mean for Carol Everett. Would there be bad publicity? Would the clinic end up closed? Could they recover from this blow?

That night, Carol discussed the situation with Harvey again. He told her that since the boyfriend didn't want the woman's family to know about the abortion, he'd spoken to them and told them that he'd been treating "Sheryl" for gynecological problems. They asked him flat out if she'd had an abortion, and he told her no, Carol said.

Harvey had done damage control, Carol said. Nobody at the hospital would say anything to anybody about the death; Harvey's private practice and the clinic would be fine as long as they could keep the story from getting any publicity. And, Carol said, Harvey and his girlfriend carefully edited the patient chart before providing it to the medical examiner's office.

The autopsy found that "Sheryl" had died of hemorrhaging from a cervical tear. At this news, Carol said, "I went numb:"

We could have saved Sheryl's life! my mind screamed. We only needed to have sutured her cervix. We had everything we needed in the clinic to save Sheryl's life, with one exception -- a doctor willing to take the time to re-examine his patient to determine the cause of the bleeding. But he had a date, and the margaritas were waiting.

Trust But Verify

Prolifers tend to believe Carol's story. Scoffers dismiss it. But there's another course besides uncritical acceptance and contemptuous dismissal: Looking into the story and seeing if it's true.

At Life Dynamics, we knew we couldn't just use the story out of Carol's book when we did our research for Lime 5. We needed a "secular" source -- something more than a prolifer claiming that something had happened. So, as we did with all prolifer reports of deaths, we started searching for a public record document to verify Carol's story.

We knew that Carol's abortion facilities were in Dallas. Elsewhere in Blood Money, Carol indicated that as of January of 1982, she was still proud of her clinics, which had recently expanded to doing later abortions. Elsewhere she said that to celebrate the boost in business that accompanied the expansion into later abortions, she bought a new car on March 2, 1982. The next date we can get a clue from is Harvey's marriage, which takes place in February of the following year. The woman Carol called "Sheryl" must have taken place in 1982, then.

We stared searching all public record sources in the Dallas metroplex area for an abortion death in 1982. And we found it:

Autopsy Report Case No. 0120-82-0057 on 34-year-old Shary Graham indicates that she was pronounced dead January 16, 1982, at an emergency room in Dallas. She had a 3cm tear in her cervix. "It is our opinion that Shary... died as a result of a laceration of the uterine cervix. By history, she had undergone a termination of pregnancy procedure the day prior to the death. Evidence of bleeding included large amounts of blood on three cloth robes that accompanied the body, and hemorrhage beneath the outer covering of the uterus."

The address of the facility where Shary had her abortion was the address of one of Carol's clinics.

Of course, no public record document is going to verify the story of the pitcher of margaritas. But when we consider what excuses other abortionists had for leaving patients with no medical supervision, the pitcher of margaritas is credible:

• 

  Lou Ann Herron

  John Biskind left Lou Ann Herron without medical supervision so that he could keep an appointment with a tailor. She bled to death in the clinic.

• No reason was given for Abram Zelikman's decision to leave the hemorrhaging Eurice Agbagaa in the care of a receptionist. She also bled to death.
• Tommy Tucker seems to have left Angela Hall with no doctor to care for her because he'd had a fight with the nurse about whether or not to call an ambulance. She died of multiple complications.
• Bruce Steir left Sharon Hamplton in the care of ill-trained staff who plunked the hemorrhaging woman into a wheelchair and pushed her out the door. She bled to death on the drive home.

• Nareshkumar Gandalal Patel was reprimanded by the Oklahoma medical board for leaving a patient "in post-operative condition in the treatment room under anesthesia" on June 10, 1989, so that he could take a friend to the airport. 

Carol places the responsibility for the death of the woman she calls Sheryl not only on abortionist Harvey Johnson's shoulders, but squarely on her own. Carol herself began laying the groundwork for what would happen to "Sheryl" with a business decision to do later abortions because of their higher profit margin.

Watch Trust But Verify on YouTube.

