In Korea, reformed abortionist speaks out

AND the Los Angeles Times covers the story! Fairly! Though the headline writer clearly sticks by the old attitudes: In South Korea, abortion foes gain ground

HT: Big Blue Wave

1939: Abortion proves fatal for teen

Seventeen-year-old Miss Dorothy Jasinski was brought to St. Mary's Hospital in Chicago by two unidentified women on November 17, 1930. Dorothy was treated there until her death on November 29. The coroner determined that Dorothy had died from an abortion performed in Michigan City, Indiana, the day she'd been brought to the hospital.

The coroner recommended identification of the person or persons responsible, and his or their arrest on charges of murder.



For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

To email this post to a friend, use the icon below.

Another evil man, stupid woman, dead kid tale.

California Man Charged With Killing Girlfriend, Her Son

Prosecutors say a 38-year-old Oakland man killed his girlfriend's young son, dumped his body in the water, then killed her to stop her from telling anyone.

....

Police found the body of 17-month-old Jashon Williams floating near the Berkeley Marina on Sunday — two days after the body of his mother, Zoelina Williams, was found in nearby Aquatic Park.

....

Martin previously was convicted of killing a girlfriend's child. He pleaded guilty in 1994 to voluntary manslaughter in a plea deal that got him 11 years in prison. He was released in six years after getting credit for time served.

First of all, women need to grasp that the number one threat to the children of unmarried women is moms' boyfriends. They're the ones who by and large do the bulk of the molesting, abusing, and murdering. So don't do the Horizontal Bop with somebody you'd not want to stick around and raise the kids with. And if he seemed like Mr. Right at the time and then morphed into a sleezebag, try waiting until your kids are grown before you start bringing strange men into their lives.

Second of all, the guy who murdered this kid HAD ALREADY DONE TIME FOR KILLING ANOTHER GIRLFRIEND'S KID. "This guy's bad news" isn't something you need a PhD to grasp in a situation like that.

In this sad case, the guy also killed the mother so she'd not narc on him for offing the kid, so she's paying the same price her child did for her bad judgment. But it was her bad judgment.

1901: Doctor's work leaves woman dead

On November 15, 1901, 22-year-old Irma Brown of Garden City, Kansas, died at County Hospital from complications of an abortion performed there that day.

Dr. Robert E. Gray was arrested November 19 and held without bail by Coroner's Jury.

On March 26, 1902, Gray was acquitted by a jury.

Irma's abortion was typical of criminal abortions in that it was performed by a physician.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. For more about abortion and abortion deaths in the first years of the 20th century, see Abortion Deaths 1900-1909.

Abortionist Gone Wild

Innocence is no excuse in the Nanny State

Ex-soldier faces jail for handing in gun

The man found a trash bag somebody else had tossed over his garden wall. It had a gun in it. So he took it to the police station and turned it in. Now he's facing five years in prison, minimum, for possession of a firearm.

Judge Christopher Critchlow said: "This is an unusual case, but in law there is no dispute that Mr Clarke has no defence to this charge.

"The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant."

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Because there are people who want to bring this nonsensical attitude toward the entire freaking world.

1952: An unusual death

On November 3, 1952, Isabell Cuda went to the home of Mary Murawsky in Rockford, Illinois, for an illegal abortion. Mary was neither licensed nor qualified to practice medicine. Murawsky used some sort of instrument on Isabell. Isabell became ill, and died on November 12, leaving behind a husband and a minor child.

Isabell's abortion was unusual in that it was performed by an amateur, rather than by a doctor, as was the case with perhaps 90% of criminal abortions.

During the 1950s, we see an anomaly: Though maternal mortality had been falling during the first half of the 20th Century, and abortion mortality in particular had been plummeting, the downward trend slowed, then reversed itself briefly. I have yet to figure out why. For more, see Abortion Deaths in the 1950s.

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion.

Two pre-Roe anniversaries

On November 11, 1929, 23-year-old Mary L. Kelly died in Chicago from an abortion performed by an unidentified perpetrator.

On November 11, 1909, Marian Lang, age 29, died in Chicago home from an abortion. Dr. Pope was indicted by a grand jury. The source document does not indicate that the case went to trial.

Note, please, that with issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. And things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future.

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion.

Obama's priorities: Too busy for Berlin & Ft. Hood

Obama Draws Criticism for Sitting Out Berlin Wall Anniversary

Obama Needs to Go to Ft. Hood

Any other President -- including Clinton -- would have had the decency, the class, and the sense of proportion to hoof it down to Ft. Hood to address the soldiers, and to Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Wall. But Obama, the eternal frat boy, is simply too busy.

Every single leader of the EU, along with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, are attending the celebrations. But not our CoC. Not the POTUS. Not BO.

He's probably have brought tacky gifts anyway.

Conversion story: Hear Abby Johnson say how she went from PP director to PL advocate

MsUnderestimated brings us video of Mike Huckabe interviewing former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson. (HT: NewsBusters.

