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Dr. Lou E. Davis |
- "Seek Physician in Girl's Death; Find New Victim," Chicago Daily Tribune, May 25, 1932
- "Woman Doctor Exonerated in Death of Girl Patient," Chicago Tribune, June 23, 1932
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Dr. Lou E. Davis |
The autopsy report for 22-year-old Joan Camp attributed her death to "complications apparently as a result of a recent termination of pregnancy." Joan had been found unconscious in the morning on May 18, 1985. She was rushed to Memorial Hospital in San Leandro, California, where doctors tried to save her life. Their efforts were futile. Joan died the next morning, May 19, 1985, from clots in her lungs.
Sources: California Certificate of Death # 85-069355; Alameda County Coroner’s Report # 85-1122; Life Dynamics "Blackmun Wall"
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Dr. Alberto Hodari |
Dr. Ronald Blatt |
Cynthia Quintana-Morales, a healthy 30-year-old mother of two, entrusted herself to the care of Dr. Ronald D. Blatt at Eastside Gynecology. She reported for her abortion appointment on May 7, 2001.
The facility administered Brevital to sedate Cynthia, and she went into cardiac arrest. She was transported to Lennox Hill Hospital, where she died of anoxic encephalopathy on May 18. She left a 16-year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter motherless.
Cynthia's husband of ten years, Andrew, sued Blatt and the practice, citing failing to use reasonable care, neglecting to heed Cynthia's condition, departing from accepted practices, performing contraindicated procedures, and lack of informed consent. Andrew asserted that his wife never would have consented to the abortion had she been adequately informed of the specific risks to her.
Blatt promptly closed the practice and reopened it as East Side Gynecology Services, effectively protecting his practice from financial liability.
Cynthia's husband settled with Blatt on March 30, 2008 for $1.25 million. Blatt's insurance covered the settlement.
Thanks to Operation Rescue for these sources:
An autopsy report tells the story of the seventeenth young woman I know of now to have died after an abortion at that National Abortion Federation flagship: Family Planning Associates Medical Group.
To preserve her confidentiality, I have given her the pseudonym "Kyla Ellis."
Kyla was 23 years old and about 11 weeks pregnant when she went to Family Planning Associate Medical Group at 601 S. Westmoreland Avenue in Los Angeles for an abortion on May 14, 2014. Like other young Black women, she was at higher risk of death than a white woman would be.The day after the abortion, Kyla suffered agonizing abdominal pain. Her partner, whom I will call "Benjamin," called an ambulance, which rushed her to Centinela Hospital. She arrived at around 3:30 that afternoon. Kyla rated her pain at 10 on a scale of 10. Bright, fresh blood was flowing from her vagina. She couldn't pass urine at all. Hospital staff used a catheter to drain her bladder of about 200 cc of bloody urine.
Doctors decided that Kyla needed more intensive care than Centinela was able to provide. Kyla rode by ambulance to Kaiser West Los Angeles. She arrived shortly after midnight on May 16. At first she was awake, but at around 1:40 a.m. her gaze turned glassy and she became unresponsive. Staff took her to the lab for a CT scan, but on arrival Kyla went into cardio respiratory arrest. All efforts to revive her failed and she was pronounced dead at 2:45 a.m.
The autopsy found her uterus boggy and enlarged. The endometrium (lining) had been scraped away.
Kyla had bled to death.
She's the seventeenth woman I'm aware of to have died after abortions at FPA. The others are:
Evidently April's companion believed that it was safe to drive her 59 miles home to Birmingham. She never made it there.
Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue noted that April's autopsy showed that April had "led a difficult and tragic life." She appeared older than her 29 years. Calcium deposits were found on one of her heart valves. She had transverse scars across her left wrist, indicating at least one suicide attempt. This was a young woman who needed a lot of loving, supportive care. Instead, she was sent home with fatal injuries. As described in the autopsy:
There is a perforation of the left portion of the cervix below the cervical os. The perforation extends into the broad ligament with maceration of the lower uterine segment and vasculature of the broad ligament. This is associated with a massive hemoperitoneum (approximately 1-1/2 liters). The uterus contains an intact fetus (see 1068).