January 16, 1889: Deathbed Marriage

 n inquest was held into the January 16, 1889 death of 22-year-old Kitty Cody, a young Oyster Bay woman, in Brooklyn. 

Frank P. Dudgeon had set Kitty up in Mrs. Anyon's house at 85 West Eighty-Ninth Street. Kitty took sick there. Mrs. Anyon, who testified that Dudgeon had sent a box to Kitty, along with "a letter from him explaining the use of the contents of the box." The box evidently contained abortifacients. Kitty died at the apartment of Mrs. M. A. Harriman at 124 Flatbush Avenue.

The inquest was a circus, "held in the Supervisor's chamber, which was literally packed with spectators. It was replete with dramatic incidents, with some of which the crowd expressed its sympathies with the prosecution by breaking into applause."

The state entered into evidence an affidavit from Nelly Cody, Kitty's sister. "It embodied extracts from a letter to the dead girl signed Petie, which accompanied a package containing medicine and a syringe." A witness was produced who identified Dudgeon as the man who had brought the package to Anyon's house.

Dr. Charles F. Hall and Mrs. M. A. Flarriman were found to be complicit in concealing the commission of an abortion. The prosecutor's office concluded that Kitty, provided with the abortion drugs, had attempted an abortion, then used an instrument provided to her to perform a self-induced abortion.

On May 21, she went to a doctor who cared for her until hospitalizing her on January 6. While hospitalized she'd said something that had led to the belief that Dr. Charles Singley had perpetrated an abortion. Singley, when arrested, said that Kitty was trying to blackmail him. His only contact with her had been, he said, when she'd come to his office for treatment for a pelvic abscess. He'd treated her, she'd paid her $2, and left. This had been about a month prior to seeking care from the doctor who had hospitalized her.

Dudgeon married Kitty the day before her death. 

Dudgeon was tried as an accessory to manslaughter in Kitty's death, but in April of 1889 "escaped conviction by a disagreement of the jury, which stood eight to four for conviction of manslaughter in the first degree." He was released on $10,000 bail, which he was able to pay himself in cash. In fact, so prosperous was Dudgeon that he managed to arrange a lavish birthday banquet for himself while he was in jail. However, in July of 1890, the DA of Kings County dismissed the indictment. Kitty's father, James Cody of Oyster Bay, sued Dudgeon for $100,000.

Watch Last-Minute Marriage on YouTube.

Sources:

• "Suspicion Deepens," Brooklyn Citizen, January 17, 1889
• "Dark for Dudgeon," The Brooklyn Citizen, January 19, 1889
• Untitled paragraph, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 19, 1889
• "Taken To Her Home," Brooklyn Daily Times, January 29, 1889
• "Dudgeon is Found Guilty," Brooklyn Daily Times, January 29, 1889
• "She is Lodged in Jail," The Brooklyn Citizen, February 6, 1889
• "Gained her Liberty," The Brooklyn Citizen, February 12, 1889
• "Frank Dudgeon Turns Up," The Evening World, March 1, 1889
• "Will He Skip?" The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 19, 1889
• "One Witness Heard," The Brooklyn Citizen, April 2, 1889
• "Story of Her Death," The Brooklyn Citizen, April 3, 1889
• "The Dudgeon Trial," The Standard Union, April 3, 1889
• "The Dudgeon Trial," The Brooklyn Citizen, April 4, 1889
• "Did Mrs. Tracy Write It?" Brooklyn Daily Times, April 4, 1889
• "Tell-Tale Letters," Brooklyn Citizen, April 4, 1889
• "Dudgeon's Chances," The Brooklyn Citizen, April 8, 1889
• "The Dudgeon Trial," The Brooklyn Citizen, April 8, 1889
• "Witnesses for the Defense," The Brooklyn Citizen, April 9, 1889

January 16, 1901: Was the Abortionist a Morphine Addict?

