Thursday, June 19, 2025

June 19, 1984: Teen Found Dead on Bathroom Floor

 After awakening from a nap on June 19, 1984, 14-year-old "Gwen Newhart's"* mother found her dead on the bathroom floor.

Dr. E. Wyman Garrett

Just five days before, Gwen had undergone a second-trimester abortion performed by 46-year-old Dr. E. Wyman Garrett** in Newark, New Jersey. She was 22 weeks pregnant.

At home after her abortion, Gwen began vomiting and suffered from abdominal pain and a high fever. Her mother called Garrett, who told her that the symptoms were normal and prescribed antibiotics. She seemed to improve briefly, but took a turn for the worse on June 18.

Gwen's mother called the next morning and Garrett said to bring Gwen in to the office. Mrs. Newhart took a nap and awoke to find her daughter dead on the bathroom floor.

The massive infection that was causing her symptoms killed her.

An autopsy found that Gwen's uterus had been punctured, and her abdomen was full of pus and adhesions.

When the New Jersey medical board investigated Dr. Garrett, they noted that he had illegally altered Gwen's medical records. He had also performed Gwen's abortion in violation of state regulations, since New Jersey required that abortions past the first trimester be performed in a hospital.

They noted other, non-fatal injuries including:

  • A 16-year-old girl who had to be hospitalized with a 1-inch tear in her uterus and a pelvic infection from a second-trimester abortion Garrett performed in his office rather than a hospital
  • A baby boy born alive at University Hospital in Newark after Garrett had initiated a saline abortion; the baby died 15 weeks later.
  • A baby girl who suffered birth injuries leaving her severely brain damaged after Garrett failed to diagnose intrauterine growth retardation
  • A woman who was discharged from the clinic with a fetal head left in her uterus

Garrett argued that he was suffering from ''burnout syndrome,'' caused by performing more than 2,600 second-trimester abortions between 1982 and 1986. He asserted, "If any man has this much work, he's going to have complications." He pleaded no-contest in the state case.

In 1986 the board concluded that Garrett was guilty of gross negligence, abandonment of patients, and professional misconduct. He failed to recognize and treat complications in a timely manner, they found. banned Garrett from performing abortions or other outpatient surgery. In 1987 they revoked his license. They cited a total of 26 abortions performed in a "grossly improper" manner. As of 1994 he still owed over $175,000 in fines and court costs from the medical board suspension proceedings.

Garrett had other unsavory run-ins with society. In 1971, during a teacher strike, Garrett (who was then a school board member) told a school trustee "We know where you live. We're going to get you." He then turned to a reporter who was taking notes and said, "You'll have to give me your notebook or you won't get out of this building alive." Garrett then, according to the reporter, summoned two men to beat the reporter up and take his notebook and wallet. Two weeks into the trial Garrett plea-bargained down to interfering with people at a public meeting and paid $2,000 in fines and costs. 

In 1983 he started refusing to do second-trimester abortions at University Hospital in Newark because they would no longer pay him $250 to $300 per abortion instead of the Medicaid physician fee of $79. (In 2022 dollars, he had been getting $734 - $880 per abortion when the Medicaid fee was $232.) Garrett publicly said that since the hospital was reimbursed $1,334 ($3,915 in 2022 dollars) per abortion and he performed 851 abortion there in the previous year, he'd brought the hospital more than $1.2 million in Medicaid dollars (about $3.5 in 2022 dollars). Garrett argued that he was entitled to more than $79 because his usual abortion fee was from $400 to $900 ($1,174 - $2,641 in 2022 dollars). 

In 1984 Garret performed a fatal abortion on Gail Wright.

In 1986 a whistleblower claimed that she discovered that Garret was preparing post-operative reports prior to surgery he was performing at University Hospital.

*Source failed to redact name in original, but out of privacy respect I use a pseudonym. 

** "John Roe 268" in Lime 5

Watch "Stopped Before He Could Kill Another Patient" on YouTube.

Sources: 


Deceived or lying?
Abortion advocates argue that although legal abortion deaths like Gwen's are indeed sad, they're only a pale shadow of the carnage that would ensue were legal protection restored to unborn children. They use these claims to garner support among those otherwise reluctant to support legal abortion as well as to slander life advocates.

