Tuesday, March 31, 2026

March 31, 1930: Two Nearly-Simultaneous Abortion Deaths Linked to Dr. Thomas Eade

SUMMARY: During an inquest into the March 31, 1930 death of Gladys Louise Anderson, word came that 24-year-old Cleo Hinton had also died from a botched abortion. Both deaths were attributed to the work of Dr. Thomas M. Eade. 

Yearbook photo of a smiling young white woman with bobbed hair, wearing a print dress
Gladys Anderson
Gladys Louise Anderson was an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Illinois. She was studying liberal arts and sciences and was a member of the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority as well as Alpha Lambda Delta, a women's honorary freshman scholastic society.

Gladys had been seeing R. C. Catheart for about two years, and the couple had become engaged in the late fall of 1929. Over the weekend of March 8 and 9 of 1930, Gladys traveled to Chicago to tell R. C. that she was pregnant. The couple discussed the situation and decided that they were still too young to marry. They agreed that Gladys should abort the baby.

R. C. said that he had heard of Dr. Thomas M. Eade in Champaign, Illinois, and recommended that Gladys go to him.

Gladys wrote to R. C. to tell him that she underwent the abortion on Monday, March 24 and returned to classes and her sorority house after spending the night at Eade's practice. Her letters to R. C. stopped, so he went to Campaign on Thursday to check on his betrothed.

Dr. Thomas Eade
By Friday night, March 28, Gladys was seriously ill. Somehow word reached Dr. Eade that his patient was ill, and he sent his secretary, Ruth Brown, to the sorority house with medication. Gladys's condition continued to deteriorate. The sorority house mother called Dr. J. R. Powell to check on her at 3:30 on Saturday morning, March 29, and found her to be so ill that he admitted her to Mercy Hospital in Urbana. Somebody contacted her mother, Mrs. LeRoy Anderson, who hurried to her side.

Gladys's condition continued to deteriorate, so at 7:00 on Saturday evening Dr. J. M. Christle came in as a consultant. 

In spite of the best efforts of the doctors, Gladys died of peritonitis at 3:00 on the morning of Monday, March 31, with her mother at her side. An autopsy confirmed that she had died from peritonitis due to an abortion. 

Cleo Hinton
Just an hour before the start of the inquest on the evening that Gladys died, word came to the coroner that 23-year-old stenographer Cleo Hinton had also died at Mercy Hospital on March 31 after giving a statement that Eade had perpetrated an abortion on her. 

Unlike Gladys, Cleo indicated in her deathbed statement that her baby's father had not been involved in the abortion. However, the man in question, J. F. Campbell, testified to the contrary. "I have known Miss Hinton possibly five years, and since November 29 I have been in her company many times, although we did not go together steady, nor were we engaged. Six weeks ago she came to me and told me of her trouble and stated that it was necessary for her to do some thing at once. She told me she was going to see Dr. T. M. Eade and that she would let me know how much it would cost."

"Later, possibly two days later, she called me and told me that the doctor had consented to perform the operation for $40. For several days she took treatments and pills, but two weeks ago she told me at her home ... that the treatments were not benefiting her as they should and that she was to go and stay two days at the doctor's office."

The abortion had been perpetrated at Eade's office on Saturday, March 22, two days prior to Glady's abortion. Cleo remained, ailing, at Eade's practice while J. F. visited her regularly.

Cleo's sister, LaVonne Hinton, indicated that Cleo had said she was going to St. Louis and would return on Monday the 24th. When she didn't return as expected, LaVonne said, "I started an investigation and on Tuesday, March 25, I found her at Dr. Eade's office in bed and very very sick."

"I saw that her condition was bad," LaVonne said, "and ordered her removed to a hospital, but Dr. Eade refused. Later in the day I called him by telephone to tell him I was sending up two doctors to see my sister. Eade said he would not let them in and it was at this time that I went to the state's attorney."

