On February 28, 1914, 23-year-old homemaker Martha Kwasek died at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Chicago from septicemia caused by an abortion performed by an unknown perpetrator, according to the Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database.
The Cook County Death Indicates indicates that Martha's maiden name was Sadowski and she was a native Chicagoan born to German immigrants.
On February 28, 1918, 27-year-old Mrs. Catherine Lurandowski died at Chicago's County Hospital from an abortion perpetrated by Katerine Eichenberg on November 20 of 1917.
Eichenberg, whose profession is given only as "abortion provider" in the Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database, was also noted as "known to police" and operating sometimes under the alias of Ekowski.
She might have been a midwife, since they were very common abortionists in Chicago at the time, though she might also have been a lay abortionist with or without a doctor providing training, instruments, medications, and back-up.
Diane Adams died February 28, 1992 in Pureto Rico after an abortion most likely performed by Angel Acevado Montalvo in the US Virgin Islands. Public records indicate that Diane was black, which placed her at higher risk both of being sold an abortion and of dying once she climbed on the table.
The only information I've been able to gather on Diane comes from pro-life web sites. Human Life International mentions that abortionist Angel Acevado Montalvo was charged with manslaughter in two cases of maternal deaths from safe and legal abortion. HLI also notes that after his conviction, Montalvo went right back to business doing abortions.
Priests for Life posts a list of women who have died from legal abortions, including Diane Adams, whose date of death they give as February 28, 1992. They cite a March 5, 1992 article in the Virgin Islands Daily News.
They cite one other death, that of Rosael Rodriguez, from that article. Rosael Rodriguez and Diane Adams are most likely the two women referred to by HLI.
Andrea Marie Corey, a 31-year-old bookkeeper was referred by nearby Planned Parenthood to Southern Tier Women's Services in New York for a safe and legal abortion.
Andrea was sent home after her abortion, but she had retained tissue that caused clostridium perfringens septicemia ("gas gangrene"). She died in the emergency room of Rutland Regional Medical Center in Rutland, Vermont on February 28, 1993.
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| Diana Lopez and her children |
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| Dr. Mark Maltzer |
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In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Chicago had an underground abortion culture populated primarily by doctors and midwives.
In February of 1926, 36-year-old Anna Barg Wilger, or somebody else who wanted to keep her pregnancy from ending in the birth of a living baby, sought out one of those midwives, Theresa Struhala.
On February 27, Struhala perpetrated the abortion on Anna in the Wilger home. Anna died there that day.
Struhala was indicted for felony murder in Anna's death. I don't know the outcome of the case, but do know that Struhala went on to be implicated in the 1934 abortion death of Evelyn Yazitt (possibly Vavitt).
"Roseanne" is one of the women Life Dynamics identifies on their "Blackmun Wall" as having been killed by a safe and legal abortion.
Roseanne was in the second trimester of pregnancy when she chose safe and legal abortion, permissible under New York's liberalized abortion law, in 1971. She was 37 years old, had had four children.
Roseanne's doctor chose the saline abortion method, which is performed by injecting a strong, sterile salt solution into the amniotic fluid. The fetus swallows and inhales the salty fluid, which causes massive internal bleeding and death. The woman then goes into labor.
Roseanne was infused with saline for the abortion. Two days later, she began vomiting and having seizures. She aspirated some of the vomit and developed pneumonia.
The pneumonia took its toll. Roseanne died on February 27 from the pneumonia and anoxic brain damage.
The 1970 liberalization of abortion had made New York an abortion mecca until the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling that abortionists could legally set up shop in any state of the union. In addition to "Danielle," these are the women I know of who had the dubious benefit of dying from the newfangled safe-and-legal kind of abortion in pre-Roe New York:
Source: "Maternal Mortality Associated With Legal Abortion in New York State: July 1, 1970 - June 30, 1972," Berger, Tietze, Pakter, Katz, Obstetrics and Gynecology, 43:3, March 1974, 321
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| Dr. J. W. Eisiminger |
Marie Epperson, a 19-year-old telephone operator for Bell Telephone, died February 26, 1929 after an abortion in Oklahoma City.