Here's a transcript of the interview:

MIKE HUCKABEE: Well, she helped numerous women get abortions, but she’s now a strong pro-life advocate who helps lead protests at the very clinic she once worked for. Please welcome former director for Planned Parenthood, Abby Johnson, from Bryan College Station, Texas. Abby, it’s so nice to have you here.

ABBY JOHNSON: Thank you.

HUCKABEE: We asked Planned Parenthood to issue a statement. We actually asked would they like to be on and share their side of the story. We got this statement – I want to share it. They said: "Planned Parenthood respects everyone's beliefs on this most personal of medical issues, and Planned Parenthood remains fully committed to ensuring that every woman facing an unintended pregnancy knows all of her options. Planned Parenthood’s focus is on prevention. Nationwide, more than 90 percent of the health care Planned Parenthood affiliates provides is preventative in nature."

Abby, my honest assessment of that statement is they do prevent some things. They prevent birth, not illnesses. There’s no illness involved in a pregnancy. Illness means you're sick. You're not sick when you're having a baby.

JOHNSON: No.

HUCKABEE: When you were at Planned Parenthood, did you find that the focus was on health care and prevention of illness?

JOHNSON: No, it's prevention of, I mean, a lot of it is prevention of pregnancy. And that is why I got into it.

HUCKABEE: That's why you first got involved-

JOHNSON: That’s why I first got involved.

HUCKABEE: -to keep people from getting an unintended pregnancy.

JOHNSON: That's right. That’s absolutely why I got involved in it. But I soon found that one of their goals was to make money. And the way they make money is to increase the number of abortions they do.

HUCKABEE: You were working, actually, helping and assisting in an abortion, and you saw on an ultrasound of the abortion process. Tell me what did you see when the ultrasound was running and the abortion was taking place?

JOHNSON: Well, I was called into the room to assist during a procedure. And it was actually an ultrasound-guided abortion procedure, which is not that common in Planned Parenthood health centers because it's a longer type of abortion procedure, and Planned Parenthood centers are trying to do as many procedures a day as they can, and so they’re not going to take a lot of time for each procedure. But for whatever reason, this physician did decide to do an ultrasound-guided procedure on this particular woman. And so, I was called in to help. And my job was to hold the ultrasound probe on this woman's abdomen so that the physician could actually see the uterus on the ultrasound screen. And when I looked at the screen, I saw a baby on the screen. And she was about 13 weeks pregnant at the time. And I saw a full side profile. So I saw face to feet on the ultrasound machine. And I saw the probe going into the woman's uterus. And at that moment, I saw the baby moving and trying to get away from the probe.

HUCKABEE: Moving away from it, oh, my God.

JOHNSON: Yes. And I thought, "It's fighting for its life." And I thought, "It’s life, I mean, it's alive."

HUCKABEE: Until that moment, Abby, had it appeared to you that you were able to use words like "fetus" and "tissue," it's very different than when you saw the form of a child, recognizable.

JOHNSON: That it was alive. Mm-hmm.

HUCKABEE: What did you do? Did you say anything at that moment to the doctor?

JOHNSON: No, I mean, my mind was racing, my heart was beating so fast. And I just was thinking, "Oh, my gosh, make it stop." And then, all of a sudden, I mean, it was just over, just, in the blink of an eye. And I just saw the, I just saw the baby just literally, just crumble, and it was over. And I just, I dropped the ultrasound probe. And then I realized, "Oh, my gosh, I'm not holding the ultrasound probe," so I scrambled and I put the ultrasound probe back in place. And I, so many things were going through my mind, and I was thinking about my daughter who’s three, and I was thinking about the ultrasound I had of her, and I was thinking of just how perfect that ultrasound was when she was 12 weeks in the womb. And I was just thinking, "What am I doing? What am I doing here?" And I could just, I had one hand on this woman's, on this woman's belly, and I was thinking, "There was life in here, and now there's not," and-

HUCKABEE: You literally were holding your hand on top of her, on top of her belly at that point-

JOHNSON: Mm-hmm.

HUCKABEE: -and realized that what was underneath that hand once a moment ago was life and it's gone?

JOHNSON: Mm-hmm.

HUCKABEE My gosh. When you were faced with that – by the way, did the woman see any of this? Did she have access to see the screen at all?

JOHNSON: No, she was sedated.

HUCKABEE: People never see really what’s happening to them.

JOHNSON: No.

HUCKABEE: I can't help but believe if they saw that they might be running out of those clinics.

JOHNSON: Yeah, absolutely. If clinic workers saw what was happening on that screen, they would be running out of those clinics. This is what the abortion industry does not want their workers to see. They don't want their workers to see what’s actually happening during an abortion. That's why Planned Parenthood doesn’t do, that's why so many of these large abortion industries don't do ultrasound-guided abortion procedures. They don't want people to see what’s really happening in the woman's womb.

HUCKABEE: You know, I think about what you've gone through. You must have walked away that day saying, uh-oh, this is not what I want to be spending the rest of my life doing as a career. What was the next step you took? You were the executive director of that Planned Parenthood clinic, and yet, really you didn't know what was going on back in those back rooms in that standpoint.