Sheriff Shouf went to Eade's office on March 25 as part of the investigation into Gladys's abortion. Eade told the sheriff that Cleo was ill from intestinal influenza. The sheriff had her transferred to Mercy Hospital, where she died on March 31 at 7:15 pm.

Eade was arrested later that day. However, before police had a chance to seize his records, his secretary reported finding the office ransacked and the records stolen. 

Eade had previously been implicated in two other abortions, one in which the patient died an another in which the patient "went insane." 

Watch 1 Day, 2 Dead on YouTube.
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Monday, March 30, 2026

March 30, 1988: Habitual Quack Lets Teen Choke During Abortion

Eighteen-year-old Erna Mae Fisher was fearful and nervous when she went to 39-year-old Dr. Dennis W. Miller for an abortion at his practice in Kansas City, KS on March 30, 1988. Miller asked Erna's mother, Ocie, to come into the room and hold her hand to calm her.

Grok AI illustration
According to Ocie, Miller gave Erna an anesthetic injection, then started a suction machine. Erna jerked upright and went rigid. She then coughed, vomited, choked, went into spasms, and collapsed, apparently lifeless.

An assistant ran for smelling salts while Miller continued with the abortion for ten minutes. Erna's color deteriorated and her pulse faded, then stopped. He then delayed another 10 minutes before calling an ambulance. 

When EMS arrived less than two minutes later, they found Erna's airway still full of vomit. Miller was making no attempt at resuscitation, but was holding Erna in his arms. He justified failing to check her airway or provide her with oxygen by saying, "Since I didn't realize what was going on, I didn't think it would have made any difference."

The young Black mother of an 11-month old daughter was beyond saving. She was declared dead on arrival at Bethany Medical Center.

Miller later admitted that he hadn't asked when Erna had last eaten before giving her pain medications that he knew could cause vomiting. He settled out-of-court with Erna's family for $475,000.

Even after Erna's death, Adele Hughey, director of Comprehensive Health for Women in Overland Park, KS, said that Miller had been performing abortions there since the early 1980s. "We have a lot of confidence in him. He knows how to provide excellent abortion services and is very good." 

Miller had failed the Missouri state medical exam three times before finally giving up. It took nine tries for him to pass the exam to be licensed in Kansas.

Miller had already settled six malpractice cases in the Kansas City area for a total of nearly $2 million. Another suit, settled for $2.2 million, involved botched obstetric care that caused a little boy to be born prematurely and suffer intellectual and physical disabilities as a result. 

Dennis W. Miller

Miller was able to keep his medical license and continued to practice, botching a delivery in 2006 which resulted in the death of the baby.  Once again he did not lose his license, but was only censured and fined. He was later censured for botching a C-section in 2009, nearly killing the mother; botching the care of a diabetic obstetric patient so badly in 2011 that she nearly died and her baby was injured during delivery; and botching a tumor removal so badly in 2012 that the woman died. This time they finally permanently suspended his license.

Watch Cuddles Can't Clear Dying Teen's Airway on YouTube.
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Sunday, March 29, 2026

March 29, 1943: No Word on Investigation

On March 29, 1943, 32-year-old Katherine Murz Behl died at Westchester Square Hospital in the Bronx, New York. Her death was due to generalized peritonitis after her uterus and sigmoid colon were perforated during a criminal abortion.

According to 1940 census records, Catherine, a New York native, worked as a statistical clerk. Her husband, William was an elevator operator. The couple had a daughter who was 10 years old at the time of the census. 

I've not been able to find any evidence that there was a serious investigation of Katherine's death.

Watch Mystery Abortion in the Bronx on YouTube.
Watch Mystery Abortion in the Bronx on Rumble.

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Saturday, March 28, 2026

March 28, 1929: Another Chicago Doctor Implicated

Grok AI illustration
Mrs. Anna Reba Calvin of 8005 Eberhart Avenue, Chicago, died at the age of 30 on March 28, 1929. 

Anna left behind two sons and a daughter.

Dr. Emmett Casey of 459 West 79th Street, was arraigned on a charge of perpetrating an abortion, resulting in her death. 

