August 12: An Early Death at a Notorious California Abortion Hospital

Sara Lint, a 22-year-old coed, submitted to a safe and legal abortion at San Vicente Hospital in Los Angeles, California, on August 11, 1970. She went into ventricular fibrillation soon after the abortion was initiated.

The technique being used on Sara, hysterotomy, was one with a known high maternal mortality rate. It was, in fact, surgery similar to a C-section but with the intention of allowing the baby to die of prematurity.

San Vicente staff treated Sara for an hour before transferring her to Midway Hospital down the street, where she died at 4:57am on August 12. The autopsy found yellow fluid in Sara's heart, frothy tan fluid in her lungs, and a seven-inch male fetus in her uterus.

San Vicente was where five other women underwent their fatal abortions: Natalie Meyers (1972), Mary Pena (1984), Laniece Dorsey (1986), Joyce Ortenzio (1988), and Oriane Shevin (2005). 

At some point I've been unable to precisely determine, San Vicente was bought out by Family Planning Associates Medical Group, the largest chain of for-profit abortion clinics in the world. Some of the San Vicente Deaths are thus also FPA deaths. 

Patients who died from abortions performed at FPA facilities other than San Vicente include these 13 women and girls:

• Denise Holmes, age 24, 1970
• Patricia Chacon, age 16, 1984
• Josefina Garcia, age 37, 1985
• Tami Suematsu, age 19, 1988
• Deanna Bell, age 13, 1992
• Susan Levy, age 30, 1992
• Christina Mora, age 18, 1994
• Ta Tanisha Wesson, age 24, 1995
• Nakia Jorden, 1998
• Maria Leho, age 26, 1999
• Kimberly Neil, age 38, 2000
• Maria Rodriguez, age 22, 2000
• Chanelle Bryant, age 22, 2004