One Mystery Death, Two Safe and Legal

On July 28, 1928, 21-year-old homemaker Maud Thurmond died in Chicago from sepsis from a criminal abortion performed that day. Nobody was ever held accountable for Maud's death.

Charisse Ards is one of the women Life Dynamics lists on the Blackmun Wall of women killed by safe and legal abortion. Life Dynamics indicates that Charisse was 20 years old, single, and a mother of one. According to Life Dynamics, Charisse died July 28, 1989, from a pelvic infection after a legal abortion.

Thirty-two-year-old Mary Ann Dancy was a mother of five when she went to Fleming Center in North Raleigh, North Carolina for a safe and legal abortion on July 27, 1990. The abortion was performed by Clarence J. Washington. He documented no complications. However, after Mary Ann went home, she bled heavily, and the next day, July 28, she was taken to Halifax Memorial Hospital. She died that night during emergency surgery from hemorrhage due to a lacerated cervix.