Sources: 

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March 28, 1942: Teen Blames Fatal Abortion on Popular Doctor

SUMMARY: On March 28, 1942, 19-year-old Cleo Florence Moore died at New Rochelle Hospital in New York from peritonitis from an illegal abortion she said had been perpetrated by Dr. Frank F. Marino.

Who Was Cleo Moore?

Cleo Florence Moore was the only daughter of Floyd and Margaret Moore, whose four other children were all sons. The family operated a thriving, prosperous onion farm in Middleville, Michigan. 

Farming wasn't the life that Cleo wanted, though. She left the family farm and moved to New Rochelle, New York in July of 1941. 

Cleo moved into a rooming house at 15 Church Street in New Rochelle. There she met another young woman, a waitress named Mrs. Alice Olga Petersen, in early 1942. The two became friends, and  Cleo suggested that they share a room and split expenses, so they moved to a one-room apartment at 208 Center Avenue. 

Cleo worked as a telephone jukebox operator -- an obsolete job that I had to look up.

Cleo and other women would work from a central location. Patrons at restaurants and diners could chose from a selection of songs listed on a tabletop jukebox, put a coin in the slot, and talk to the operator by a telephone linkup inside the machine. The patron would select the song by number and the operator would put the record on a turntable hooked to speakers in the jukebox. This enabled a larger musical selection than playing the music from an on-site turntable. 

What Happened to Cleo?

Cleo's roommate, Alice, told authorities that Cleo had met a man through her work, and discovered that she was pregnant in January. On March 5, Alice said, Cleo visited 42-year-old Dr. Frank F. Marino  at his office on 208 Center Avenue to arrange an abortion. The specific choice of Dr. Marino was described in the news as "arbitrary."

On March 9, Alice said, Cleo left the apartment at 2pm, and asked Alice to meet her at around 4pm at Marino's office to help her get home after the abortion. Cleo arrived about 5 minutes early and saw Cleo leaving in a taxi. Alice waved the cab down. She testified that Cleo was very pale and looked "terrible." They rode home together and Cleo, already feeling unwell, went to bed. Cleo got up briefly at around 7:30 to get something to eat and then went back to bed. Alice attributed the sleepiness to the effects of the morphine administered for the abortion.

By March 11, Cleo was so ill that Alice summoned Marino. He examined Cleo then sent her to the hospital. "When you get there," Alice said Marino warned Cleo, "don't tell them who did the job." Alice also said that Dr. Marino's wife told her to protect her husband, lest "you and Miss Moore...go to prison."

Somehow the abortion was reported to the authorities. At first Cleo told them that she had taken some pills to induce the abortion, but later she changed her story and said that Merino had performed the fatal abortion.

Cleo languished in the hospital until her death at 1:45 on the morning of March 28. An autopsy showed that she had died from peritonitis caused by an abortion.

Merino's Side of the Story

Between his indictment and the start of the trial, Marino became a captain in the Army Medical Corps. He was stationed in Atlantic City but was placed on inactive leave to attend the trial. Originally he denied ever having seen Cleo before admitting her to the hospital.

He later testified that he had examined Cleo on March 5, confirmed the pregnancy, and charged her $2 for the consultation. He testified that Cleo had indeed requested an abortion but he had refused, recommending that she marry the baby's father. Merino said that Cleo said she couldn't do that because the baby's father was already married. Cleo, he said, had told him that she would find somebody else to do the abortion before she left his office. Merino admitted that he'd lied earlier about having seen Cleo before March 11, but had done so because "I didn't want to get mixed up in this mess."

Merino said that he didn't hear from Cleo again until the 11th, when he was summoned to her home and sent her to the hospital without reporting the abortion. 

Neither of these consultations was documented in Merino's records.

He produced alibi witnesses who said that from 1pm to 3 pm on the day of the abortion he had been treating patients in his office and was doing house calls from 3pm to 4 pm.