In the early morning hours of January 16, 1901, 20-year-old Jennie Mallard died at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Chicago from an abortion performed several weeks earlier. She had signed a statement about three hours earlier incriminating Dr. Margaret Simmons, who was arrested and held without bail in the death. Simmons would neither confirm nor deny the allegations. She did, however, admit that Jennie looked familiar to her.

Jennie had been ailing for several weeks. Three hours before her death she signed a statement implicating Dr. Simmons in the fatal abortion.

Simmons' profession is listed as nurse or midwife in the Homicide in Chicago database, but she was actually a physician. She originally hailed from Lincoln, Nebraska, where there was news coverage of her arrest. 

"Old residents remember her as a blushing, beautiful girl, and the center of Lincoln's social life. For several years she was teacher in the public schools in this city. Then cards were issued announcing her marriage to Dr. Simmons. This was some twenty years ago," notes the Lincoln Star Journal of January 18, 1901.

The couple had seemed happy for perhaps a dozen years. Then Dr. George Simmons divorced Dr. Margaret Simmons on the grounds of desertion. "At the time of the seperation (sic) it was known generally that Mrs. Simmons was addicted to the use of morphine, although this was never publicly stated, the Star Journal noted. Dr. George remained in Lincoln and Dr. Margaret relocated to Rock Island, where she was associated with a criminal abortion case.

Dr. Simmon's elderly mother was reportedly reduced to a moribund state over the deterioration of her daughter's life. 

Sources:

• "Woman Physician Arrested," The Inter-Ocean, January 17, 1901
• "Mrs. Dr. Simmons, Formerly of Lincoln, Held at Chicago on Charge of Murder," Lincoln (NE) Evening News, January 18, 1901
• "Mere Mention," Nebraska State Journal, January 19, 1901
• "Once a Lincoln Social Leader," David City (NE) Daily News, January 23, 1901

January 15, 1989: Immigrant Dies Abandoned by Abortion Doc at Fake Clinic

Seeking a Better Life

In April of 1988, Eurice Agbagaa, age 26, flew from her home in Ghana to Dallas to look for work. She had been working with her widowed mother selling fabric in a street market, but she wanted more from life. She wanted to earn money to send home to her family, especially her five-year-old daughter. Eurice hoped to study nursing so that she could get a good job and bring the child to join her in the United States.

Eurice stayed in Dallas for several weeks but wasn't finding employment, so the friend with whom she was staying suggested that she try her luck in New York, where there was a growing Ghanaian community. She moved in with a woman I'll refer to as Ms. X, because her name is never given in news coverage. Ms. X had come to the United States from Ghana five years earlier and was eager to help her friend get settled. Eurice found a job working illegally as a housekeeper in Paterson, New Jersey, where she earned $170 a week, which is around $432 in 2025 dollars. Eurice lived in the home in Patterson during the week then stayed with Ms. X on weekends to be part of a community of others from her native land.

Eurice sent money home, where it made a big difference to her family. In December of 1988, Eurice was able to purchase five dresses to send home to her daughter -- the first Christmas gifts the child had ever received. 

In addition to Ms. X, Eurice had another local friend, Eddie Agboh, who had come from the same town in Ghana and was working in the US as a travel agent. He was one of the elders in the close-knit Ghanaian community. Eddie's brother, Kenneth Agboh, also spoke with Eurice by phone sometimes while she was in New Jersey. 

But an affair with a married Ghanaian man, never identified in news coverage, started Eurice down a tragic road.

Fake Clinic, Unqualified Staff

Eurice had been in the United States only nine months when she went to Y.P. Woman's & Medical Association in the Bronx, NY at  11:30 a.m. on January 7, 1989. Though the facility looked like a clinic, it was run by non-physicians who hired a nurse, scheduled appointments, and rented space to doctors who would independently use the space to see patients. It was, in short, a fake clinic. Eurice had found it with help from her friend, Ms. X.

Abram Zelikman  estimated the pregnancy as 11 to 12 weeks. He performed the abortion at about 1pm, then sent Eurice to the recovery room under the care of receptionist Yolanda Penalzer, who had administered the general anesthesia for Eurice's abortion. 

