Mary Strugnall, age 17, died January 2, 1929 from an abortion performed that day by Dr. Joseph A. Harter. Harter was held by the coroner on February 28. His brother, a student named Irving Harter, and Vernon Keyser, the baby's father, were arrested as accessories.
"Amy" is one of the women Life Dynamics identifies on their "Blackmun Wall" as having been killed by a safe and legal abortion. Amy was 35 years old when she had a legal abortion December 24, 1970. She was 14 weeks pregnant. During the abortion, Amy suffered from a massive pulmonary embolism. Efforts to save her life finally failed, and she died on January 2, 1971, leaving behind two children.
Sherry Emry's friends were worried about her as 1977 rolled over into 1978. She'd been sick, unable to rise from bed, pale and sleeping fitfully, with chills and sweating. They came to check on her as the day started on January 2, and found her dead in her bed. The autopsy found that she had bled to death from an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy. The coroner blamed Sherry's death on the fact that Arnold Bickham's Water Tower Reproductive Center in Chicago, where Sherry had submitted to an abortion on December 28, threw fetal remains away without a pathology analysis. The police found that Sherry had a receipt from Water Tower indicating a $50 discount. They hypothesized that staff might have noted the lack of a fetus in the aspirator, concluded that Sherry hadn't been pregnant, and given her a partial refund rather than provide her with the follow up care that would have saved her life.
Sherry wasn't the only woman to die after abortion in a Bickham facility. Sylvia Moore, age 18, died after Bickham (pictured) shoved her out the door of his clinic New Years Eve of 1986. Bickham was eventually drummed out of the medical profession, and became a high school principal. I'm still tracking down information about his less-than-stellar post-abortion career. But at least he stopped killing people for a living.
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