RealChoice: March 6, 1977: Abortionist Lets Miscarriage Patient Die

Friday, March 06, 2026

March 6, 1977: Abortionist Lets Miscarriage Patient Die

The Ambulance Crew's Shock

Grok AI illustration

Ambulance attendant Benito Lopez told the medical examiner's inquest that he and his partner Cameron Burchett of the El Paso Ambulance and Rescue Services were shocked at what they saw when they arrived at. Dr. John B. Miller's private practice at 3307 N. Piedras St. in El Paso. It was around 12:20 pm on February 26, 1977. A woman lay unresponsive on the table.

She was later identified as 20-year-old Sylvia Ann Ramos, the daughter of Jesse and Carlota Quiroz Ramos. She had been born May 19, 1956 in Texas. Sylvia had divorced and had resumed using her birth surname.

She was not being provided with any care when the medics found her. She wasn't breathing. Her head was in a forward position rather than tilted back to keep her airway open. The medic saw no oxygen tanks or other emergency equipment. Miller seemed to have given up on his patient. Benito said he told Miller that he had to either pronounce Sylvia dead, in which case the medics would call the police and medical examiner, or Miller could instruct them to resuscitate her.

"Give it the old college try," Miller reportedly responded.

Not an Abortion

Though the news painted Sylvia as being Miller's second dead abortion patient, she had actually gone to him for follow-up rather than an abortion. She had previously gone to R. E. Thomason General Hospital in El Paso. She was told that she was having a miscarriage. It's unclear why she ended up having follow up several days later at Miller's office instead of being treated at the hospital, especially considering what is noted in the autopsy.

Poor Judgment From the Start

At 4' 8" tall and weighing nearly 200 pounds, Sylvia was high-risk to be doing any sort of procedure in an outpatient setting. It would be difficult to keep her airway properly managed and she would be at higher risk of complications related to obesity. But evidently, Miller didn't hesitate. He said that he injected Novocain, performed a D&C to treat the miscarriage, and removed a genital wart.

What Everyone Agrees On

To give Miller credit, he had called emergency services as soon as he noticed that Sylvia wasn't breathing, though it's unclear if this happened on the procedure table or after she was moved to the recovery room. Benito and Cameron arrived within four minutes. They initiated appropriate CPR and transported Sylvia to Sierra Medical Center. She lingered there until March 6, when for an undisclosed reason she was transferred to R. E. Thomason General Hospital and declared dead on arrival.

Unqualified Assistance

Both Miller and Sylvia's mother, who by then had the surname Chamberlain, agree that Sylvia had gone to Miller's office that February day with a male companion. Miller identified him as "Clums." Carlota said that the companion was a friend named James Opie.

Carlotta, who later sued Miller for $205,265, asserted that Miller asked Sylvia's friend to assist with the surgery because there were no trained nurses. I haven't seen any denial from Miller that he asked "Clums" to assist. Miller himself admitted that he had no licensed nurse -- neither an RN nor a registered practical nurse. He just referred to his two helpers -- his wife and his daughter -- as "nurses."

What the Autopsy Found

Miller's story doesn't hold much water. First and foremost, there are no signs of needle marks indicating drug use. Instead, Sylvia's arm showed old scars from likely burn injuries. Nor is there any sign of a genital wart or any procedure to remove one. While Miller might have performed a D&C, as he claimed, he also did something else, something that left a "brownish to black rim of tissue which has the appearance of severe either physical or chemical cauterization" on her cervix. This burning was so severe that it caused part of her cervix to go necrotic.

The pain from this burn might have caused the next finding: Stomach contents had come up through Sylvia's esophagus and were aspirated into her lungs. This caused her right lung to partially collapse and both lungs to suffer damage that inhibited the exchange of oxygen. Sylvia developed aspiration pneumonia.

The lack of oxygen to the brain was the final blow that caused her death. The autopsy report put it bluntly: "The brain is completely mushy."

The combination of Miller's actions and inactions led to a lingering, inevitable death.

Miller's Protests Fall Flat

Miller, a 54-year-old 1954 graduate of University of Texas-Dallas Medical School, defended himself not only at the medical examiner's hearing, but in letters he wrote to local papers.

Miller told the El Paso Herald-Post stating that the medics were in only one room of his facility, and there for only five minutes, so they were in no position to pass judgement on how well or poorly equipped his office was. He said that at his office he had three bottles of oxygen, four laryngoscopes, oral airways, and "all the injectables that could conceivably be needed." But he did not assert that the medics would have seen an oxygen bottle in the room where they had found Sylvia.

Miller wrote, "Our office does not have the equipment that a Cardiac Emergency Room has, but it does have proper resuscitation equipment and the injectables for the treatment of Anaphylactic Shock." But he didn't indicate having the right injectables to deal with cardiac arrest.

Miller admitted to the inappropriate placement of Sylvia's head, but asserted that this didn't matter because he had placed a plastic airway device in her mouth, which would have kept her windpipe open. First of all, this isn't true. An oropharyngeal airway can only be counted on to keep the windpipe open if the head remains properly positioned (see illustration). Secondly, if Miller had a laryngoscope, why had he only used an airway rather than inserting a breathing tube?

As for why he reported doing only artificial respiration and not CPR, Miller wrote that he didn't choose to open Sylvia's chest for open heart massage because he knew the ambulance would be there soon. However, chest compressions for CPR had already become the norm, rather than opening the chest to access the heart directly. Closed-chest compressions were standard for medical professionals by the late 1960s. Miller had more than a decade to learn how to properly resuscitate a patient.

Miller admitted that neither his wife nor his daughter was trained in CPR, but defended them vociferously: "My nurses have worked for me better than three years. They are chosen because they like people, and then are taught to perform our services. We have many emergencies every month, and my nurses do exceptionally well in helping take care of them."

Many emergencies every month? He considered this normal? And if he dealt with many emergencies every month, why were he and his staff so ill-prepared for a patient who stopped breathing?

Perhaps the saddest of his defenses was to cast Sylvia as a drug addict -- as evidenced by needle marks on her arms. Thus, he implied, Sylvia had likely contributed to, if not caused, her own death. But, as noted in the autopsy, there were no needle marks on Sylvia's arms other than those caused by medical interventions. The only scars on her arms were burn scars.

Outcome Unknown

Sylvia's story vanishes from the newspapers after Miller's letters. I've been unable to determine if any action was taken by the medical board or the outcome of the lawsuit against him.

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