Marino's defense also asserted that Cleo's abortion was so badly botched that it was clearly "the work of a bungling amateur." This was a common defense among abortionists, but considering the catastrophic injuries I've seen documented in safe and legal abortion deaths, doctors are just as capable of mangling their patients as non-physicians.

A doctor testifying for the prosecution admitted on cross-examination that it would have been possible for Cleo to have done the abortion herself. 

Marino, who had been a member of the County Board of Supervisors, the New Rochelle Board of Education, and the New Rochelle Zoning Board of Appeals, was also a golfing buddy of the prosecutor of the case. It should come as no surprise, then, that Marino was acquitted.

Cleo's abortion was typical of pre-legalization abortions in that it was performed by a physician.


During the 1940s, while abortion was still illegal, there was a massive drop in maternal mortality from abortion. The death toll fell from 1,407 in 1940, to 744 in 1945, to 263 in 1950. Most researches attribute this plunge to the development of blood transfusion techniques and the introduction of antibiotics. Learn more here.

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

Watch Alas, No Legalization Fairy on YouTube.

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Friday, March 27, 2026

March 27, 1929: Death of an Abortion-Rights Poster Child

Clara Bell Duvall

According to the National Organization for Women web site, Clara Bell Duvall was a 32-year-old married mother of five, aged 6 months to 12 years. She and her family were living with her parents in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania due to financial problems. NOW says that Clara attempted a self-induced abortion with a knitting needle. Though she was seriously ill and severe pain, NOW says, Clara's doctor delayed hospitalizing her for several weeks. Her death, at a Catholic hospital on March 27, 1929, was attributed to pneumonia.

I'd welcome any verifying information on Mrs. Duvall's death. After all, NOW also claims that Becky Bell died from complications of an illegal abortion, when in fact she died of pneumonia concurrent with a miscarriage. (There was no evidence that Becky's pregnancy had been tampered with in any way.) But if people who think abortion is a good idea want to blame Clara's death on abortion, I'll let them claim her as somebody their ideology killed.

Clara Duvall seems to be the woman described in the chapter, "Marilyn," in The Worst of Times by Patricia G. Miller. Marilyn was Clara's daughter. There are differences in Marilyn's story and in the story NOW relates, but I was able to find enough information matching "Claudia" with the real Clara Bell Duval to conclude that they are the same woman.


"Claudia"

Marilyn gives her mother's name as Claudia, and her age as 34. The difference in ages may be attributed to people taking the years of the woman's birth and death and calculating her age without taking the months into account. Marilyn also said that her mother sang with the Pittsburgh light opera company, so it is possible that Marilyn might be using a false name for her mother to preserve the family's privacy.

Clara/Claudia's association with the opera company may also explain the elegant portrait on NOW's site -- a portrait that a poverty-stricken and desperate woman would have been unlikely to afford.

The following facts match:
  • Five children, from an infant to a 12-year-old
  • Living in Pittsburgh
  • Died in March of 1929
  • Death originally attributed to pneumonia
  • The woman used a knitting needle
  • Was at home for several days before being hospitalized
  • Died in a hospital
  • Cared for until her death by her usual doctor who seemed at a loss as to how to care for his moribund patient
Marilyn said that her brother Gerald was the oldest, twelve years old. Eileen was ten. Rose was eight, Marilyn was six, and Constance was 18 months. Marilyn describes poignantly the difference between her life before her mother's death and her life after losing her mother. The loss was truly shattering for the entire family.

Marilyn said that her mother had gotten help from a friend for a successful abortion between the births of Marilyn and Constance. Marilyn didn't have any details of the first abortion, and got what she knew about the fatal abortion from her sister Eileen, who had spoken at length with their mother when she was hospitalized -- though it seems odd that a dying woman would be explaining to a 10-year-old girl how she performed a knitting-needle abortion on herself.

