Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Safe and Legal: Deloris Smith

Today is the anniversary of the day Deloris Smith, just turned 15, died of lingering complications of abortion. She was the second of two teens to be fatally injured on June 2 of 1979, at National Abortion Federation member Atlanta Women's Pavillion in less than an hour.

It all began when 19-year-old Angela Scott stopped breathing in the recovery room. A nurse-anesthetist was administering anesthesia to 14-year-old Deloris while Dr. Jacob Adams was performing her abortion. The nurse-anesthetist ran to assist in efforts to revive Angela, leaving Deloris unattended with her anesthesia drip still running.

After staff had resuscitated Angela and loaded her into an ambulance, they returned their attention to Deloris, who had gone into cardio-respiratory arrest. Adams had accompanied Angela to the Grady Memorial Hospital, and staff refused to release Doloris to an ambulance until the physician had returned to discharge her. This resulted in a 30-minute delay, during which the ambulance crew was unable to attend to Deloris or begin transporting her.

Angela lingered for a week in a coma before dying on June 11. Deloris never regained consciousness and eventually was admitted to a nursing home, where she died of adult respiratory distress syndrome on October 24, 1979, some time after her fifteenth birthday.

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