Two physicians were suspected: Richard Thacker and John W. Eisiminger. There wasn't even news coverage of the case and everything seemed to just blow over.
Three years later all hell broke lose.
The spring of 1932 brought a sudden string of criminal abortion deaths to Oklahoma City, attributed to Thacker and Eisiminger either singly or as a pair:
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| Dr. Richard Thacker |
Dr. Henry Gross, age 56, had a reputable medical practice at 843 Belmont Avenue in Chicago in the 1940s. However, after a Dr. Ira Willits died, Gross purchased the dead man's office and set up an abortion practice there under Willits's name.
Buried in the coverage of Lavern's death is a mention of the February 26, 1943 abortion death of 20-year-old waitress Dorothy Weber.
After Gross was granted a new trial, he and both the women vanish from the records except for death notices for Gross. He died on September 30, 1945 near Milwaukee.
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At around 9 a.m. on February 22, 1980, 26-year-old Betty Jane Damato's sister, Mary Zellers, dropped her off at Abortion Clinic of Denver where Dr. James Franklin was to perform a safe, legal abortion.
That afternoon, Mary called the clinic and talked to her sister, who said that she'd had complications during the abortion. Mary went to pick Betty up and found her pale, weak, and in pain, clutching her stomach.
Grok AI illustration
When she helped Betty get out of the car at her apartment, Mary notice a blood stain on the seat where Betty had been sitting. She decided to take Betty to spend the night with her at the Zellers home.
The morning of February 25, Betty was taken by ambulance to the emergency room at Porter Memorial Hospital, where she was found to have gone into total cardio-respiratory arrest. She was pronounced dead shortly after arriving.
An autopsy revealed that Betty had died from massive infection originating from "a partially truncated and macerated fetus." Franklin had removed little more than the arms.
According to Betty's family, Franklin knew that he had not removed all of the fetus. He instead had given Betty a trash bag, and instructions to collect whatever she expelled in the bag and bring it to him.
Franklin, an osteopath, told a grand jury that he did not perform the fatal abortion. He claimed that he had examined Betty, found the decomposing foot and ankle of the fetus protruding, and sent her to the hospital. However, when Betty was examined at the hospital, the fetus was protruding head first, making it impossible for Franklin to have observed its ankle since, as an expert witness testified, it's impossible for a dead fetus to turn around in the vagina and emerge head first.
A jury convicted him of manslaughter in Betty's death on October 19, 1981, and he was sentenced to prison for three years.
Franklin already had a history of malpractice including causing an 11-year-old boy to be left paralyzed after a botched appendectomy and a man who died while hospitalized under Franklin's care. Those cases took place in New Mexico, where Franklin had been director of a hospital that went out of business. He was recruited by the Kiowa County Hospital in Eads, Colorado, after the doctor they'd hired turned out to be on the run after being caught practicing without a license in Kansas.
Watch Trash Bag Aftercare on YouTube.
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| Helen Marie Turner |
Helen Marie Turner, 25-year-old daughter of Circuit Judge Chester Myers Turner and Emma (Follett) Turner of Cambridge, Illinois, married Wesley Hospital intern Dr. Lester Lemuel Long on December 21, 1915.
Helen was a 1912 graduate of Knox College with a degree in arts and sciences. Her studies were supplemented with travel abroad. Her yearbook identifies her as "The hope and pride of the Pi Phis." She had been vice president of her sophomore class, winner of first prize in the D.A.R. essay contest and had president of the Knox chapter of Pi Beta Phi. She worked for two years teaching English in a public high school school in Cambridge.
Lester was a 1915 graduate of Northwestern Medical College.
The couple moved into an apartment at 6123 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago so Lester could continue his medical studies at the hospital.
But it wasn't long before Helen was showing a premature baby bump. Neighbors were starting to gossip. The newlyweds decided that the impending baby had to be headed off before it brought too much shame on the pair.
Lester made three attempts to abort the baby. It's not clear if he succeeded in his efforts, but one thing is clear: he caused his bride to fall ill and lapse into delirium.
