Typical Abortion Deaths Across the Years

On March 6, 1928, Lucille Smith, a 24-year-old store clerk and homemaker, died at Chicago's Burrows Hospital from complications of an abortion performed that day at the office of midwife Emma Schulz. Schulz was indicted for felony murder on April 1, 1929. The following year, Schulz was arrested after the death of 23-year-old Gladys Schaffer.

On March 6, 1945, 36-year-old Beatrice Fisher took her four-year-old daughter and her mother-in-law to Seattle to get aftercare from Dr. Frank C. Hart, who had done an abortion on Beatrice when the previous day for $100 in cash. While Beatrice was with Hart, her mother-in-law did some shopping with the little girl. On returning to Hart's building, the mother-in-law found a crowd of people gathered in the lobby around Beatrice's dead body. The coroner concluded that a clot from a gouge in her uterine wall had formed an embolism that had lodged in Beatrice's lung, causing her death. Hart was convicted of abortion and manslaughter.

A 16-year-old girl identified as "F.S." underwent a safe and legal second-trimester saline abortion on August 26, 1969. Afterward, she developed an infection and symptoms of meningitis. She continued to be treated for ten days before she was transferred to another hospital in San Francisco for further treatment. Doctors performed two heart valve replacements of F.S., and had scheduled her for yet another before she died on March 6, 1970. The cause of death was severe congestive heart failure and pneumonia.

Chatoor Bisal Singh did an abortion on Ellen Williams on March 2, 1985 at Miami's notorious Dadeland Family Planning. On March 4, Ellen returned, doubled over and rocking back and forth in pain. Dadeland owner Betty Eason gave her some tea, then called Singh, who arrived four hours later. Singh examined Ellen, then turned her over to Nabil Ghali (pictured), a known quack and pervert, who performed a second D&C and sent Ellen home with a bottle of antibiotics. On March 5, Ellen was rushed by ambulance to Coral Reef Hospital, where she was taken into surgery. She died in the intensive care unit on March 6. The autopsy revealed that she had uterine and bowel perforations, causing the peritonitis that killed her.