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Saturday, February 02, 2008

Equally dead. Is only one needless and tragic?

On February 2, 1926, Alberta Handa, a 38-year-old Black woman, died of a botched abortion in Chicago. The perpetrator was never caught.

Fast forward half a century, to February 2, 1977. Elizabeth Tsuji, a 21-year-old Cal State student, checked into Inglewood General Hospital for a saline abortion. She died that day. Two autopsies were performed, neither of which could find a definitive cause of the young woman's death. Other women who met their deaths at Inglewood include Kathy Murphy, Cora Lewis, Belinda Byrd, Yvonne Tanner and Lynette Wallace.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:25 PM

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  2. Anonymous6:15 PM

    *sighs* Another intolerant comment from the pro-choice side (or perhaps a spammer). Hey, maybe you ought to leave the intolerant and hateful comments from the pro-choice side up to show what their true priorities are! *wink, wink*

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  3. We do have to clearly distinguish among ordinary prochoice citizens, the prochoice lobby, and scumbags who back abortion because they just hate everybody.

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  4. Anonymous4:43 PM

    Hmm, let's see, I think the wide range of beliefs can be divided into several categories: there are the average citizen who may not be a political activist, but doesn't want to infer with her right to choose; then there are the well-meaning, if not misguided pro-choice activist nd abortion doctors who sincerely believe that abortion helps women; there are those who are hesitantly pro-choice, they feel abortion is sad, but necessary, there are the political lobby (like NARAL); there are those like the INS crowd who are pro-choice activists trying to justify and defend their own abortions, then there are the pro-suicide, pro-euthanasia, pro-sterilization population control group.

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  5. I was thinking more of the range of thought on the deaths.

    On one end, you get those for whom the dead are only political fodder. For them, you wave the bloody coathanger, and the bloody canula is dismissed with "Well, all surgery has risks!" Even if the guy gutted her like a fish and left her to gasp out her last breath unattended on the floor.

    On the other end, you get the people who actually do give a happy shit about the women, who are appalled and say, "The whole freaking reason we legalized was to stop stuff like this from happening! This has GOT to stop!"

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