Ms. X sat by her. "She was turning and tossing," Eurice's friend told Newsday. "She couldn't really talk. Then the sheets came off her and I saw blood pouring out of her."

Over the next 2 1/2 hours, Eurice bled so heavily that Penalzer became alarmed and asked Zelikman to do something. Zelikman told her that the bleeding was normal and that she should put an ice bag on the patient. He then left the facility for his home a few miles away, leaving Penalzer to care for the patients in recovery.

Penalzer continued to be concerned about Eurice's bleeding, and tried repeatedly to reach Zelikman at his home, but couldn't contact him. Finally, at 4:02 pm, she called an ambulance, telling the 911 operator, "I have a woman who is bleeding and unconscious and in shock." 

While awaiting EMS, staff at the fake clinic scrambled to hide Eurice's file.

Her Final Days

Size difference between an 11-week fetus
and a 19-week fetus

The ambulance crew found Penalzer performing CPR on Eurice, who was in shock. They were able to restore her breathing and transport her to Long Island College Hospital, where an emergency hysterectomy was done. It was determined that Eurice had actually been at least 19 weeks pregnant. Eurice had a perforated uterus and severed abdominal artery. She had lost approximately 75% of her blood.

Eurice survived the surgery but remained comatose and was put on life support.

Word spread in the Ghanaian community, and Eddie Agboh went to the hospital to check on his friend about a week after the abortion. "She didn't resemble the person I knew before," he told Newsweek. "Her face was swollen, her eyes were protruding. It was very pathetic. I came home and called friends and told them she was in a complete mess, that she wouldn't last long."

In the early morning of January 15, Eddie Agboh got a call from the hospital. His friend was dead. Her cause of death was multiple organ failure.

Closing the Book on Eurice

While her body lay at the Ortiz Funeral Home in Brooklyn, Eddie Agboh and others raised money to send her body home for burial. They were able to gather more than $10,000 for Agboh to take Eurice's body back to Accra. The funeral there was a sideshow, with people pouring in to be part of the scenario. "Somebody's child having traveled overseas and the body having been brought back under serous circumstances. Everybody had an inquisitiveness in the whole affair. The mysteries surrounding the whole thing became a little bit inviting. The hall was jammed."

Ms. X was haunted by the experience, unable to sleep, brought back again and again to the moment that a nurse pulled Eurice's blood-drenched shirt off her body and handed it to her friend. Stunned and confused, Mrs. X dropped the bloody shirt in the trash. 

She had nothing good to say about staff at the fake clinic. "I felt if I hadn't been there, they would have wrapped her body and thrown it in the garbage."

Zelikman, a 54-year old Soviet immigrant who received his medical training in Leningrad, had been in the United States since 1979. He was faulted by the medical board for allowing non-medical staff to practice medicine, abandoning patients other than Eurice, failing to keep medical records, and failing to take adequate medical histories or perform appropriate blood tests for his abortion patients. His license was suspended. The medical board noted that he had allowed an unlicensed assistant to administer general anesthesia in his clinic on four occasions. The Brooklyn District Attorney investigated the death, but no charges were ever filed.

Watch Abandoned in a Fake Clinic on YouTube.

Watch Abandoned in a Fake Clinic on Rumble.

Additional sources: 

• "Probe doc in abort," New York Daily News, January 12, 1989
• "She's dead after abortion," New York Daily News, January 16, 1989
• "D.A.'s office investigating abortion death in Brooklyn," (New Jersey) Star-Ledger, January 17, 1989
• "Abortion Death, Clinic Investigated," Newsday, January 18, 1989
• "Doctor suspended in abortion fatality," New York Daily News, February 4, 1989
• "Doctor suspended in abortion incident," Star-Gazette, February 4, 1989
• "Doc Charged in Abortion Death," Newsday, February 11, 1989
• "Tragic End to Ghanaian's Dream," Newsday, July 9, 1989

January 15, 1915: Mourning Interrupted

On January 15, 1915, 22-year-old Margaret Jennickes died in Chicago. Somebody tipped off the coroner that there was something fishy about Margaret's death. 

