History: New York's Liberal Law Claims Another Victim, "Amy."

"Amy" is one of the women Life Dynamics identifies on their "Blackmun Wall" as having been killed by a safe and legal abortion.

Amy was 35 years old when she took advantage of New York's new law allowing outpatient abortion-on-demand, somewhere in the state of New York on December 24, 1970. She was 14 weeks pregnant.

During the abortion, Amy suffered from a massive pulmonary embolism. Efforts to save her life finally failed, and she died on January 2, 1971, leaving behind two children.

Though Amy was the first woman identified as an abortion victim in 1971, she wasn't the last. Other women to die that year include:

• Cassandra Bleavins
• Janet Forster
• Doris Grant
• Betty Hines
• "Annie" Roe
• "Andrea" Roe
• "Anita" Roe
• "April" Roe
• "Audrey" Roe
• "Barbara" Roe
• "Beth" Roe
• "Monica" Roe
• "Roseann" Roe
• "Sandra" Roe
• "Tammy" Roe
• "Vicki" Roe
• LaSandra Russ
• Carole Schaner
• Margaret Smith
• Kathryn Strong

During the 1940s, while abortion was still illegal, there was a massive drop in maternal mortality from abortion. The death toll fell from 1,407 in 1940, to 744 in 1945, to 263 in 1950. Most researches attribute this plunge to the development of blood transfusion techniques and the introduction of antibiotics. And as you can see from the graph below, the fall in abortion deaths was in place long before legalization. Legalization did nothing to change the number of deaths each year; the trend had been in place for decades. Learn more here.