Differences in the Stories

NOW's story differs from Marilyn's in many aspects, however. Aside from the different age and name, the following aspects do not match:
  • NOW has the family living with the woman's parents; Marilyn said that they were living in a large house owned by her mother's parents.
  • NOW indicates that the family were too poor to afford a home of their own. Marilyn said that they lived in a large house, and that her father was an editor of one of Pittsburgh's daily newspapers, and that he did freelance public relations for sports events. Marilyn also said that one of her mother's friends was the wife of a well-known Pittsburgh industrialist. This is not a likely friendship for a destitute woman forced to move her family of seven into her parents' home. Marilyn also said that her mother was laid to rest in a magnificent mahogany casket with a satin lining, hardly the sort of burial a poverty-crushed widower could afford for his dead wife. Marilyn also said that the casket lay in the parlor, not a room that poor people were likely to have. In fact, Marilyn describes how shocking it was, after her mother's death, to go live with poor relatives. Poverty was a new experience for the child. In fact, Marilyn describes a riverboat outing the family took before her mother's death. She described how the girls were dressed in matching navy blue coats with red satin linings, and her brother had a jacket and tie.
Reconciling the Stories

Census data from 1920 indicates that Clara Duvall was the wife of Grafton Duvall. Grafton was a newspaper editor. In 1920 the couple had two children, Grafton Jr., age 4, and Elinor Jane, age 20 months. The couple and their children lived at 1616 Westfield Avenue, the same address at Clara's parents, Joseph and Sadie Bell and their two sons, Harry, age 31, and Joseph Jr., age 30. Joseph Sr. was an engineer. Harry was listed as "invalid," meaning incapacitated and unable to work. Joseph Jr. was listed as a fireman on the railroad. 

The Duvall family were still at the 1616 Westfield Avenue address at the time of Clara's death. 

The December 3, 1914 Pittsburgh Post notes: "Miss Bell's Betrothal: An interesting engagement announced yesterday was that of Miss Clara Jane Bell, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph H. Bell, of Aspinwall, to Grafton O. Duvall, son of Dr. and Mrs. Wirt Duvall of Baltimore. Mr. Duvall is a student in the University of Maryland, where he is in the law department."

Grafton and Clara married in 1915 in Aspinwall, Pennsylvania when he was 24 years old and she was 20. Grafton Jr. was born February 28, 1916 in Baltimore; Eleanor Jane was born June 28, 1918 in Baltimore. The couple moved to Pittsburgh in 1926, where their daughter Claire was born on September 10, 1927. The other children, Roxanna Bell and Mildred Linn, were mentioned in Clara's obituary, "Death Claims Church Singer," in the March 28, 1929 Pittsburgh Press. 

The January 9, 1922 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette notes for the night's KDKA radio program that Mrs. Grafton Duvall would sing soprano solos, "Summer Wind," "Mighty Lak a Rose," "My Shadows," and "The World is Waiting." In fact, Clara shows up frequently in the society pages as a soloist at various events in the city.

So there are three possibilities:
  1. Clara Bell Duvall and Claudia are two different women, both with five children, both of whom lived in homes owned by their parents, who both performed knitting-needle abortions in the same city in the same month, and who both died in hospitals and both had their deaths wrongly attributed to pneumonia.
  2. Clara and Claudia are the same woman, and but NOW turned her from a prosperous matron and opera singer into a wretched slum mother in order to make her situation seem more desperate.
  3. The story, third-hand and based on a deathbed conversation between a mother and her 10-year-old daughter, reflects a frightened child's misunderstanding of something her mother was trying to convey.
If what NOW and Marilyn describe is accurate, then Clara/Claudia's abortion was unusual in that it was self-induced, rather than performed by a doctor, as was the case with perhaps 90% of criminal abortions.

Clara's death certificate indicates pneumonia as a contributing factor in Clara's death due to nephritis. 



For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

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Thursday, March 26, 2026

March 26, 1986: Second Dead Patient of New Jersey Abortionist

Up until recently, this was all I knew about the abortion death of 29-year-old Gail Wright: She was 29 years old and 20 weeks pregnant when she underwent a legal abortion. After her abortion, she developed sepsis.  She died of adult respiratory distress syndrome on March 26, 1986, in Maplewood, Essex County, New Jersey, leaving behind a husband.

