Fourth-year resident Karen S. Watson administered an amnioinfusion. Linda reported pain and said she was "burning up all over." Watson's supervising physician, Daniel Gilman, injected more chemicals into Linda's uterus. Dennis Boom's attorney, Patrick Dunphy, said that the two injections caused the heart damage that killed Linda 36 hours after the first injection.
Watson did not use ultrasound to guide the needle injecting the poison into Linda, and apparently she injected the chemicals directly into Linda's bloodstream instead of into the amniotic sac.
The defense, of course, says that there was no negligence. Also, the hospital says that Gilman is responsible for Linda's death, because he performed the second injection and was supervising Watson. Gilman can't be named in the suit because the statute of limitations expired before Linda's husband filed.
According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Gilman "had performed more than 100 abortions." Watson has started an ob/gyn practice in Milwaukee.
News coverage of the case does not indicate why Watson and Gilman chose the antiquated instillation technique for Linda's abortion. Since the late 1960s, nations such as Sweden, Japan, and the Soviet Union had abandoned instillation abortions as being far too dangerous for the mother. US abortionists began abandoning the technique in the mid-1980s.
As the case continues, I'll be attempting to speak to Dunphy and learn more about the case, such as what the chemical was that Watson used (I suspect it was hypertonic saline, from Linda's report that she was "burning up all over."), what medical justification, if any, Watson had for choosing the defunct instillation technique, and what steps staff took to address Linda's symptoms beyond giving her a second injection.
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