Infection Deaths from 1988 and 1999

Demetrice Andrews, age 22, underwent an abortion on October 17, 1988.  She became progressively ill, and was finally admitted to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, where she suffered multiple organ failure. She died on November 9, 1988.

"Yvonne" Roe is one of the women Life Dynamics notes on their "Blackmun Wall" of women killed by legalized abortion. Yvonne was a 19-year-old student who died from sepsis on November 9, 1999 in Marrero, Louisiana, after undergoing a safe and legal abortion. She had been an All-American cheerleader and a member of the National Honor Society.

Abortion-rights advocates will concede that the deaths of Demetrice and Yvonne were sad, but will insist that were it not for the legalization of abortion, even more women would die. This presumption steals credit from the people who were truly responsible for improved survival rates for induced abortions.

Maternal mortality of all kinds, including abortion mortality, had fallen precipitously since 1920 except for a brief leveling off of abortion mortality during the 1950s which I have been unable to account for. By 1960 the steep downward trend in abortion deaths had resumed, and wasn't effected at all by legalization.

Improved health and advances in medical care were making surgery of all sorts, including abortion, safer, and providing much more effective ways to treat complications.

It is utterly disingenuous for champions of legal abortion to steal credit from those who achieved these remarkable improvements in public health.