Dr. E. Wyman Garrett

I've since found a news article that revealed a surprise: the abortionist was E. Wyman Garrett, who two years earlier had sent a 14-year-old patient home to die of a massive infection.

Garrett had performed Gail's abortion at University Hospital in Newark some time shortly before March 21, when he was suspended from privileges at the hospital. He had been suspended for botching four abortions -- the one that killed the teenage girl, one where he left the fetal head in the patient's uterus, and one in which he caused "massive" uterine lacerations, and another whose abortion was performed at 32 weeks, far past the hospital's cut-off for gestational age. 

Those weren't the only cases Garrett was in trouble for. He pleaded "no contest" with the medical board for 31 instances of "gross malpractice," mostly related to abortion cases. (More on his unsavory career is covered here.)

Gail died on March 26 in Overlook Hospital in Summit, New Jersey. It's unclear if she had been transferred there from University Hospital or if she had been discharged from University and then had gone to Overlook later.

Garrett's excuse for botching abortions was "burnout." He had been performing 12 to 14 second-trimester abortions daily at University Hospital. That means roughly one abortion every 30 to 35 minutes, assuming an 8-hour work day with an hour for lunch and no bathroom breaks. When you consider that the procedure itself typically takes 15 to 30 minute according to UCLA Health, That's not allowing much time to speak to the patient or even wash his hands between procedures. 

Garrett was paid $250 to $300 by the hospital for each abortion, so his daily income could range from $3,000 to $4,200 ($8,700 to a little over $12,000 in 2025). 

Watch Slow Action Means Death for Another Patient on YouTube.
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Wednesday, March 25, 2026

March 25, 2000: Yet Another FPA Death

Summary: 22-year-old Maria Rodriguez was one of well over a dozen deaths after abortions at Family Planning Associates Medical Group, the largest chain of for-profit abortion facilities in the world.


Albany Medical Surgical aka FPA Washington Blvd.
At a National Abortion Federation Risk Management Seminar in the 1990s, Michael Burnhill of the Alan Guttmacher Institute scolded Steve Lichtenberg for "playing Russian roulette" with patients' lives by performing risky abortions in an outpatient setting and treating serious complications on site in his procedure room rather than transporting them to a hospital. Evidently Lichtenberg chose not to listen to Burnhill's warning.

On March 25, 2000, 22-year-old Maria Rodriguez went to Lichtenberg's Albany Medical Surgical Center, a National Abortion Federation member clinic in Chicago, for a late second trimester abortion. 

Lichtenberg estimated her pregnancy at 18 weeks and went ahead with the what a later expert consultant called "a seemingly uncomplicated (albeit short) procedure." 

At about 9:00 a.m., Maria was showing signs of shock from hemorrhage. The expert consultant pointed out that Lichtenberg had failed to notice that he had ruptured Maria's uterus. Lichtenburg flushed out her uterus with a dilute solution of Vasopressin, a hormone used sometimes to control bleeding. He also had pressure applied to her uterus. But, the consultant noted," At no time were further attempts made to ascertain the cause of the bleeding or to explain the discrepancy between the marked decrease of hematocrit and the seemingly moderate blood loss."

A slightly rectangular logo, a medium blue square in the background, a forest green cursive F extending off the right and left edges, and a lavender square with "FPA" in all caps in white

Lichtenberg diagnosed DIC, a clotting disorder caused by triggers such as amniotic fluid in the blood stream. He started treating Maria with Fresh Frozen Plasma (FPP) at 9:34. Her hematocrit continued to fall, and she was showing abnormal EKG readings. Her heart was racing and she was continuing to bleed. She wasn't given a transfusion, or transported quickly to a hospital so that a transfusion could be administered there. Lichtenberg also didn't administer any additional medications to help control Maria's bleeding.

