The death it's a crime to acknowledge

Pamela Colson, age 31, was 12 weeks pregnant when friends drive her to Women's Medical Services in Pensacola, Florida, for a safe and legal abortion June 26, 1994. Pamela bled heavily during the drive home. According to her friends, Pamela became unresponsive, so they stopped at a motel. Two passers-by did CPR while Pamela's friends called for an ambulance. Pamela was taken to a hospital where she died after an emergency hysterectomy.

Her autopsy showed massive amounts of damage and bleeding. The surgeon who performed an emergency hysterectomy, trying to save Pamela's life, had removed her uterus at the site of the laceration "so that the laceration was a portion of the incision made to remove the uterus." Her uterus showed extensive hemorrhage and blood clots. Her uterine artery was also injured. Several of Pamela's ribs were fractured, apparently during attempts to resuscitate her; this is common in even properly performed CPR.

The cause of death was given as "irreversible shock from blood loss due to a perforated uterus occurring at the time of an elective abortion." William Keene was tentatively identified as having performed the abortion.

Shortly after Pamela's Death, Vicki Conroy of Legal Action for Women accompanied a post-abortion woman to the National Abortion Federation member site where Pamela had submitted to the fatal abortion. There, the post-abortion woman placed a memorial wreath on the building, using the same kind of sticky-gum material used to hang posters in dormitories, and Vicki photographed the scene. The next day, the wreath was gone.

About a month later, abortionist John Britton was shot dead at the very clinic that had sent Pamela Colson home to die.

During the media blitz following the shooting, the clinic pressed charges against Vicki Conroy, and she was arrested for having participated in the placing of the memorial wreath.

These events bring home the reality of the abortion industry's priorities. Abortionists and those who aid and facilitate are given every possible protection. The women they supposedly serve are treated, at best, like second-class citizens.

When an abortionist is killed, no expression of outrage is strong enough, no measure to protect other abortionists is too expensive or too burdensome. But when a woman is killed by the callous carelessness of abortionists, there is no expression of outrage, and safety measures are dismissed as too costly and too burdensome. To even acknowledge a woman's death, as Vicki Conroy and her friend did, is treated like a crime.

Who is it that the abortion lobby is really protecting? The evidence is overwhelming: They are there for the abortionists. The women they supposedly care so much about are just so much grist for the abortion mill.