Four Doctors' Deadly Work Over a Century

On February 3, 1912, 37-year-old homemaker Helen Imhoff died on the scene from blood poisoning caused by an abortion perpetrated by Dr. W. A. Beringer and midwife Margaret Meyer. They were indicted by a Grand Jury on March 1, but the case never went to trial.

Mary Strugnall, age 17, died February 3, 1929 from an abortion performed that a month earlier by Dr. Joseph A. Harter. Harter was held by the coroner on February 28. His brother, a student named Irving Harter, and Vernon Keyser, the baby's father, were arrested as accessories. Dr. Harter was indicted for homicide, but was acquitted on June 26.

Romeo Ferrer

Denise Crowe was 21 years old when she went to Dr. Romeo Ferrer's private practice, which looked like and advertised as a clinic, on February 3, 2006. She was 16 weeks pregnant. Ferrer started the abortion at about 1:00 p.m., using ultrasound guidance. The abortion took over 45 minutes, and Denise was administered multiple doses of Demerol and Versed because she was finding the procedure so painful. After Denise was moved to the recovery room, Ferrer's staff were unable to get a blood pressure or pulse reading on Denise, and told him. He gave a verbal order for 0.4 mg Narcan, a drug to counteract narcotics. At 1:50, Ferrer began efforts to resuscitate Denise. Staff called 911 while Ferrer continued resuscitation efforts, maintaining an open airway with the non-professional method of head tilt and chin lift rather than an airway or endotracheal tube. The medics arrived to find Denise still unresponsive and without a pulse. They used an oxygen mask and additional drugs as they transported Denise to Anne Arundel Medical Center. There, emergency room staff continued the attempts to resuscitate her, to no avail. She was pronounced dead at 2:57 p.m. The autopsy found that Denise had died from a Demerol overdose. The medical board faulted Ferrer for carelessly administering medications too rapidly and in excessive amounts, not appropriately monitoring Denise's vital signs, and not resuscitating Denise properly.

Jennifer McKenna-Morbelli

Jennifer McKenna-Morbelli, age 29, and her husband, TJ Morbelli, had eagerly anticipated the birth of their baby, named Madison Leigh. However, because of a prenatal diagnosis, Jennifer, accompanied by her parents, husband, and sister traveled from New Rochelle, New York to a late-term abortion facility in Germantown, Maryland on Sunday, February 3, 2013. Madison was 33 weeks gestational age. Germantown Reproductive Health Services is a National Abortion Federationmember facility, which means that it supposedly provides only the best and safest care. However, it is operated by Dr. Leroy Carhart, who had already had a less than savory history. The prolifers who gather outside report seeing Jennifer arriving for her appointments on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, appearing "pale and weak." Jennifer spent over nine hours at the facility on Wednesday. After she was discharged, Carhart and his wife left the state to work at another abortion facility. According to Operation Rescue's anonymous source, Jennifer started suffering chest pain early on Thursday morning. She was unsuccessful in her attempts to reach Carhart. Finally, at about 5:00 a.m. her family took her from the hotel to the emergency room. Hospital staff were unable to get in touch with Carhart either, though he eventually did return their calls. Jennifer was suffering from massive internal bleeding and coded six times as staff struggled to stabilize her. She finally died at around 9:30 a.m. The medical examiner indicated that Jennifer died from disseminated intravascular coagulopathy caused by an amniotic fluid embolism -- in other words, amniotic fluid and /or fetal tissue got into her blood stream and caused a cascading series of catastrophic problems including the inability of her blood to clot. This is the second third-trimester abortion patient to die under Carhart's care. The first was Christin Gilbert, who was being treated by Carhart at George Tiller's Wichita abortion facility in 2004.