RealChoice: "Natasha's" Story: The 12-Year-Old Who Was Nearly Eviscerated

Saturday, October 29, 2022

"Natasha's" Story: The 12-Year-Old Who Was Nearly Eviscerated

Chapter 1 of Lime 5 tells the story of 12-year-old "Natasha," who was grotesquely injured in an abortion performed by "John Roe 204." While I'm doing my walk-through of Lime 5 seems a good time to go into more detail.

Newspaper accounts, of course, don't disclose the child's name so I'll continue to refer to her as Natasha.* To simplify the narrative, I'll give her mother the pseudonym "Lucinda." John Roe 204 is Egar Gonzalez, aka Egar Gonzalez-Rodriguez. He had come to the United States from Cuba in 1955 and got his license to practice in Florida in 1977.

Natasha refused to name the father of her baby, but since I've found no coverage of an investigation into statutory rape, he was likely an age-mate.

The Pregnancy

Natasha was described as a healthy, average 7th grader too unaware of a normal menstrual cycle to even notice she was pregnant until she was nearly seven months along that summer of 1982.

At first, Lucinda said, she had trouble believing that her daughter was pregnant at the age of 12, and that her pregnancy was so far advanced. "I never even knew. I thought she was just getting fat because she liked to eat a lot." Once Lucinda grasped the reality, "I just wanted her to have the abortion so she could be a normal 12-year-old girl again."

Around June 18, Lucinda took Natasha to a doctor who said that she was six months pregnant and he would not perform an abortion. Around June 24, she took Natasha to Dr. Val Manocchio at Deerfield Medical Center in Deerfield Beach. He said that Natasha was 26 weeks pregnant and she just go ahead and have the baby.

The first doctor referred the mother and daughter to an unnamed clinic at 1918B SW 57th Avenue in Miami. It was run by 54-year-old Dr. Egar Gonzalez.

The Abortion

The next day Lucinda took Natasha to the facility.

"When we got to the clinic, Gonzalez came out, and he seemed so self-assured," Lucinda told the Miami News. "He told me, 'Don't worry, everything is going to be OK. I can help your daughter.'"

He examined Natasha, then assured the two that the pregnancy was only 24 weeks -- a month less than the actual gestational age and just squeaking by under the legal limit in Florida for elective abortions.

Natasha and her mother arrived at the practice at 9 am on June 25 for the procedure. Gonzalez received a payment of $1,000 in cash. That's just over $3,000 in 2022 dollars.

Today's popular practice of killing the fetus with a lethal injection of digoxin had not been developed yet. The more typical method in 1982 would be a saline induction. This would have meant admitting Natasha to a hospital, then using a large syringe to remove as much amniotic fluid as possible and replace it with a strong salt solution. The salt would cause the baby to bleed to death internally as it swallowed and inhaled the solution. Though this method was gruesome and risky, it was very popular among abortion practitioners because it was easy to perform and required very little involvement by the physician himself.

Instead, Gonzalez decided to just use forceps to pull apart the living unborn child. He struggled with his task for nine hours while Natasha lay anesthetized on the table. He managed to partially dismember the fetus but was unable to complete the abortion.

Lucinda paced in the waiting room.

The Emergency

It wasn't until nearly 6:30 that evening that Gonzalez decided that he'd done enough damage. He went into the waiting room, Lucinda later said, sweating and shaking. "He told me, 'Something went wrong. Something happened to your daughter. We have to call the rescue unit.'"

While they waited for first responders from the Miami Fire Department, Lucinda said, "I went crazy. I didn't know what to do. I thought I was the one that would lose control. I walked into where my child was, and she was just lying there, stretched out like she was taking her last breath."

By the time medics arrived, Natasha was pulseless and unconscious. Gonzalez told those taking over the child's care that she had been 22 weeks pregnant. The ambulance took her to South Miami Hospital.

Dr. Nathan Hirsch, a gynecologist who treated the girl, said, "When we got her on the operating table she was within an hour of death." He described her injuries. "The child's uterus was traumatically ruptured in three different places. She had multiple injuries in her large and small bowels."

To save her life, surgeons removed her damaged uterus and of her large intestine, performing a colostomy. They also removed a partially dismembered unborn baby girl weighing more than two pounds and sent the remains to the medical examiner.

Natasha spent time in the intensive care unit, and it was two weeks before she was finally well enough to go home. She underwent several other surgeries to eventually reconnect her intestines so that she no longer needed the colostomy.

No Justice for the Baby

Prosecutors David Waksman and Tony Musto pursued the case against Gonzalez, who had been a practicing gynecologist since 1955.

Ben Hall, a Metro-Dade homicide detective, noted that Florida law forbade abortions after viability except in cases where the mother's health or life was at risk and even then required that the pregnancy be ended in a way that takes care to preserve the life of the baby.

Detectives pursuing the case likely witnessed the autopsy performed on the baby, and would certainly have seen the autopsy photos. The baby's decapitated head, along with her severed right leg and left arm, had been left inside Natasha's body. The left leg was almost completely severed as well, though the right arm was still attached to the baby's torso. The only part of the baby Gonzalez had succeeded in removing from Natasha's body, likely via suction, had been the baby's brain.