In layman's terms, there was a hole in April's cervix that led to a severely damaged large ligament. The damage to the ligament included extensive damage to the blood vessels there. April died with about 1 1/2 liters of blood in her pelvic cavity. April's unborn baby was dead in her uterus. Operation Rescue provided an image illustrating the damage.
Payne |
Operation Rescue concluded that the doctor who performed April's fatal abortion was octogenarian Louis T. Payne. Payne had been called out of retirement by the clinic operator. Gloria Gray, who had been unable to find a doctor to replace him. Payne, who reportedly would bring his little pug dog to work with him, retired again a few weeks after April's death. He voluntarily surrendered his license during the investigation. This move would halt any action of the medical board to look into his actions.
According to Operation Rescue, there was a criminal investigation of April's death.
Operation Rescue extensively covers the convoluted history of West Alabama Women's Center.
Hemorrhage deaths from abortion simply shouldn't happen, according to a study published by David Grimes of the abortion-friendly Centers for Disease Control. Grimes long since stated that there was never any legitimate reason for an abortion patient to bleed to death. ("Fatal hemorrhage from legal abortion in the United States," Surgical Gynecology and Obstetrics, November, 1983) The articles states:
Deaths from hemorrhage associated with legal induced abortion should not occur. Yet hemorrhage was the third most frequent cause of death from legal abortion in the United States between 1972 and 1979. .... Twenty-four women died from hemorrhage after legal abortion in the United States from 1972 to 1979.... Deaths from hemorrhage can be eliminated by preventing uterine trauma during abortion and by rapidly diagnosing and treating hemorrhage if it occurs.To add to the tragedy, the clinic where April was fatally injured stands next door to a prolife pregnancy center where she could have gotten holistic help with whatever struggles she was facing.
Thanks to Operation Rescue for these sources:
Big Abortion is gearing up for the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision mandating that states permit abortion with no limitations in the first trimester, trivial limitations in the second trimester, and a "health" loophole in the third trimester.
They've already been making inroads in abortion-friendly states, to the point of pushing hard to make sure that if a baby runs the abortion gauntlet and comes out alive and gasping, he or she won't escape. Most Americans, however, are horrified at the idea of letting born alive babies die and lack any real enthusiasm for killing them in-utero.
How can the abortion lobby get people who think abortion is nasty at best to support their drive to push the envelope nationwide?
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Diamond Williams |
On May 3, Mary died. Her death certificate indicates that she died form severe septicemia due to generalized peritonitis due to a criminal abortion. An autopsy was performed. However, the autopsy alone was unable to determine when, where, and by whom the abortion was perpetrated.
The coroner held an inquest into Mary's death. Witnesses included Deputy Sheriff W. B. Connelly, Dr. L. S. Connor, Mary's husband, Gus, and Robert Curry, presumably Mary's brother-in-law.
Mary's husband, Gus, testified that she'd asked him and Robert to take her to "an aged, feeble and nearly blind colored woman, Ada Barnes," on April 24. Both of them denied knowing what Mary, who was also Black, planned to do at the Barnes residence.
Deputy Sheriff Connelly indicated that witnesses, who were not named in the news coverage, had also seen Mary go into the Barnes home, Connelly also said that witnesses claimed that Ada Barnes admitted to using some instrument to perform an abortion.
The coroner's jury concluded "We find that Mary Ruth Curry came to her death by her own means which took place near Neeses, Orangeburg County, about April 24, 1961.
It's unclear how, if witnesses indicate that Ms. Barnes did an abortion, the coroner's jury concluded that Mary had died "by her own means." No charges were pressed against Ada Barnes.
Sources:
Dr. Lillian Hobbs |
On April 14, 1932, 21-year-old Isabelle Ferguson died of suspected abortion complications. Two physicians in the University of Oklahoma area, J. W. Eisiminger and Richard E. Thacker, were suspected in the case.
