It's probably much harder to sell an abortion to a woman who only believes herself to be pregnant in our days of over-the-counter home pregnancy tests. However, it wasn't always that easy to verify on your own if you were or weren't pregnant. Women were sometimes sold abortions when they weren't actually pregnant, either because of a screw-up or because of blatant dishonesty, as was the case with the Voodoo Abortion Couple, Dr. Judith Comeau-Samuel and her husband, Dr. Maxen Samuel. The couple would charge $75 for a pregnancy test. They would then tell the patient she was pregnant, then offer to apply the $75 pregnancy test fee toward the cost of an abortion. Authorities estimated that 25% of the abortions performed at Comeau-Samuel's facilities were done on non-pregnant women. The number of victims in 1985 was estimated at 2,400.
It was also the stories of abortion clinics selling abortions to women who weren't pregnant that prompted Diane Sawyer to have one of her people call us at Life Dynamics and ask for information about clinics that were still open after getting caught doing that. Of course, when she found out that women were also being maimed, killed, and possibly raped she decided that she didn't want to do a story on seedy abortion clinics after all.
With this in mind, let's look at the cases from Lime 5.
"Sharon" went to San Vicente Hospital (Hospital 7) on January 26, 1974. Based on their assurance that she was indeed pregnant and that an abortion "was necessary for her health" she was admitted for an abortion. During the procedure she suffered injuries requiring treatment. She only discovered afterwards that she had not been pregnant after all. (Los Angeles County Superior Court Case No. 109113)
"Patricia" went to a Kansas City, Missouri abortion clinic on April 16, 1983. She said that after "the painful poking had been going on probably about seven to nine minutes, ... the doctor had stopped for a second, and whispered something to the nurse ... and the nurse raised me up and said, it had been a mistake, I had not been pregnant." Patricia later said, "I was weak and I could not respond." She bled heavily, and a nurse told her that if they couldn't stop the bleeding they would have to send her to the hospital by ambulance. Another clinic employee warned her not to fall asleep. Patricia dressed and waited for an ambulance. "I waited for .. a half hour, and I was getting weaker and weaker, and nobody said anything about an ambulance. I wasn't going to wait all day.... I was crying telling [my sister] what happened. And I told her to come and get me." Patricia's sister drove her to the hospital, with tissues stuffed into her underpants because the clinic hadn't even given her a pad to absorb the bleeding. Patricia's reproductive organs were damaged and it was three years before her periods resumed. (St. Louis Missouri Circuit Court Cause No. 852-01457)
"Joann" underwent an abortion by John Roe 382 on June 17, 1985. She suffered a perforated uterus and permanent injury that required surgical repair. Doctors subsequently determined that Joann had not even been pregnant. (Oakland County Michigan Circuit Court Civil Action No. 86 320211)
"Debra" was able to use a home pregnancy test when she thought that she'd gotten pregnant in spite of having an IUD. When it came back positive, she went to John Roe 92 in Denver. He didn't give her another test to confirm the pregnancy but just assumed that the over-the-counter test was accurate and performed an abortion. There was no tissue collected from the procedure, so Roe tried again. Still unable to get tissue, he sent Debra to a hospital to check for a tubal pregnancy. There, he made an abdominal incision and noted a mass on or near Debra's ovary. Roe stated, "Because it could not be certain as to what exactly was going on, it was elected to remove the ovary and the distal segment of the tube." A lab report found that there was no pregnancy tissue in the tube or ovary. Debra had not, in fact, been pregnant. (Denver Colorado District Court Case No. 86 CV 7389)
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| Synthia Yvette Dennard |
Twenty-four-year-old Synthia Dennard, a married mother of two, went to Biogenetics in Chicago for an abortion and tubal ligation on September 7, 1989. The surgery was performed by Inno Obasi. Synthia began to hemorrhage during the surgery. A medical investigation later found that Obasi had "failed to summon help in a timely manner; refused to allow trained and skilled paramedics to attend to Synthia; refused to allow paramedics to transport Synthia to a hospital in a timely manner," and otherwise "allowed Synthia to bleed to death." An autopsy revealed that instead of removing a section of Synthia's fallopian tube, Obasi had removed a portion of an artery. The autopsy also revealed that Synthia, mother of two, had not been pregnant at the time of her abortion. Biogenetics is the same facility where "Susanna Chisholm," and Brenda Benton underwent their fatal abortions.
Watch Lime 5: Not Pregnant on YouTube.
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