Three Criminal Deaths and One Safe-n-Legal

Minnie Wittenborn died Thursday evening, January 13, 1880, either from a miscarriage or from an abortion perpetrated by an unidentified person. Though Dr. Charles H. McCallister was known to have tended to Minnie after the miscarriage or abortion, he was chastised only for his failure to properly treat Marie by failing to remove the placenta that she had retained.

On January 13, 1911, 27-year-old homemaker Rauha Wilen died at Chicago's Augusta Hospital of peritonitis caused by an abortion. Midwife Mary Rominel was arrested and indicted by a grand jury.

Dr. Arthur L. Blunt

On January 13, 1915, 23-year-old motion picture actress Beulah Rehm died atWesley Hospital after an abortion perpetrated at Dr. Arthur L. Blunt's Chicago practice. Beulah had been at the Plymouth Hotel when she took ill on Christmas Eve. Her doctor, Dr. Andre Stapler, sent her to the hospital. Stapler and other staff were suspicious and questioned Beulah about the cause of her problems. She admitted to Springer, and then to police, that she had gone to Blunt's West Harrison Street practice three times during the week of December 13 for abortion attempts. Blunt was brought to the hospital, where he was identified by Beulah as her abortionist. blunt denied ever having seen Beulah before. Blunt was held by the Coroner but the case never went to trial. Blunt had committed the abortion on Beulah while still out on bail for the 1913 abortion death of Frances Odochowski.

Christin Gilbert

Christin Gilbert, a 19-year-old woman with Down syndrome, was brought from Texas to George Tiller'sWichita abortion facility for a presumably safe and legal late abortion on January 10, 2005. Christin was legally incompetent, unable to give her consent. Like all Tiller late abortion patients, ostensibly so sick that their pregnancies endanger their lives or health, Christin spent the bulk of her time during the abortion process at a motel, in the care of her family. She would be brought back to Tiller's facility each day for procedures to kill the fetus and dilate her cervix, then returned to the motel and the care of her family.

On January 12, Tiller's staff diagnosed Christin as being "dehydrated". She was given IV fluids then sent back to the motel. She had numerous episodes of vomiting, and lost consciousness several times. Rather than call an ambulance or take her to the hospital, Christin's family waited until morning and took her to Tiller's clinic.
There she went into cardiac arrest. Tiller employee Marguerite Reed called 911, falsely stating that Christin was alert and awake when she had actually already gone into cardiac arrest.

Leroy Carhart

Ambulance staff arrived and found Dr. Leroy Carhart performing CPR so ineptly that they didn't even realize that he was a doctor. The rescue workers resuscitated Christin, then transported her to the hospital. She was pumped full of antibiotics to try to treat the underlying sepsis that evidently had caused the cardiac arrest, but to no avail. She died that day of systemic organ failure.