At around 10:15 a.m., Maria appeared to have been somewhat stabilized, but "no attempt was made to determine the cause of the bleeding with ultrasound evaluation" or to tie off the bleeding artery. By 10:30, her hematocrit had fallen to 15%, meaning she had less than half the red blood cells needed to carry oxygen to her brain. Finally, an hour and a half after Maria suffered her life-threatening injury, and an hour after Lichtenberg had diagnosed the dangerous clotting disorder, it occurred to somebody to call 911 and have Maria taken to a properly equipped hospital. By the time she arrived there, her hematocrit was 3.5%, less than 10% of what it should have been. Doctors at the hospital tried to save her, to no avail, she died that evening, leaving behind a four-year-old daughter.
Other women to die from abortions at FPA facilities include:
  • Denise Holmes, age 24, 1970 (at facility run by Allred and later absorbed into FPA)
  • Natalie Meyers, age 16, 1972 (at facility run by Allred and later absorbed into FPA)
  • Mary Pena, age 43, 1984
  • Patricia Chacon, age 16, 1984
  • Josefina Garcia, age 37, 1985
  • Laniece Dorsey, age 17, 1986
  • Joyce Ortenzio, age 32, 1988
  • Tami Suematsu, age 19, 1988
  • Susan Levy, age 30, 1992
  • Deanna Bell, age 13, 1992
  • Christine Mora, age 18, 1994
  • Ta Tanisha Wesson, age 24, 1995
  • Nakia Jorden, 1998
  • Maria Leho, 1999
  • Kimberly Neil, age 38, 2000
  • Emmeko Reed, 2002 (damage to uterus caused fatal rupture in subsequent pregnancy)
  • "Imelda Laurence," 2003
  • Chanelle Bryant, age 22, 2004
  • "Kyla Ellis," age 23, 2014

    • Watch Livening Up the Day Costs Woman her Life on YouTube.
    Watch Livening Up the Day Costs Woman her Life on YouTube.
    Sources:
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    March 25, 1962: The Forgotten Victim of a Pro Choice Hero

    How to Be an Abortion-Rights Hero

    Want an interesting exercise? Google "Dr. Henrie abortion". You'll get sites like these:

  • Professors profile Grove doctor who performed 5,000 abortions:
    Dr. W. J. Bryan Henrie
    GROVE, Okla. - In 1953, a strapping 17-year-old broke away from the small-town life he had known to join the U.S. Navy, fulfilling a duty to which he said he felt called.

    More than 50 years later, Hank "Buster" Henrie returned to the town of his youth to learn about a father he wanted to know better. His father, Dr. William Jennings Bryan Henrie, was Grove's only physician for many years. The doctor also operated an underground abortion clinic and performed 5,000 abortions over a 23-year period, according to a claim the doctor himself made at his 1962 trial.

    This past week, Dr. Henrie's son sat down with two professors from Pennsylvania's Gettysburg College, Jennifer Hansen and Kristen Eyssell, who are filming a research documentary about the doctor's life, his practice and the impact he had on Grove.

    "I learned that Dad was loved by the community," said the younger Henrie. "I didn't know the intensity of the love for my father, and I was surprised at the level of protection (against the law) he was given by the community."

    • Missives from the Grove:

    You want to know what the difference between Grove 1956 and Grove 2006 is? In 1956 abortions were illegal, but you could get one from Dr. Henrie and no one thought much of it. .... In 1956 when abortion was illegal, you could count on getting a safe, compassionate one from your local doctor and not necessarily have to pay a dime.

    What a swell guy!


    What About Jolene?

    But they're forgetting someone. There's one name you won't find in these hagiographic articles: Jolene Joyce Griffith. She died on March 25, 1962. According to her widower, Derrell, the kindly Dr. Henrie failed to properly sterilize his instruments, and, even though he knew that Jolene had a potentially life-threatening infection, simply sent her home with no arrangements for aftercare and without warning her family that she was potentially in danger.