On Thursday, February 24, Lester summoned Dr. Mark T. Goldstine to help him save his wife. To avoid being blamed for the criminal activity, Goldstine insisted that both Helen and Lester sign documents admitting to what they had done before bringing him into the case.
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On the 25th, Goldstein and a colleague, Dr. P. Nusbaum, notified the coroner that they were going to the Long home to treat a woman suffering abortion complications. As they struggled to save the young woman, the bridegroom wandered through the home, sometimes staggering into the bedroom, clutching Goldstine's arm and asking, "Is there a chance? Is there just a little chance?"
Goldstine would just shake his head.
Finally, at 9:00 on the evening of February 26, Goldstine called the Woodlawn police station. "Mrs. Long is dead," he said. "Her husband is waiting for you."
Detective Sergeant Patrick Higgins arrived at the apartment to find Lester Long slumped in a chair in the kitchen. He had tracked blood from the bedroom into the kitchen as he had tried to prepare food for Helen. The young man was so woebegone that it took the sergeant five minutes to bring himself to arrest him. Lester sobbed and cried out questions about Helen as he was walked out of the apartment building into the police car. It hadn't sunk in that his wife was dead.
At the police statement, Lester gave a full statement. News coverage painted a pathetic picture of the young man, distraught at his wife's death, pacing his cell, tearing at his hair, weeping and crying out, "Can she live? Can she live?"
Lester was held by the Coroner and indicted by a Grand Jury on March 15, but the case never went to trial.
As for Helen's father, he placed no blame. He sent a telegram to Lester's father, a physician in Toulon, Illinois just saying, "Come to Chicago at once. Lester is in trouble."
He then visited his son-in-law in the jail, reaching through the bars to grasp his shoulders and say, "I have nothing but sympathy for you, Lester. You and she thought it was for the best. We all make mistakes. This was a very sad one for both of us."
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SUMARY: Alda Christopherson, age 21, died on February 25, 1916 after an abortion perpetrated by Dr. Lillilan Hobbs in Chicago.
Dr. Lillian Hobbs (pictured) was convicted of murder in the 1916 abortion death of 21-year-old Alda Christopherson. The testimony of John K. McDonald, who was granted immunity in exchange, was crucial in the case. He was the father of Alda's aborted baby.“Twila” underwent a legal first-trimester abortion in either 1974 or 1975. Her death was counted by the CDC as a death from legal abortion.
Twila was at greater risk than most women because of an unspecified congenital heart disease. This may have played a role in the reasoning behind the abortion as well as surgical sterilization by laparotomy. She may have mistakenly believed that the abortion would save her life instead of ending it.
At 11 weeks pregnant, Twila underwent the surgical abortion in a hospital under general anesthesia. She did not survive.
Despite Twila’s lifelong cardiac condition, it was not any pre-existing disease that killed her. She died of a suspected cerebral embolism. This horrifying injury occurred when air, amniotic fluid, blood clots, particles of placenta or even tiny shreds of her dead child’s body entered her bloodstream and blocked an artery to the head, depriving her brain of blood and oxygen.
Fam Plan Persp. 1981 Jan—Feb
Comparative Risk of Death in hospitals and nonhospital facilities
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On February 22, 1928, 26-year-old waitress Martha S. Deidrich Watson, a Wisconsin native, was dropped off at West End Hospital in Chicago by a man who immediately left without giving his name.
Madeline was taken into the hospital and observed to be delirious and in critical condition. She died the following day, February 23, leaving behind a four-year-old son. Her death was determined to have been caused infection from a criminal abortion.
Martha had lived in Sheboygan, moved to Milwaukee around 1927, and then at some undetermined point went to Chicago. She had been married to her child's father, John Watson, about six years earlier but at some point the couple divorced and he disappeared from the area.
The person or persons responsible were never identified or prosecuted.
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| Dr. George Fosberg |
On February 23, 1906, 26-year-old Bessie Orme died at her home in Chicago. Dr. George Fosberg said that he had performed an abortion on her in an attempt to save her life. He had then tried to insist that she be taken to a hospital, but when the family refused, he withdrew from the case.
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