There are two approaches Big Abortion takes when trying to scare people into supporting legal abortion as a means of protecting women's lives:

Outright lying. They will trot out the long-disproven claim that 5,000 to 10,000 women were dying every year from abortion before legalization.

Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of NARAL,* admitted that he and his associates knew that the claims of 5,000 to 10,000 criminal abortion deaths were false. They bandied them about anyway, Nathanson confessed, because they were useful. This, too, is old news -- Nathanson came clean in 1979 when he published Aborting America.

Lying by omission. They will use numbers that are accurate, but will totally remove them from context in order to draw a conclusion that is demonstrably false. which typically involves taking fairly reliable abortion mortality numbers from before and after legalization then crediting legalization for the drop. No less prestigious organization than the Alan Guttmacher Institute uses this statistical legerdemain: "As the availability of legally induced abortion increased, mortality due to abortion dropped sharply: The number of abortion-related deaths per million live births fell from nearly 40 in 1970 to eight in 1976."

The truth is that you can take virtually any time period from when public health officials first started collecting the data and you'll find that abortion mortality fell. The only exception is a strange leveling-off in the 1950s that I've been unable to account for:

Milan Vuitch
What caused abortion mortality to fall precipitously wasn't legalization. Legalization didn't even make a blip in the trends, likely because for every non-physician whose business fell away, a physician abortionist became sloppy once the risk of a prison sentence for botching an abortion was gone. I know of three erstwhile criminal abortionists -- Jesse Ketchum, Milan Vuitch, and Benjamin Munson -- who kept their noses clean prior to legalization but each went on to practice appallingly sloppy abortions that killed two patients after legalization.

*National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, later renamed National Abortion Rights Association, now called NARAL Pro-Choice America
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Monday, June 16, 2025

June 16, 1910: First Death Attributed to Fred Orainger

On June 16, 1910, Mrs. Paulina Sproc, a 35-year-old immigrant from Bohemia, died in a Chicago home from an abortion that had been performed on June 5.

A man mistakenly identified in the Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database as W.L. Orsinger was held by the coroner's jury. However, his name was actually Fred L. Orsinger. Orsinger had battled with the medical board for 32 years trying to get licensed and insisted on practicing regardless.

Ten years later Orsinger was implicated in the abortion death of Minnie Schofield in March of 1917.

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

Sources: 
Chicago Business Directory, 1904



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Saturday, June 14, 2025

June 14, 1983: No One Willing to Take Responsibility

A lawsuit filed by Eduardo Bermeo alleged that his wife, Ecuadoran-born Rosario Bermeo, age 30, died following abortion by Dr. Joseph B. Shapse at Prospect Hospital in New York June 14, 1983.

Shapse noted that no autopsy had been performed, so Eduardo could not prove that Rosario had die for any reason "beyond respiratory and cardiac arrest." He said that the abortion proceeded without incident, and that he had no responsibility for actions of the certified registered nurse anesthetist. 

The CRNA, Shapse noted, had been the one monitoring Rosario after the abortion, when her vital signs began to fail. Therefore, he said, he was not to blame for her death.

Eduardo's attorney countered with an affidavit by a physician that Shapse was indeed responsible for supervising the SRNA and that he had a duty to monitor and evaluate his patient's condition during and immediately after surgery.

Prospect operated only from 1963 to 1985, according to Forgotten New York. It did not long outlive Eduardo's unfortunate wife. 

Watch Passing the Buck on YouTube.
Watch Passing the Buck on Rumble. 

Source: New York Appellate Court 162 A.D.2d 235

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June 14, 1977: First Known National Abortion Federation Death

Who Was Barbaralee Davis?

Eighteen-year-old Barbaralee Davis had already lived an intense life. With her mother's permission, she had married 21-year-old David A. Davis II in September of 1973 at the age of only 15. She was separated from her husband and was caring for a 3-year-old son. Barbaralee had a history of irregular periods, but when she noticed symptoms of pregnancy she visited a local hospital for a pregnancy test, which came out negative. However, her symptoms continued so she returned to the hospital two weeks later and this time the pregnancy test was positive.

Trusting the National Abortion Federation

Barbaralee requested an abortion referral. A local women's group sent her to Hope Clinic for Women in Granite City, Illinois. Hope Clinic, about a two-hour drive from Barbaralee's home, was a member of the newly founded National Abortion Federation. Her abortion was scheduled for about one week later.