"Mourners over the girl's body were surprised by a visit from Coroner's Physician Springer. He performed an autopsy and changed the death report from dilation of the heart" to peritonitis due to an illegal abortion.

The coroner's office concluded that the abortion had been perpetrated by Dr. C.A. Erickson of South Green Street. Erickson was charged with murder. A man named Joseph Martin of Bishop Street was also held for manslaughter. 

Though Dr. Erickson was indicted on February 1, the case never went to trial because the men were exonerated by a Grand Jury. No other suspect in Margaret's death is mentioned in my sources. I've been unable to determine why Erickson was a suspect. According to the Cook County Deaths Index, Margaret was a telephone operator born in Chicago to German immigrant parents.

Watch Mourning Interrupted on YouTube.

Sources:

• "Doctor Held on Illegal Operation Charge," The Day Book, January 16, 1915
• "Two Held in Girl's Death," The Day Book, January 21, 1915
• "Doctor Held for Death," Chicago Tribune, January 21, 1915

January 15, 1907: A Repeat Offender in Chicago

On January 15, 1907, 24-year-old housekeeper Sarah M. Cushing died in Wesley Hospital in Chicago, from septicemia caused by a criminal abortion perpetrated on December 29 at the home of a midwife or "lady doctress" named Gertrude Plenz. From coverage of matters, it's pretty clear that Plenz was a doctor, identified as a "midwife" in some instances because at that time and place, female obstetricians were often identified as midwives.

Plenz was arrested on January 24, and held by the coroner's jury. Mrs. Plenz had already been implicated in the abortion death of Margaret McCarthy in 1904. Plenz and her sister, Sophie Mann, were both indicted in the 1937 abortion death of Mary Kissell. 

Not that any of this slowed Dr. Plenz down. The November 30, 1939 Bridgeport (IL) News notes that Plenz was thrown a high-society surprise birthday party on November 21. 

Watch Mourning Interrupted on YouTube.

January 14, 2004: Young Black Woman Dies from Chemical Abortion

Chanelle Bryant in 1998
Blair High School, Pasadena, CA 

Twenty-two-year-old Chanelle Bryant was about nine weeks pregnant when she want to Glendale FPA, owned by the notorious Edward "Fast Eddie" Allred. There she was given the drugs for a chemical abortion. She was instructed to use the prostaglandin as a suppository, rather than take an oral prostaglandin. This off-label use is being investigated by the CDC and FDA after Chanelle and four other US women died of chemical abortion complications. Those other women were Oriane Shevin, Holly Patterson, Vivian Tran, and Brenda Vise. Since then other women including Amber Thurmond and Alyona Dixon.

Chanelle suffered terrible pain four days after self-administering the medication. She sought emergency care at Huntington Memorial Hospital. Her condition deteriorated, and she was transferred to the intensive care unit at 1:20 PM. At 4:11 she went into cardiac arrest. She was taken into surgery at 5:27 to try to identify the source of her problems. Ten minutes into surgery she went into cardiac arrest again. She was pronounced dead at 5:51.

Chanelle had been perfectly healthy before her abortion, according to her mother, Lynn Bryant. She told reporters that it was vital for medical professionals to be educated about the dangers of chemical abortions to prevent further maternal deaths.

The coroner‘s report attributed her death, January 14, 2004, to "sepsis and pneumonia due to endomyometritis with abscess formation due to Termination of Pregnancy." Her manner of death was listed as undetermined.

Thus Chanelle joined the sad ranks of women known to have died after FPA abortions: Denise Holmes, Mary Pena, Patricia Chacon, Josefina Garcia, Laniece Dorsey, Tami Suematsu, Joyce Ortenzio, Susan Levy, Deanna Bell, Christine Mora, TaTanisha Wesson, Maria Leho, Kimberly Neil, Nakia Jorden, Maria Rodriguez, and "Kyla Ellis"

FPA is a member of the National Abortion Federation, an organization that ostensibly ensures that abortions are done safely.

