On March 4, 1975, Robert Sherman performed a safe and legal abortion
on 16-year-old Rita McDowell, who was in the second trimester of her pregnancy. When Rita was discharged, her mother was told that she
would expel the fetus that night. As they left the office, Rita
told her mother, "Oh, Mama, I feel like I had one hundred needles in
me."
Rita did not
expel the fetus. Instead, she developed a fever. Her mother called
Sherman's facility on March 5 but was told
that Sherman would not speak to her, and
to bring Rita in two days later.
In the early
morning hours of March 7, Rita awoke screaming, then collapsed in her
mother's arms. Doctors at the hospital where Rita was taken removed the
macerated fetus, but she died from massive infection just after midnight
on March 8.
An investigation revealed evidence that Sherman deliberately performed
incomplete abortions so that he could charge more for follow-up care.
He was charged with murder in Rita's death, and prosecutors
presented evidence that Sherman re-used disposable medical
equipment, failed to perform tests to verify pregnancy, failed to do
pathology examinations, allowed a nurse's aide to
perform surgery, and falsified medical records.
Sherman got the charge dropped in exchange for a guilty plea on perjury charges. The prosecutor defended the plea bargain on the grounds
that the felony convictions would block Sherman from ever practicing
medicine again. However, Sherman served two years in a federal prison, then set
up a legal abortion practice in Boston.
In early March of 1972,
"Colleen"
took advantage of the new law and traveled from Michigan to New York for a
safe and legal abortion. She was 21 years old and 20 weeks pregnant.
Colleen had a history of asthma. During the abortion, she went into respiratory arrest. She died March 8
, the same day 31-year-old
"Connie" died from a a
safe and legal abortion performed in in New York on March 3. Connie had gone into cardiac arrest during the abortion. She
left behind one child.
On the morning of March 8, 1954, the Skains family of Haskell, Texas,
got a phone call from police in Chicago. Their 24-year-old daughter,
Ozella Ann Skains, had been found dead along a street in suburban Oak Park. Police surmised that she had either jumped from, or been
thrown from, a moving vehicle. The
chiropractor, John Goetschel, to whom she was engaged was being held for questioning, along with a friend of his. Both Goetschel and the friend told the police that they knew Ozella was pregnant. Goetschel
said he'd prescribed 12 five-grain quinine tablets, telling Ozella to
take two at a time, then follow up with a hot bath. He also used
chiropractic treatments on Monday night
(the day before her body was discovered) to attempt to cause an
abortion. A woman that the police questioned said
that Ozella had stayed with her all day Monday and had been often stricken
with nausea. She'd left about 11 p.m. In the company of the two men, who
insisted that she'd been very much alive when they had dropped her off
near her hotel that night.
The autopsy revealed that Ozella had died of an air embolism without
ever having lost the baby. Goetschel was prosecuted, but acquitted by a
jury of eight women and four men, a verdict his attorney attributed to
lack of clear evidence that Goetschel had caused Ozella's death.
Ozella's family sued Goetschel and Malek for $20,000 in damages.
Twenty-two-year-old
Mary Bellville died Friday, March 8, 1889, from
complications of an attempted abortion. "Her death aroused increased
excitement in Astoria." A week before her death, Miss Bellville made a deathbed statement that
Arthur B. Roosa had helped her to abort another pregnancy the previous
June, "furnishing the instrument and instructing her in its use". Roosa, Miss Bellville said, was the father of both aborted children. He
had not helped her with the second, fatal abortion. News coverage
attempted to quell rumors that any local physicians, or any party other
than Miss Bellville herself, "had any part in this criminal act."
No comments:
Post a Comment