Hope Clinic for Women

When Barbaralee arrived at the clinic on June 14, 1977, it had been five months since her last menstrual period.

Hope Medical Director Hector Zavalos examined Barbaralee and concluded that she was 11 weeks pregnant. Zavalos performed a suction curettage abortion. 

Barbaralee was moved to the recovery room. The last recording of her blood pressure, taken about 45 minutes after the abortion, was low, at 100/68.

Barbaralee attended a post-abortion counseling session, during which she was pale and reporting lower abdominal cramping. She was kept for observation an additional half an hour.

At some point staff told Barbaralee's worried sister, Rita Tripp, that there had been complications but that everything would be fine.

Sent Home Hemorrhaging

About two hours after the abortion, Barbaralee reportedly told staff that she felt better and asked to be sent home. Barbaralee was not given a discharge examination. Zavalos simply sent her on her way, asserting that she seemed to be okay. However, according to the CDC's investigators, Barbaralee was showing symptoms "suggestive of internal hemorrhage."  Her sister said that Barbaralee was pale and weak when she helped her out to the car.

Barbaralee lay in the back seat on the way home. When they arrived, Rita said, Barbaralee told her that she felt like something was wrong. 

Rita said that she tried to call Zavalos but was unable to reach him.

Barbaralee remained lethargic and seemed to go to sleep. About two hours after returning home she tried to stand up but fainted. She was rushed to the Pinckneyville hospital by ambulance, where an emergency hysterectomy was attempted to save her life. Barbaralee died during the surgery, leaving her child motherless.

What The Autopsy Revealed

The autopsy found the face and spinal column of Barbaralee's baby embedded in a hole in her uterus. There were two quarts of blood in her abdomen. Barbaralee had bled to death.

The medical examiner noted: "A very large retroperitoneal hematoma is present with dissection of blood along right ureter. A 4 mc. tear is noted on the right anterior surface of the lower third of the uterus and a large amount of blood, estimated at 2000 ccs. is present in the pelvis. Two fetal parts, the face and thoracic spinal column, are embedded in a 700 cc. fresh hematoma inside the uterus."

Illinois law placed a 12-week limit on outpatient abortions. Zavalos told CDC investigators that he thought Barbaralee had been only 11 weeks pregnant even though her last normal menstrual period had been five months earlier. The clinic records examined by CDC staff said that the gross examination of the fetal tissue removed during the abortion was consistent with an 11-week pregnancy. However, the medical examiner drew a different conclusion, based on the tissue that had been left embedded in Barbaralee's uterus:

In an attempt to estimate the length of gestation in the absence of the whole fetus, the two parts, namely the face, less the crown, and the thoracic vertebral column without the rump, are laid end to end. Together they measure 9 cm. A conservative estimate of the crown to rump length would be 10 to 11 cm. This will place the gestational age at 16 to 16 1/2 weeks.

The Lawsuit

Barbaralee's family sued both Zavalos and the clinic for $1 million. In particular, Barbaralee's family attorney brought up the following issues:

  • "Patients who receive abortions should be observed at the clinic 'for a period of time sufficient to ensure that no immediate post-operative complications are present'."
  • "Patients in whom any adverse condition exists or in whom a complication is known should be transferred to a hospital"
  • "Clinics should have a 'written agreement' with an approved hospital to provide 'prompt transfer' of persons requiring in-patient care."
Illinois law required that outpatient surgery centers have a written agreement with a hospital not more than 15 minutes away for transfer of patients needing care. Hope Clinic did not have any such written agreement.

A doctor reviewing the case for Barbaralee's family noted that it would be evident from the fetal remains whether Barbaralee's unborn baby was over 16 weeks or merely 11 weeks. For reference, an 11-week fetus is about 1.6 inches long and weighs about 1.6 ounces, while a 16-week fetus is about 7.3 inches long and weighs a little over 5 ounces. A foot measurement, which is commonly used in abortion facilities to verify fetal age, would be 7-8 mm in an 11-week fetus and 20 mm in a 16-week fetus.

The defendants tried to get the case thrown out on a technicality, because the family's attorney had sued both the facility and the doctor under the same count. In response, the attorney severed the two cases and asked for $1.4 million from each rather than $1 million for the two defendants.