January 14, 1986: Antiquated Abortion Method Kills Detroit Teen

Christella Marie Forte, age 16, was a student at Coley High School in Detroit in January of 1986. She was also about 23 weeks pregnant. She was admitted to New Centre Hospital, where Dr. Raul Rivera injected a concentrated sterile salt solution into her uterus to kill the baby. But Rivera messed up and the solution got into Christella's bloodstream. She screamed, convulsed, and went into cardiac arrest 27 hours after instillation of saline for an abortion. She died on January 14, 1986, without ever expelling her baby.

Strangely, her death certificate lists her manner of death as "natural," rather than "accidental."

A medical journal article that appears to be about Cristella's death says that she was an obese Black girl experiencing her first pregnancy. The article gives the gestational age as 21.5 weeks. Nothing seemed to have gone wrong with the injection, until 26 hours afterward when she "complained of severe abdominal cramps with projectile expulsion of amniotic fluid. Generalized convulsions and shaking followed and the patient went into shock. Death occurred within 2 hours."

"At autopsy, microscopic examination of lungs revealed pulmonary edema with marked vascular congestion..... Positive test results ... confirmed a diagnosis of amniotic fluid embolism. There was marked congestion of the blood vessels of the kidneys, liver, brain, and spleen."

What is particularly disgusting about Christella's death is how utterly needless it was: saline abortions had been discredited as far too dangerous for over a decade. The documents surrounding her death do not explain why her abortionist chose an outdated, high-risk procedure for his young patient.

Watch Antiquated Abortion Technique Kills Teen on YouTube.

Watch Antiquated Abortion Technique Kills Teen on Rumble.

Source: Wayne County Circuit Court Case No. 86 – 621838

January 14, 1928: Five Vermont Children Left Motherless

 On Christmas Day of 1927, 27-year-old Anna E. DeLong attempted a self-induced abortion. Shortly thereafter, she was taken to Porter Hospital in Middlebury, Vermont. She languished there before dying of septicemia on January 14, 1928.

Her husband, Basil, was left to raise their five small children, four sons and a daughter. The two had married on December 21 of 1916, when Anna was only 17 years old.

She was the daughter of Addie LaPorte Turrill and her late husband, Nathan.

Bizarrely, the notices of her death and funeral are noted amongst club notes and similar items in the paper.

Watch Self-Induced in Vermont on YouTube.

Sources: 

• Vermont death record
• "D.A.R. Meeting," New Haven (VT) News, January 19, 1928
• "The Death of Mrs. DeLong," Middlebury (VT) Register, January 20, 1928
• "Clover Club," Brandon (VT) Union, January 26, 1928

January 13, 2005: "Medically Necessary" Abortion Kills Disabled Teen

Christin Alysabeth Gilbert, a 19-year-old woman with Down syndrome, was brought from Texas to George Tiller's Wichita abortion facility for a 28-week abortion. Christin was legally incompetent, unable to give her consent. Information about how this beautiful young woman met her tragic end was gathered by Operation Rescue.

Christin had been raised by her family in a small Texas town, according to Operation Rescue West. She was mainstreamed into her local high school, where she served as a bat girl for the softball team. She graduated in 2004.

An abortion at 28 weeks is a multi-stage procedure. Patients would come to the facility for various steps but spend the bulk of their time at a nearby motel with whatever companions they had brought along with them. Christin was accompanied by her parents, Paula and Jack, who brought her back and forth to Tiller's facility in the family minivan.

On January 10, 2005, Christin's family brought her to Tiller's clinic. Step one was a meeting with Dr. Ann Kristin Neuhaus.

Kansas law stated that no abortion past 22 weeks could be performed unless there was "a documented referral from another physician not legally or financially affiliated with the physician performing or inducing the abortion and both physicians determine that: (1) The abortion is necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant woman; or (2) a continuation of the pregnancy will cause a substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman." 