JOHNSON: Mm-hmm. I went home that day, and I had made the decision that day that that was it, and I went home, and I talked to my husband about it. And, I mean, my husband is a teacher. And we have a daughter, and so we're depending on two incomes, and so, we just decided that I would go back to work, and I would just be really looking for another job. And I knew that I had two weeks until we were going to be doing surgical abortions again. So I had two weeks to find another job. And so I went, the first week was pretty uneventful. And the next weekend came, and that Monday came, and I was just sitting in my office, and I was crying. I had the door closed. And I was just thinking, "Where am I going to go? What am I going to do? I don't want to be here."

HUCKABEE: What did the people at the clinic say when you finally said, "This is it, I'm leaving"?

JOHNSON: Well, nobody really knew what was happening. I couldn't talk to anybody at the clinic because they didn't know what was going on in my heart. They didn't understand what was happening. And now that they do know, Planned Parenthood has put a restraining order out on me now that they know I’m working with the pro-life movement.

HUCKABEE: I wish Planned Parenthood would put a restraining order on themselves and stop the horrible procedures that they're doing every day. Abby Johnson, thank you. You have a lot of courage to share your remarkable story. And I thank you so much, and I hope it's a great reminder that we can't necessarily just listen to words. We need to understand the actions behind them.

JOHNSON: That’s right.

HUCKABEE Thank you. God bless you. What a wonderful story.

JOHNSON: Thank you, thank you.

HUCKABEE: Abby Johnson.

Two tragic anniversaries

"Yvonne" Roe is one of the women Life Dynamics notes on their "Blackmun Wall" of women killed by legalized abortion. Yvonne was a 19-year-old student who died from sepsis on November 9, 1999 in Marrero, Louisiana, after undergoing a safe and legal abortion. She had been an All-American cheerleader and a member of the National Honor Society. Life Dynamics cites the Clarion Ledger, November 11, 1999, and indicates that though they have information giving Yvonne's real name, they can not release it due to a confidentiality agreement.

Demetrice Andrews, age 22, underwent an abortion on October 17, 1988. She became progressively ill, and was finally admitted to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. Demetrice suffered multiple organ failure. She died on November 9, 1988. It is ironic that Demetrice was admitted to Grady to be treated for abortion complications. Another woman, Jacqueline Reynolds, died just two years earlier, from complications of anesthesia administered for an abortion performed at Grady.

Newborn cries influenced by womb sounds

Babies 'cry in mother's tongue'

Third trimester fetuses evidently are paying attention to their mothers' voices and gauging their cries accordingly after birth.

1923: Death in a Chicago hospital

On November 6, 1923, Mrs. Agnes Wendt died at Chicago's St. Anne's Hospital from complications from an abortion performed there that day.

Dr. Irene Wagoner was exonerated by the coroner, but nevertheless indicted for murder in Agnes' death.

Agnes' abortion was typical of criminal abortions in that it was performed by a physician.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see Abortion in the 1920s.

1977: Abortion quackery kills Texas mom

Louchrisser Jackson, a 23-year-old mother of five, was 12 weeks pregnant when she went to Dr. Robert L. Gardner for a safe and legal abortion at Reproductive Services in Dallas on November 4, 1977.

Louchrisser began hemorrhaging. Gardner said that he ordered blood for a transfusion, but it didn't arrive so about an hour before her death he attempted to give her a transfusion with his own blood -- which turned out to be an incompatable type.

A private ambulance was called but was not informed of the nature of the transport. In that jurisdiction, private ambulances are only permitted to transport stable patients; they are prohibited from responding to emergency calls. Because the ambulance service had no reason to expect an emergency, they did not respond promptly, nor did they refer the transport to the fire deparment's ambulance service.

When the ambulance crew arrived, Louchrisser had gone into cardiac arrest. The crew, upon discovering that they'd been called for an emergency transport, rushed Louchrisser to the hospital immediately rather than calling for a fire department ambulance.

Louchrisser died that day. Gardner requested that the body be released without an inquiry. Another physician at the hospital learned of the case and requested an inquiry.

The autopsy found massive hemmorage of at least two liters of blood, and a "1.8 x 2 cm. ragged perforation in the right lateral wall just above the internal os of the cervical canal. This perforation commonicates freely with the retroperitoneal space on the right side. The endometrial surface of the uterus is ragged and hemorrhagic." Death was attributed to "massive retroperitoneal hemorrhage due to perforation of the uterus during a therapeutic abortion."

1928: Woman dies in doc's office

On November 4, 1928, 22-year-old Anna Borndal died at the office of Dr. Lou E. Davis of Chicago, from complications of an abortion performed there that day.

Davis was held by the coroner for unintentional manslaughter. She was indicted by a grand jury for homicide.

Anna's abortion was typical of illegal abortions in that it was performed by a physician.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see Abortion in the 1920s.

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion.

PP director quits after witnessing abortion

Planned Parenthood Director Quits After Watching Abortion on Ultrasound

Praise God!