Hope Clinic for Women was not only permitted to remain in operation, it was allowed to remain a member in good standing of the National Abortion Federation.

Sources: 

Watch "Lying or Clueless?" on YouTube.


As I was updating the entry for Barbaralee, the first known abortion death at a National Abortion Federation member clinic, I because disgusted as I always am by the cavalier attitude the abortion lobby -- and their media lapdogs -- take towards women's legal abortion deaths. I just want to take some time to call out a particularly infuriating example.

The September 1, 1977 Decatur Daily Review quotes attorney Frank Susman, who had defended Dr. Kenneth Edelin in an infanticide case related to a post-viability abortion. 

The face and spine of Barbaralee's fetus were found embedded in a rip in her uterus. But how did Susman characterize the failure to even notice that major parts of the fetus hadn't been removed? "[A]bortion, like all surgical procedures involves a risk, and possibly a risk of death. And this patient in this procedure was advised of that."

Was Barbaralee informed that it was possible that pieces of her dead fetus would be left embedded in a uterine tear, and that she might be sent home with an undiagnosed, life-threatening injury? And why is "Well, all surgery has risks" an excuse for an abortion death caused by such an egregious injury? Had Barbaralee's abortion been illegal, though still performed by a doctor, no doubt that same spokesperson for the abortion lobby would have been livid about how the legal status of abortion had forced Barbaralee to seek substandard care and suffer an injury she never would have died from had her abortion been legal. If it weren't for double standards, the abortion lobby would have no standards at all.

Then there's the misinformation: "I think we just have to put this in perspective and realize that -- for example -- well over a million abortions were performed last year in the United states and there were five deaths."

That statement simply wasn't true. According to the 1976 CDC Abortion Surveillance Summary, there were ten legal abortion deaths -- twice the number Susman claimed. To be fair, the CDC doesn't exactly leap out and announce abortion death numbers right away. The 1976 summary wasn't issued until August of 1978. Susman doesn't say where he got the lowball number. The CDC also admittedly missed one, since the 2019 Abortion Surveillance Summary notes 11 legal abortion deaths for 1976. Of course, that's assuming that the CDC actually knows -- or even cares -- how many legal abortion deaths there are. There's abundant evidence that their data collection on legal abortion deaths has been perfunctory at best since Willard Cates and David Grimes left the abortion surveillance branch.

The kicker, though, is the way Susman, the abortion lobby, and the media simply dismiss legal abortion deaths as nothing worth worrying your pretty little head about. Imagine if, after an airline crash, the NTSB and the airlines insisted that the concern was far out of proportion and started citing the overall safety of airline travel. Such a transparently self-serving attitude would be roundly condemned. For some reason, though, the abortion lobby is able to dismiss cases of fatal malpractice by reminding us that comparatively few patients actually die. 

The proper response to any death caused by mistakes, or slipshod procedures, or faulty equipment is to do a preventability study and to at least suggest corrective action. Why aren't abortion facilities held to this standard?

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June 14, 1991: Deadly Abortionist Better Than No Abortionist At All?

  

Angela Hall, a 27-year-old mother of five, felt unable to deal with a sixth child. She saw an advertisement for safe, legal abortion at Thomas Tucker's office in Alabama.  The ad, which pictured a couple walking arm-in-arm, said that Tucker did abortions to 24 weeks. Angela called to schedule an appointment. 

Angela was keeping the abortion a secret from her mother, and drove to Tucker's Birmingham clinic with a friend, Annette Wilson. One of Tucker's employees, Joy Davis, screened Angela and felt that she had risk factors that made abortion in an office setting unsafe. She had a fever and was anemic. Joy got on the phone with Tucker and indicated that she felt that Angela should be referred to a hospital. Tucker told Davis that "we need the money. Just do it. Just put the patient through." 

Tucker ordered her to prep Angela, who was in the second trimester of pregnancy. The fee for Angela's abortion was $1,800. She was already unconscious, under general anesthesia, when Tucker started the abortion on June 11, 1991. Angela started gasping for breath. Her blood pressure fell, setting off an alarm on a piece of monitoring equipment. Tucker told Davis to turn the alarm off because other patients could hear it. "It was a very panicked atmosphere," Joy Davis said. "Dr. Tucker was screaming at us." He managed to stabilize Angela's blood pressure and sent her to the recovery room.