Christin's family was referred to Tiller's clinic by a Texas Planned Parenthood, not by Neuhaus, who had an arrangement with Tiller to meet with his patients and "refer" them. These meetings took place on Tiller's premises as part of patient processing. As was customary, Christin's parents paid Neuhaus by a separate check to "refer" their healthy daughter, 28 weeks into an uncomplicated pregnancy, for a supposedly medically indicated abortion.

Kansas law had a 24-hour waiting period between pre-abortion "counseling" and the initiation of the abortion. However, the same day Kristin was pro-forma referred, Dr. Leroy Carhart injected digoxin into Christin's uterus to cause fetal death. This drug is usually administered into the fetal heart, but sometimes is injected into the brain or just into the amniotic fluid in hopes that the fetus would swallow enough of the drug to cause death. Since this was a 28-week abortion, the normal procedure would also have been to insert laminaria, sterile dehydrated seaweed sticks that absorb fluid and expand, dilating the cervix. Christin's family then took her to the nearby La Quinta Hotel, which served as an overnight annex to Tiller's late-term abortion facility.

Christin's parents brought her back to the facility the following day. Typically, on the second day of a late abortion, an ultrasound is preformed to determine if the fetus is dead, and if necessary to perform a second digoxin injection. The laminaria are then swapped out to provide further dilation. However, Christin expelled her dead baby in the family minivan on the way to the clinic. Somebody performed a D&C to complete the abortion, and a "tear in the uterus" was sutured, though it's unclear if the tear was caused by intense contractions or instruments used to do the D&C. Christin and her family were sent back to the La Quinta.

Christin's family brought her back to Tiller's facility on January 12, where she was given IV fluids because she appeared to be dehydrated. The family went to a restaurant for dinner, but Christin had no appetite and was unable to eat.

Some time between midnight and 4 am on January 13, Christin was cramping, bleeding, vomiting, and suffering fainting spells. The family called Tiller employee Cathy Reavis, the "head nurse" who is not actually a nurse. She was the on-call person staying at the La Quinta to provide patient care. Under this "nursing" care, Christin was given a warm bath and put back to bed. Reavis tried to call Carhart, who was also supposed to be at the hotel, but she was unable to reach him. She did not seek further medical consultation for Christin but instead returned to her own room and went back to sleep.

The next morning, January 13, Christin's family tried to wake her and get her ready to return to the clinic, but she was unresponsive. Instead of calling 911, they used a luggage rack to get their bleeding, unconscious daughter from the hotel room to the minivan to take her to the clinic. 

Christin reportedly regained enough consciousness to walk "with assistance" into the clinic, but once there she went into cardio-respiratory arrest. There are no clinic notes describing what care she was provided with during the 45 minutes between when Christin's heart stopped beating and when Tiller employee Marguerite Reed called 911. (You can listen to the call here.)

From the ambulance dispatch sheet, obtained by Operation Rescue West:

• CP VERY EVASIVE; PUT ON HOLD
• CP REFUSED TO GIVE ANY INFORMATION, JUST SAYING NEED EMS
• The caller is with the patient. She does not have chest pain. She is completely awake (alert). She has not fainted. She has pain above the belly button (navel).

Remember, these quotes are from the dispatch sheet. It was the caller, Marguerite Reed, who reported that Christin had no chest pain, abdominal pain above the navel, that Christin was alert and had not fainted. The investigation revealed that Christin was in fact in cardiac arrest when the call was made. LeRoy Carhart was performing CPR on a clinically dead patient, and the EMS services are being misled, told that she's alert.

Giving false information about a patient's condition to 911 can jeopardize the patient's life, because it can lead to inadequate help being sent. In a life-threatening situation, the patient needs the care of a medic. If the caller leads 911 staff to believe that the call is a routine transfer, only EMTs may be sent, meaning that there will be nobody on the ambulance crew qualified to perform intubations or to use a defibrillator.