"From the very beginning, we wanted to charge him with first-degree murder," Hall said. "We thought this was a premeditated killing of a human being."

"A human being has been killed," said Prosecutor Waksman. "The medical examiner said, after examining the baby, that it was viable. We're satisfied that the fetus was a human being. he acted recklessly. He did have the intent to kill."

However, after the state's attorney researched the law, the charge against Gonzalez for killing Natasha's viable unborn baby was downgraded to manslaughter.

Gonzalez challenged the charge. His attorney, Frances Barrera, asserted that because the killing took place inside Natasha's body, the entity Gonzalez killed was not a human being under Florida law.

Dade Circuit Court Judge Joseph Farina agreed, asserting that according to Florida law, the baby could have only been considered a human being under the law if she had been born alive and then died of injuries inflicted during the abortion

No Justice for Natasha

The prosecutors had also charged Gonzalez with aggravated battery against his young patient on the grounds that she had not consented to the catastrophic injuries she'd suffered. Judge Farina also threw out that charge on the grounds that Natasha and her mother had both signed consent forms which included internal injuries as possible risks. This left prosecutors with nothing but the illegal abortion charge, with a maximum possible sentence of five years rather than the minimum manslaughter sentence of 15 years.

Gonzalez's attorney also tried to get the illegal abortion charge thrown out on the grounds that under Roe, the state had no right to forbid abortions after a particular point in pregnancy but that rather it hinged on whether the fetus was viable. This argument didn't hold water, since the Medical Examiner and every other doctor who treated Natasha had been in agreement that the baby could have survived if born alive. This charge stood.

Gonzalez seemed to believe that he had made everything right when he had returned the $1,000 Lucinda had paid for the abortion. He justified not having consulted with another doctor prior to undertaking such a risky procedure because he was "so anxious to get the abortion done."

Gonzalez as Victim?

Barrera characterized Gonzalez as a "superlative" doctor who "has performed thousands and thousands of pregnancy terminations in this country and his native Cuba." She asserted that "one in every 300 abortions results in a hysterectomy" and that Natasha's case is the first in more than 1,200 abortions he'd done in Miami that resulted in a complication.

This claim holds little water, since while awaiting a decision by the board Gonzales had performed an abortion on another woman that had left her requiring a hysterotomy and colostomy to save her life.

Frances Barrera said that she was one of Gonzalez's patients. "He is a family man and a decent human being. And because he's had one mishap during years of practice does not justify this vindictive persecution by the state of Florida." She said that the press was doing a "hatchet job" on Gonzalez as they reported on the near-fatal abortion.

Medical board member Dr. Raul Valdes Fali responded, "You used the expression 'hatchet job.' I have the record before me, and I haven't seen a more perfect example of a hatchet job than what Dr. Gonzalez performed on that woman and her fetus."

The Slap on the Wrist

Gonzalez pleaded no contest on the illegal abortion charge and was sentenced to five years on probation.

The medical board voted unanimously to revoked his license rather than merely suspend it indefinitely. Nevertheless, it was nobody's responsibility to check up on him to make sure he wasn't practicing. It turns out that losing his license and having to answer to a probation officer did not throw off the ex-doctor's groove. He kept quietly doing abortions in his clinic, sailing just under the radar.

Retraumatizing Natasha

In 1988, "a concerned citizen" wrote a letter to Department of Professional Regulation chief Tom Gallagher to report that Gonzales was still in business. The state began an investigation. A dozen women reported that Gonzalez has performed abortions on them, and he tried to sell an abortion to an undercover investigator. Police also arrested Gonzalez, along 42-year-old Maria Chavez, who was not licensed to practice medicine anywhere in the United States, for performing abortions at Gonzalez's office.

Lyda Longa of the Miami News spoke by phone with Lucinda after Gonzalez was arrested. Natasha was too traumatized to be interviewed.

"Ever since my daughter saw that man's face again, she has been withdrawn. She prefers to remain in her room with the door closed. She's been crying every day and she has been throwing up."

Lucinda nearly wept as she told the reporter, "I couldn't believe it was him all over again. I couldn't believe he was still out there practicing medicine. We were just starting to get our lives in order with much difficulty, and now we have to be reminded of this again."

Natasha was 18 years old by then. She had finished high school and had a boyfriend who knew nothing about the abortion. But when Gonzalez was shown on the TV news, according to Lucinda, Natasha said, "It's starting all over again, mama. That man is back."

Natasha struggled after the abortion, with good days when she was a vibrant teenager and bad days when she would cry for hours in her bedroom.

Lucinda was considering getting her daughter some psychiatric help. "I've felt guilty all these years," Lucinda told the reporter, "because after all, I was the one that took her to Gonzalez."

Where is Gonzalez Now?

Dade Circuit Court Judge Martin Greenbaum released Gonzalez on $35,000 bond but warned him, "If you so much as look at a surgical sponge, that would constitute enough to revoke your bond and take you into custody."

Gonzalez seemed to have taken the warning seriously. There is no further mention of him in any news source I can find, I haven't been able to even determine if he remained in the US or returned to Cuba.

Lime 5: Injuries to the Bowel will go active on November 2, 2022.

*My research has identified Natasha; she was a young black girl, which made her at higher risk for abortion complications than a white girl.

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