Though both doctors were suspected, only Thacker was charged with murder. Isabelle's widower, S. E. Ferguson, sued Thacker for $10,000. Mr. Ferguson held that Thacker, assisted by his wife, Ida, perpetrated the abortion in their office in the Terminal Building in Oklahoma City on March 25. Mr. Ferguson said that after the Thackers had injured Isabelle, they had taken her to their home and "refused her the right to go to a hospital when she became dangerously ill."
Isabelle left behind a six-month-old daughter.
Both Thackers fled the city and were sought by police.
Thacker and Eisiminger were not ordinary doctors who just did abortions on a few patients. They were abortionists, and quack abortionists at that. Singly or as a pair they were implicated in a string of deaths:Mamie Ethel Crowell, age 20, was a telephone operator living on Belmont Avenue in Chicago.
Mamie died on April 14, 1930, possibly in the office of Dr. Hans Paulsen, from an abortion performed on her that day. Two days later, Paulsen was booked for manslaughter by abortion.
The father of the baby, Uriah Denniston, was booked as accessory.
Paulson was held by the Coroner for murder by abortion. Denniston wasn't mentioned in the verdict.
On September 1, the indictment was quashed. The source notes "Circumstances suggesting judicial corruption."
Sources: Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database, Illinois US Deaths and Stillbirths Index 1916-1947
Stella Saenz, age 42, had arranged for a legal abortion in the spring of 1968. At that time, California allowed legal abortions, but only in hospitals. On April 11, she was admitted to Los Angeles County General Hospital with sepsis. Doctors administered penicillin. Stella went into anaphylactic shock; neither she nor the doctors had realized that Stella was allergic to penicillin. Doctors tried to treat both the infection and Stella's reaction to the penicillin, to no avail. She died on April 13. The California Department of Public Health classified Stella's death as both a drug reaction death and a legal abortion death.
Unfortunately, when the Cemetery of Choice Wiki was closed down, I lost access to my original source documents.
According to the New York Index to Death Certificates, 25-year-old Alice Markowitz Russo died at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, NY on April 13, 1939. Her cause of death was generalized peritonitis following alleged self-induced abortion. I have been unable to find any other information about Alice's death.
On April 6, 1991, "Terri," age 34, had an abortion at a doctor's office in the 1100 block of Summit Avenue in Union City, New Jersey. A nurse called the police saying that they needed emergency help for an unconscious patient. According to the police report, the doctor had already left the facility when the nurse called for help. Terri was taken to the hospital and placed on life support. She was pronounced dead on April 11, 1991.
Unfortunately, I lost my source document for Terri's death when the Cemetery of Choice wiki closed.
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Dr. Guy E. Brewer |
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Dr. Raymond Showery |
In the morning of April 10, 1912, 38-year-old Mrs. Grace Peters died at Columbus Hospital in Chicago. She had been taken to the hospital after having taken very ill in her home on April 4.
Abortion-rights groups have been fighting to halt laws that would treat abortion clinics like ambulatory surgical centers. The abortion lobby insists that regulations such as size of doorways and hallways and elevators are just nit-picky and have nothing to do with women's well-being. What they don't want you to know is why these size requirements are included in ambulatory surgery center regulations. If a patient is having a life-threatening emergency, EMS workers need to be able to get the patient onto a gurney and perform resuscitation efforts while moving the patient from the procedure room into the ambulance.
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Lakisha Wilson |
One of the comments in my blog was asking for information about the death of a woman named Minnie Mitchell. I found her death certificate.
Minnie, a 26-year-old Black woman, was admitted to the general hospital in Spartanburg, South Caroline on or around February 13, 1940. She was treated by Dr. William Hendrix until February 19. She died at 2:35 the morning of February 20.
Minnie had been three months pregnant and underwent a criminal abortion on February 9, 1940. The abortion was incomplete, leading to infection and finally to fatal sepsis.
Minnie's death certificate is disturbingly incomplete. She's noted as married, but there's no information about her spouse and she has the same surname as her father. Dr. Hendrix marked that the death was due to homicide, but did not fill out any of the information in the appropriate section of the death certificate to indicate where, how, and by whom her fatal injuries were inflected.
I also can't find any news coverage of Minnie's death or any other sign that a guilty party was ever identified and held accountable.