Where was George Tiller while all this was happening? He was performing an abortion on another patient. He did look into the room to see what was happening, and told Christin's parents, who were in a separate room, so say that their daughter was being provided with care. 

When paramedics arrived at the clinic, they found Christin lying in "huge amounts" of "coffee grounds" blood and fluid, "Way more than you would normally see." A man was on top of Christin, trying to physically force fluids from her stomach. Assuming that the man was a nurse who didn't know what he was doing, they ordered the man to get away from the patient. The man, who turned out to be Leroy Carhart, at first refused but was sternly directed away from Christin so that people who knew what they were doing could attend to the young woman.

Medics transported Christin to Wesley Medical Center. They had been briefly able to get her heart to resume beating, but she was not maintaining a functional pulse. She arrived bleeding from the mouth, vagina, eyes, and nose. When told of her condition, her parents asked about organ donation. They opted for comfort care rather than aggressive resuscitation, and she was pronounced dead at 4:14 pm. Because of the damage done to her organs during her ordeal, only Christin's eyes were suitable for donation.

The medical examiner concluded that Christin "died as a result of complications of a therapeutic abortion. The most likely mechanism of death is sepsis...."

The Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, launched an investigation into the circumstances in Texas leading to the fatal trip to Wichita, and subpoenaed Tiller as a "material witness". No Texas criminal charges were pending against Tiller. Wesley Medical Center was also subpoenaed. Christin's medical records were being requested for a Grand Jury investigation into possible felony sexual assault.

The court order, signed by Elizabeth Berry, Presiding Judge of the Criminal District Court #3 of Tarrant County, Texas, requested the following records from Wesley Medical Center:

Any and all records and/or documents pertaining to [Christin], W/F, DOB 5/30/85, who was pronounced dead at Wesley Medical Center on January 13, 2005, including but not limited to medical and patient billing records, and the name of the physician who treated [Christin] and/or pronounced her dead.

Tiller's attorney, Daniel Monat, issued a statement that Tiller "received a routine subpoena from the state of Texas for the examination of medical records and items related to an investigation in Texas which is not directed at [Tiller]."

On February 2, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius sent a memo to Larry Buening, Executive Director of the Kansas Board of Healing Arts (BOHA) asking the board to investigate Christin's death.

Tiller is a member of the National Abortion Federation. Tiller allegedly justified performing an abortion on Christin on the grounds that it was necessary to preserve her health or life. I find this claim to be highly dubious. Had the pregnancy posed a threat to Christin's life or health, it could have been terminated within an hour by performing an emergency c-section in any properly-equipped obstetric ward. How it was supposed to preserve Christin's life or health to instead drive her past any number of hospitals into another state, and to perform a three-day procedure with the patient spending the bulk of her time in a motel room under the supervision of only her parents is a mystery.



Operation Rescue West has confirmed that Tiller has an arrangement with erstwhile abortionist Kristin Neuhaus, who is no longer permitted to perpetrate abortion in Kansas due to gross irregularities in her practice. Tiller provides a space in his facility for Neuhaus to meet with the patients, who pay her with a separate check. Neuhaus then rubber-stamps their "need" for an abortion.

A Grand Jury convened in Texas to investigate the sexual assault that had resulted in Christin's pregnancy, but no charges were ever filed.

Christin's was not the only tragic death caused by doctors who recommended (or excused) abortion as a life-saving or health-preserving option for the mother:

• Allegra Roseberry was pushed into an abortion in order to obtain experimental cancer treatment.
• Anjelica Duarte sought an abortion on the advice of her physician, and ended up dying under the care of a quack.
• Barbara Hoppert died after an abortion recommended due to a congenital heart problem.
• Erika Peterson died in 1961 when her doctors obtained her husband's permission to perform a "therapeutic" abortion.
• "Molly" Roe died in 1975 when her doctors made the dubious decision to perform a saline abortion to improve her chances of surviving a lupus crisis.

Watch No Justice For Christin on YouTube.

Watch A Hotel is Not a Hospital on Rumble.

Sources:

• Christin A. Gilbert autopsy