While in recovery, Angela bled so heavily that Davis became alarmed and called an ambulance. "Blood was running down the table," Joy Davis tearfully told reporters. "It was pooling in the floor and running down behind her back." Angela's sheets and hospital gown were soaked. Davis said that Tucker told her that he was the doctor and if anybody was going to make a decision to call the ambulance, it was going to be him.

Davis reported to Tucker that Angela was bleeding through the packing put in place after the abortion, and asked him to do something for his patient.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked her. 

"I don't know," Davis said she responded, "but I want you to do something. She's going to lay here and die."

"Fine. Call the f*ing ambulance," Tucker said before leaving the building, according to Davis. He was loath to call an ambulance, Davis reported, because he had already referred a patient to a hospital that day for complications. 

Angela was taken to the hospital, where she suffered respiratory failure, clotting, and sepsis. It was hours after she was admitted that her friend finally called her mother, in hysterics, to say that Angela was being taken to the Intensive Care Unit. Annette didn't mention the abortion. Angela's mother rushed to the hospital, where she saw her daughter hooked up to tubes, pale, and breathing only faintly. 

She died just before midnight June 14. The autopsy found numerous tears and lesions in the pelvic area, and congestive necrosis in Angela's liver and spleen. The doctors concluded that amniotic fluid embolism had caused clotting problems resulting in necrosis, septic shock, and cardiac arrest. 

When Alabama authorities subpoenaed Angela's records, Tucker ordered Davis to destroy some and falsify others. Davis tore up the records, which he then tried to burn in an ash tray, Davis said. When this set off the clinic's smoke alarm, Tucker put out the fire, bagged up the papers, and told Davis to take the papers to the basement and burn them. Instead, she said, she taped them back together and eventually turned them over to the medical board. 

During the initial investigation, the board learned that Tucker allowed his untrained staff to do medical procedures, including inserting the laminaria sticks to dilate a patient's cervix prior to the abortion, while he wasn't even in-state much less at the clinic.

Tucker surrendered his medical license in order to halt the investigation, planning to renew his license at a later date.

It is interesting to note that in the publicity surrounding the lawsuit filed by Angela's family, Ron Fitzsimmons of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, among other prochoice groups, balked at efforts to close Tucker down, on the grounds that he was Alabama's only abortionist, and that even he was better than no abortionist at all.

Angela's parents took their five grandchildren into their two-bedroom house. Her youngest child has no memories of his mother, only of taking flowers to her grave.

Watch How Important is a Local Abortionist? on YouTube.

Sources:

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Thursday, June 12, 2025

June 12, 1970: "Maternal Indications" Abortion Proves Fatal for Philadelphia Mother

Arlene Francis Hull was an unmarried 24-year-old black woman living in Philadelphia. She discovered she was pregnant in the spring or early summer of 1970.

There is no record of whether Arlene sought out an abortion on her own initiative or whether her doctor recommended it because she has multiple sclerosis (MS) and epilepsy causing grand mal seizures. Whatever the reason for the abortion, due to her health issues her doctor was able to admit her to Jefferson Hospital for an abortion at 15 weeks. 

Though Pennsylvania abortion law didn't specify a "life of the mother" exception, Arlene's doctors felt confident about the legality of their decision. 

Grok indicates that MS symptoms can either improve or improve during pregnancy. In 1970 it was treated primarily for corticosteroids for flare-ups. At that time doctors recommended that women with MS avoid pregnancy. Common antiepileptic drugs in 1970 could harm the fetus, leaving doctors to have to balance the risk of seizures and the risks of causing fetal injury. 

The technique chosen was hysterotomy (pictured), which is just a C-section with the intention that the baby not survive. Jefferson Hospital was a major academic medical center, appropriate for any kind of surgery for a high-risk patient. Grok could only theorize as to why such an invasive procedure was chosen. However, in 1970, abortion at 15 weeks was unusual because the fetus was too big to be aborted with a dilation and curettage but the uterus was too small for most doctors to attempt an amniocenteses abortion, which usually wasn't attempted prior to 18 weeks. Saline amniocenteses would also have been an extremely risky procedure even for a healthy woman.

