Monday, September 25, 2006

Safe and legal anniversaries

Minnie Lathan was 41 when she had an abortion and tubal ligation performed some time in September of 1978. Her uterus was perforated and her colon damaged during the procedure. She developed an infection and was hospitalized at Cleveland Clinic Hospital. She died there on September 25.

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Twenty-two-year-old Liliana Cortez underwent an abortion by Leo Kenneally at his Her Medical Clinic in Los Angeles on September 20, 1986. Other than having asthma, Liliana was in good health when she went for her abortion. After the procedure, she went into cardiac arrest. There was a 40-minute delay until the paramedics arrived to transport Liliana to a hospital. She died five days later.

Liliana's death was ruled a "therapeutic misadventure," which a coroner's spokesman called, "a nice medical term for a mistake."

An attorney for Her Medical Clinic said, "If something like this happened at a hospital ... people would just say it was bad luck, one of those fluky things. But ... all of a sudden they make it seem like these (abortion clinics) are terrible places where terrible things happen."

Other Deaths at Her Medical Clinic include Donna Heim and Michelle Thames.

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Debra Walton was 35 years old when she underwent an abortion in the fall of 1989. On September 24, 1989, about three weeks after the abortion, she was admitted to University Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama. She was in septic shock. Despite efforts to save her, she died the next day, September 25, 1989. Her death certificate does not say where the abortion took place or who performed it.

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