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Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Roe Anniversaries: Barbara Shelgren, Jean Cohen, Kathryn Strong, and Vanessa Preston

On January 22, 1900, Mrs. Barbara Shelgren, age 25, died at Augustana Hospital in Chicago of an abortion performed that day. Paulina Bechtel, identified as a midwife, was arrested and held by Coroner's Jury and indicted of homicide by a grand jury, but the case was thrown out by Judge Holdom. Bechtel was implicated in the abortion death of Ida Henry in 1900, but was identified as a physician in that case.

On January 22, 1925, 17-year-old homemaker Jean Cohen, a Connecticut native, died at Chicago's Montrose Hospital from an abortion performed earlier that day. On January 31, Louise Hagenow was arrested in Jean's death. However, Hagenow, though a known abortionist, was for some reason cleared in Jean's death. Hagenow, who had already been implicated of the abortion deaths of Louise Derchow, Annie Dorris, Abbia Richards, and Emma Dep in San Francisco, would go on to be linked to over a dozen Chicago abortion deaths: Minnie Deering, Sophia Kuhn , Emily Anderson, Hannah Carlson, Marie Hecht, May Putnam, Lola Madison, Annie Horvatich, Lottie Lowy, Nina H. Pierce, Bridget Masterson, Elizabeth Welter, and Mary Moorehead. Hagenow was typical of criminal abortionists in that she was a physician. She was also all too frequently left free to ply her lethal trade, underscoring the need for constant vigilance in order to keep corruption from letting even the seediest criminal abortionists do their damage.

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.


On January 21, 1972, 26-year-old Kathryn Strong went to Civic Center Hospital in Oakland, California for a legal abortion that was to be performed by Dr. Harold Van Maren. During the procedure, her uterus was perforated. According to her medical records, she suffered extensive hemorrhage and shock. She died the following day, leaving a three-year-old son.

As you can see from the graph below, abortion deaths were falling dramatically before legalization. This steep fall had been in place for decades. To argue that legalization lowered abortion mortality simply isn't supported by the data. Just as the legalization of abortion in California hadn't stopped Kathryn from dying, Roe vs. Wade didn't stop other women from dying.

external image Abortion+Deaths+Since+1960.jpg

On January 22, 1980, Vanessa Preston, the 22-year-old wife of a local minister, went with her husband and small son to Fairmount Clinic in Dallas. There, National Abortion Federation member Curtis Boyd performed a safe, legal dilation and extraction abortion on her. During the abortion, Vanessa went into a grand mal siezure and then into cardiac arrest. Emergency procedures were immediately instituted. An ambulance was summoned, and Boyd and a nurse performed CPR and got Vanessa's heart to beat again. About 40 minutes into exploratory surgery, trying to address a retained placenta and multiple vaginal punctures, Vanessa again went into cardiac arrest. She was given a total of 24 units of blood to try to keep her circulation intact despite her massive, unstoppable blood loss. For an hour and a half, hospital staff tried in vain to resuscitate Vanessa before finally pronouncing her dead. An autopsy revealed that she had developed amniotic fluid embolism and a blood clotting disorder during the abortion. When Boyd's staff resuscitated Vanessa, they caused a small laceration of her liver. This is typical in even properly performed CPR, and is not usually life-threatening. However, because of the DIC, Vanessa's blood couldn't clot, and she bled to death from the liver laceration.

8 comments:

  1. Dear Christina,

    I am involved in a project to get an anti-abortion article to have a very high profile on the internet in terms of web traffic.

    I am a Bible believing Christian also so we have a lot of the same ideas when it comes to the pro-life issue.

    Would you be interested in discussing this matter?

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  2. I love your website and have posted many excerpts on my Facebook page called "Funny Catholic girl complains about Obama" -- i am so happy to know there are people like you who are willing to put so much time and effort into this cause!!! As you know, the real "war on women" in this country is being waged by the abortion industry: http://www.know7things.com/sin.html Thanks for all your work!!!

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  3. Pro-life, can you elaborate?

    Chris, thanx!

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. Christina,

    Did you get my email that I sent you?

    The search abortion gets about 6,000 searches a day from the 3 major search engines.

    Can we at least discuss this matter briefly?

    ReplyDelete
  6. If you sent me an email it got mistaken for spam. again, can you elaborate?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Christina,

    I will send you an email through your Facebook account then.

    I will do this today or tomorrow.

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Christina,

    Sorry for the delay about information concerning the pro-life project. I had a bout of ill health.

    I sent a message through your Facebook page giving you more details.

    ReplyDelete