Arlene's abortion was performed at 9:15 am on June 12. By 4:30 pm, Arlene was dead from complications of the thiopental, nitrous oxide, succinyl choline and curare administered for anesthesia. According to Grok, this drug combination was standard for general anesthesia, but might have been a risky choice for a patient with neurological conditions. 

Grok offers the following possible mechanisms of complication leading to Arlene's death:

  • Respiratory Depression or Arrest: Thiopental and nitrous oxide can suppress breathing, particularly if dosing is not carefully titrated. Succinylcholine and curare, which paralyze respiratory muscles, require mechanical ventilation; any delay or failure in intubation could lead to hypoxia.
  • Anaphylaxis or Adverse Reaction: Succinylcholine or curare can trigger allergic reactions or malignant hyperthermia, a rare but fatal condition causing muscle rigidity and fever.
  • Neurological Interaction: Arlene’s epilepsy and MS may have altered her response to anesthesia. For example, succinylcholine can cause prolonged paralysis in patients with neurological disorders, and AEDs may interact with anesthetics, increasing sedation or toxicity.
  • Cardiovascular Collapse: Anesthesia-induced hypotension, combined with Arlene’s compromised health, could have led to shock or cardiac arrest.
Grok did not share my confidence that Pennsylvania doctors would have had no fear of prosecution for performing a hospital abortion on a high-risk patient. 

Sources: 

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Monday, June 09, 2025

June 9, 1979: First of Two Deaths From Near-Simultaneous Injuries

 Summary: Angela Scott was the first of two teens to die of nearly simultaneous injuries at a National Abortion Federation member clinic.

In the era of safe, legal abortion, we find a case of striking ineptitude. 

On June 2 of 1979. National Abortion Federation member Atlanta Women's Pavillion rose to new levels of incompetence when staff there managed to fatally injure two teenage abortion patients in less than an hour.

Recovery Room at Atlanta Women's Pavilion
Dr. Jacob Adams was a co-owner of the clinic, along with Dr. Otis Hammonds and Dr. Olly C. Duckett. Adams performed an abortion under general anesthesia on 19-year-old Angela Belinda Scott. He sent her to the recovery room then began performing an abortion on 15-year-old Delores Jean Smith.

Angela, an unmarried Black member of the National Guard Medical Corps, went into cardio-respiratory arrest in the recovery room due to what was reported as an "idiosyncratic reaction" to anesthesia. 

Nurse Teresa Stearns, who was not certified as an anesthetist, was administering anesthesia to Delores while Adams was performing her abortion. Stearns ran to assist in efforts to revive Angela, leaving Delores with her intravenous anesthesia drip still running while Adams continued with the abortion.

There was a 25-minute delay in getting an ambulance to the clinic because staff didn't tell the ambulance service that the call was for an emergency. 

After the staff had resuscitated Angela and loaded her into an ambulance, they returned their attention to Delores , who had gone into cardio-respiratory arrest. 

Dr. Jacob Adams
Adams had accompanied Angela to the Grady Memorial Hospital, and even though the ambulance could have transported both patients, staff refused to release Delores until the physician had returned to discharge her. This resulted in a 30-minute delay, during which the ambulance crew was unable to attend to Delores or begin transporting her.

Angela lingered for a week in a coma before dying at 2:35 a.m. on June 9. Her mother, Sarah Kellorn, sued the clinic, the three owners, and the nurse for $12.3 million, calling Atlanta's 10 or so outpatient abortion clinics "unregulated assembly-line abortion mills." At the time, abortion clinics in Georgia were not regulated beyond a requirement that they be overseen by a licensed physician.

Delores remained comatose in an intensive-care unit at Grady.

Fulton County District Attorney Lewis Slaton launched an investigation. Atlanta homicide chief Lieutenant W. K. Perry said, "We've had everybody, including the CDC, calling to see what happened and why." 

State legislators held hearings about regulating abortion clinics. The medical board held formal hearings. The Food and Drug Administration examined the anesthesia drugs used on the patients.

Delores never regained consciousness. She was admitted to a nursing home in August, where she died of adult respiratory distress syndrome on October 24, 1979. Delores's mother, Nancy Smith, filed a $12.3 million suit against the clinic after learning that her daughter's pregnancy test performed at the clinic had come up negative.