    On February 18, Jolene and Joan Jones, who worked at Derrell's supper club, contacted Henrie, who ran some sort of private hospital in Grove, OK, to schedule abortions. Either Henrie or his staff told the women to wait until Henrie was done dealing with an active criminal abortion charge. He beat the charge on February 26.

    Jolene and Joan called again on Saturday, March 3 and were told to come check in for their abortions. By then, Jolene was 4 or 5 months into her pregnancy.

    The following day, Henrie, an osteopath, performed Jolene's abortion at 12:30 pm using his "iodine treatment" method. Joan had her abortion perpetrated at around 1:30  The two women, who had each paid $75 (nearly $800 in 2025*), shared a room as they waited to expel their dead babies. Joan expelled hers after two days. Jolene, however, did not expel her baby but instead developed chills and fever. 

    On Friday, March 9, Henrie tried twice more to dislodge the fetus, telling Jolene and Joan that she was "high and hard to get to." 

    Henrie sent Jolene home to Tulsa on March 11, still suffering from an infection. She was soon admitted to a hospital, where doctors struggled in vain to save her. She died there on March 25, leaving behind her husband and three minor children. She had told police about the abortion before her death. 

    When Police went to arrest Henrie on April 11, he seemed to be expecting them and merely asked if he could get his coat. 

    The Aftermath

    Derrell supported his family by operating Griff's Supper Club in Tulsa.  He won a $35,936 judgement against Henrie on behalf of the orphaned children. Henrie unsuccessfully appealed the judgement. 

    An investigation revealed a widespread abortion practice in which Henrie documented patients by their home towns rather than by name. 

    Henrie pleaded guilty to both Jolene's fatal abortion (first degree manslaughter) and for a non-fatal abortion on another woman. In his first bid for parole, in October of 1963, Henrie told the parole board that he had perpetrated more than 5,000 abortions during the 23 years he was practicing. 

    "Everybody from the ages of 6 to 90 knew what I was doing," he told the board. He said that state official even knew.

    This first bid for parole was rejected, leaving Henrie to end up serving 25 months of a 4-year sentence, after first being given a chance to get his affairs in order. After his release, Henrie went into receivership, saying he had only $123 to his name after selling his practice to pay his legal fees. Perhaps due to his financial situation, he went right back to doing abortions, much to the applause of people who don't even care enough about Jolene Griffith to learn her name. But then, to Henrie she was only "Miss Tulsa 1."

    He told his welcome-back party when he was released from prison that he's proud of his abortion work because, he told the UPI, "Mankind will drown in our own pollution, suffocate, or starve to death." In other words, he was a population-control zealot. 

    He mentioned "a woman" who "died because of an abortion I performed." He blamed her death not on his failures, but on the law, saying, "If I had been allowed the advantage of a hospital for my work the death could have been prevented, but the law barred me from proper facilities." But the law did not bar him from properly sterilizing his instruments, nor did it bar him from admitting his patient once he realized that she had life-threatening complications due to his failure to sterilize his instruments. 

    He pointed out that he had two acquittals for abortion charges prior to the death of "a woman," and had beaten the rap both times. Cleary he had connections that could have protected him if he had prioritized Jolene's life above his legal fees. But he didn't, she died, and he blamed everybody but himself.

    He was implicated in an abortion ring, which brought in an estimated $500,000 a year (Over $4 million in 2025) in November of 1970. He was only accused of suggesting abortions to women and then referring them to an unspecified practitioner, not of actually doing the abortions himself this time.

    When Henrie died in 1972, he was given a hero's sendoff in the obituaries. Jolene's death was mentioned as something that had happened to Henrie and had unfairly tarnished his otherwise exemplary work making sure abortions happened.



    For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion.

    *For comparison, an abortion performed in 2025 at 4 or 5 calendar months, or about 17 to 21 weeks as we now calculate pregnancy, could cost anywhere between $500 and $15,000, depending on gestational age and the facility the woman chooses.

    Sources:
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