March 28, 2014: Dead Because of an Elevator

 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.

 
On this date in 2014, 22-year-old Lakisha Wilsondied because a clinic was not laid out to allow easy access by an ambulance gurney.

Lakisha Wilson

Operation Rescue obtained the autopsy report. Lakisha went to Preterm Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio on March 21, 2014. She was 19.4 weeks pregnant. Further investigation by Operation Rescue reveals further details on the pathetic excuse for treatment Lakisha received at the clinic, as well as how the substandard conditions in the clinic contributed to Lakisha's death. After the safe, legal abortion, performed by Lisa Perierra, she began bleeding heavily because her uterus had become soft (atony). 

The procedure rooms at Preterm are on the third floor of the building. When emergency medical services arrived, the elevator was malfunctioning. They were delayed in getting the gurney to Lakisha due to this problem. When they entered the room, where Lakisha still lay on the abortion table with her legs in the stirrups, they found her abortionist, Dr. Lisa Perriera, trying to resuscitate her with a pediatric-sized Ambu-Bag. The IV for administering medications had been torn loose somehow by clinic staff. 

EMS began working to revive Lakisha, who had no pulse and was not breathing. The medics were able to get her heart going but were hampered in their further resuscitation efforts because the elevator was too small to properly accommodate the gurney; Lakisha had to be taken into the elevator in a seated position that did not provide adequate access to her airway. Several house later she was finally taken to Chase University Medical Center, where she was placed on life support and pronounced dead on March 28.

Here is video, with 911 audio, of an ambulance call two years before Lakisha's death. This patient, like Lakisha, was hemorrhaging due to uterine atony. In this patient's case, the elevator wasn't working at all. Fortunately, she survived.

March 2 Erica Richardson do rewrite

 

I looked for, and found a bit, more information on the death of Erica Kay Richardson.

Sixteen-year-old Erica was brought to Dr. Gene Crawford by her aunt on March 1, 1989 for a safe, legal abortion. Erica's aunt had gone to Crawford because Washington Center Hospital considered Erica's pregnancy to be too advanced for a safe abortion.

Erica's aunt reported that Crawford left the girl unattended and bleeding for four hours after her abortion, then at 11PM carried her to the car and instructed her aunt to take her home and put her to bed.

Erica's aunt, a nurse, instead took the girl to Bowie Hospital Center, where she was admitted already in respiratory arrest. Erica died of an embolism (foreign matter or air in the bloodstream) shortly after midnight on March 2. Her uterus and cervix had been punctured during the 19-week abortion.

Erica's mother had not known that her daughter was going to have an abortion.