Both young women were Black -- a fact that made them at higher risk of abortion death for reasons that, to my knowledge, have never been investigated.

Watch "The First of Two Deaths" on YouTube.

Sources:

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Sunday, June 08, 2025

June 8, 1964: Geri the Poster Child and Why "Never Again" Rings Hollow

Geraldine "Gerri" Santoro is the woman in the infamous photo used by abortion advocates to illustrate the horror of illegal abortion. The photo showed Gerri, nude, face-down with her knees under her, on the floor of the motel room where she died in June of 1964. 

Ms. Magazine first published the photo in 1973, and abortion advocates continue to use the picture in posters. In 1995, Boston filmmaker Jane Gillooly produced a film, "Leona's Sister Gerri," to rally people behind the cause of readily available abortion, on PBS, at taxpayer expense. An icon in death, who was Geraldine Santoro in life?

Gerri's Marriage

Born August 16, 1935, Geri was part of a large family of 10 boys and three girls. Gerri's best friend from high school described her as fun-loving, given to playing hooky and getting sent to the principal's office for mischief. Gerri wanted to beat an engaged friend to the altar, so she got married at age 18 to Sebastian "Sam" Santoro, three or four weeks after she had met him at a bus stop. 

But Santoro was abusive. Gerri's sister reported often seeing her covered with bruises, and seeing the children beaten with a belt. Santoro reportedly blamed the abuse on sinus problems that gave him headaches that made him irritable, so he moved his little family to California. But the abuse continued. One of Gerri's daughters later recounted hearing her mother screaming, going into the bedroom, and seeing her father atop Gerri, his hands around her throat. So in 1963, Gerri left Sam Santoro and took their two daughters, ages 8 and 9, to live on her family's farm in Coventry, Connecticut.

The Pregnancy 
 
Clyde Dixon in court
Gerri first worked as a waitress at Hillside Restaurant in Coventry, which was owned by her brother-in-law, John Russak. She later got a job at Mansfield State Training School. There she met Clyde Dixon, a 43-year-old married man who worked with her. 

Dixon was a veteran who had flown 54 missions as a fighter pilot in World War II and had served in the Korean conflict. He was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve. He had worked at the school, an institution for the intellectually disabled, for 17 years. He had recently been promoted to supervisor over the care of 140 boys. Clyde Dixon must have seemed like an irresistible combination of a dashing hero and a stable caregiver. The two had an affair, and Gerri got pregnant. 

Gerri spoke to her sister of one day marrying Dixon, fantasizing about how her children could play in his yard and have their own room. 

This was in 1964. Sam Santoro announced he was coming from California to visit his daughters. Gerri, 28 years old and six and a half months pregnant to another man, reportedly feared for either for her life, or that she would lose custody of her children.

Seeking Abortifacients
 
Gerri asked a friend for some ergot, ostensibly for a another friend. But evidently nothing came of this. Her sister realized Gerri was pregnant, and Gerri asked her, too, for some ergot. But Leona didn't think this was safe and dissuaded her sister from pursuing this avenue. Leona said she managed to pull together about $700 or $750 (over $4,000 in 2025 dollars) for Gerri, thinking Gerri could go someplace far way, to an organization like Catholic Charities, to get help. Sadly, though there were resources available to help her, Geri rejected those resources for reasons we do not know.

The Abortion 
 
At around 8:30 pm on June 8, Gerri checked into Norwich Motel in Norwich, Connecticut under the name Margaret Reynolds. After looking at the second-story motel room, Geri told the desk clerk that she would return later with her husband and drove off in a 1957 car. She went to Willimantic to meet Dixon, where he was attending Air Force Reserve drills, and take him to the motel.

The plan was for 43-year-old Dixon, using surgical instruments and a medical textbook he'd gotten from a co-worker at Mansfield State Training School, to perform an abortion. The co-worker, 39-year-old Milton Morgan, had access to the instruments and book because his wife was a physician. 

Dixon started the abortion by inserting a catheter into Gerri's uterus. However, Gerri began to hemorrhage. Dixon abandoned her, leaving her to bleed to death. 

