Remembering more safe-n-legal carnage

On June 11, 1991, Angela Hall, a 27-year-old mother of five, called to arrange an abortion at Thomas Tucker's office in Alabama. One of Tucker's employees, Joy Davis, screened Angela and felt that she had risk factors that made abortion in an office setting unsafe. Joy got on the phone with Tucker and indicated that she felt that Angela should be referred to a hospital. Tucker told Davis that "we need the money" and ordered her to prep Angela, who was in the second trimester of pregnancy. Angela had trouble breathing and began to hemorrhage after the abortion, but Tucker cancelled the ambulance Davis had called because they'd already sent another patient to the hospital that day. Eventually Tucker gave in to Davis' pleading, snapped at her to call an ambulance, and left the building. Angela developed sepsis and finally died of her injures on June 14. The autopsy found numerous tears and lesions in the pelvic area, and congestive necrosis in Angela's liver and spleen. The doctors concluded that amniotic fluid embolism had caused clotting problems resulting in necrosis, septic shock, and cardiac arrest. When Alabama authorities subpoenaed Angela's records, Tucker ordered Davis to destroy some and falsify others. Davis tore up the records, but then taped them back together and provided the authorities with photocopies.

Eighteen-year-old newlywed Barbaralee Davis called a local women's group for an abortion referral. They sent her to a member of the newly founded National Abortion Federation, Hope Clinic for Women in Granite City, Illinois. Barbaralee underwent the abortion on June 14, 1977. After the abortion, Barbaralee was kept for observation, then discharged. Her sister helped her, pale and bleeding, to the car. Barbaralee slept in the back seat the whole way home. Her sister helped her to bed. When Barbaralee's sister checked on her later, she was unresponsive. She was rushed to the Pickneyville hospital, where an emergency hysterectomy was attempted to save her life. Barbaralee died during the surgery. The autopsy found the face and spinal column of Barbaralee's baby embedded in a hole in her uterus. There were two quarts of blood in her abdomen. Barbaralee had bled to death.



Who, in these cases, benefitted from "access" to "safe and legal" abortion.

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