The Discovery

At around 10:45 the following morning, a maid at the motel found Geri's nude body on the floor beside the bed. Salem Medical Examiner H. Peter Schwarz declared her dead at the scene. An autopsy performed at W. W. Backus Hospital estimated her time of death at around 4 a.m. on Tuesday -- which was June 9 rather than June 8, the date typically cited for her death. 

At first police thought that the unidentified woman's death might be connected to a blood smear on the door jamb of an adjacent room, but that turned out to be an unrelated incident in which a man had hut himself when he punched through a window. The man as quickly cleared of any involvement in the woman's death.

The car Geri had drive to the motel was later found abandoned in Willimantic. 

It's unclear how the police connected with Geri's family. Had they reported her missing? Did she have ID in her purse? Lorena had to go to the hospital to identify her sister's body. The family told the children that their mother had been hit by a car. 

The Men are Sentenced
 
Dixon had fled the state. Three days later, out of gas and out of money, he turned himself into police in Morgantown, West Virginia. Both he and Morgan were fired from their jobs.

Dixon pleaded nolo contender to manslaughter and conspiracy to commit abortion, and was sentenced to a year and a day to three years. 

Morgan asserted that he had only acted as Clyde Dixon's friend and had no idea that his friend planned to perpetrate an abortion with the instruments. Morgan was given a one year prison sentence, suspended after two months, and two years of probation, on a charge of conspiracy to commit abortion.

The Exploitation 

It wasn't until after Ms. published the photo that Gerri's daughter, Joannie Griffith, then 17, was shown the picture by her aunt and told the truth of her mother's death. She was outraged at how Ms. was using the photo, saying, "How dare they flaunt this? How dare they take my beautiful mom, my beautiful, beautiful mom, and put this in front of the public eye. And who gave them permission. I was pissed."
 
The headline in Ms. was "Never Again." Never again, they said, would women die from dangerous abortions as Gerri had died, because the Supreme Court had handed down Roe vs. Wade.

And with that, mainstream feminist interest in women's needless abortion deaths was laid to rest. Only if a woman's death can be used to agitate for the abortion-rights agenda do those who proclaim themselves to be champions of women's live deign to even notice. 

Post-Legalization Reality

Women continue to die horrible deaths. They were already dying horrible deaths from legal abortions even before Roe.

Black and white headshot of a middle-aged white man with brushed-back dark hair
Dr. Jesse Ketchum
Jesse Ketchum, a criminal abortionist from Michigan, carpetbagged to New York when that state legalized abortion-on-demand in 1970. Though he had no deaths attributed to him in his criminal practice in Michigan, he managed to let two women, Margaret Smith and Carole Schaner, bleed to death within four months of each other in 1971. Carole, like Geri, bled to death in a motel room. 

When Roe was handed down in 1973, striking down every anti-abortion law in the United states, it did nothing to put the back alley butchers out of business.

Benjamin Munson
In 1973, Linda Padfield was sent home with more than half of her five-month fetus still in her body; she died of infection. Rather than express outrage, prochoicers rallied around the abortionist, Benjamin Munson. Munson had been a "back alley butcher" -- a criminal abortionist -- prior to Roe. He had no dead women to his discredit. But after a stroke of the pen converted him to a provider of safe and legal abortions, he killed not only Linda, but also Yvonne Mesteth.

Milan Vuitch
Former District of Columbia criminal abortionist Milan Vuitch killed Wilma Harris in 1974, and Georgianna English in 1980. Like Ketchum and Munson, Vuitch never had a criminal abortion death linked to him. And, like Benjamin Munson, Milan Vuitch remained a hero to the abortion-rights cause despite the appalling quackery and the dead women.

Legalization was a failure


It was improvements in medical care, not a more abortion-friendly legislature, that reduced women's deaths from abortion. Women continue to die wretched deaths, abandoned by the abortionists who injured them. What has changed is that instead of being outraged and demanding corrective action, abortion-rights activists demand even laxer oversight of abortion and sometimes even start legal defense funds for the butchers who kill women. Though individual prochoicers no doubt would be outraged to learn about how much butchery continues, the leaders -- who know about these deaths -- sweep them under the rug. They work to serve the needs of the abortion practitioners, not abortion patients. It is the abortionists who have the money to purchase political power.

Until women's lives become more important than political power, women will continue to die. Does it matter what the credentials are of the person who kills them?

Independent sources:




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