According to "When Abortion was Illegal (and Deadly): Seattle's Maternal Death Toll," Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, Claudette Sayles, a 23-year-old Black woman, was a student living in Seattle in 1960. According to genealogy records and her obituary, Claudette was a mother of two. Marriage records show that she was wed in 1954 at the age of 17. Her death certificate indicates that she was divorced. Her cause of death was acute pulmonary edema and congestion due to an air embolism during an attempted criminal abortion. Claudette had died within minutes of suffering her injury.
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| Grok AI image of Mae Etta Scott arriving at Claudette's apartment. |
Police arrested Scott and she was charged with second-degree murder. The jury believed Scott's defense that nothing she had done had caused Claudette's death, so they acquitted her.
The Project cites the August 10, August 19, and December 16, 1960 issues of the Seattle Times and includes a clipping, "Murder Charge Filed in Death of Woman," from the August 10 Seattle Times which identifies Scott as a telephone operator and notes that a 20-year-old woman undergoing an abortion at the same time was being held as a material witness.
Taking this amount of care to verify and document a death is a laudable break from the usual abortion-rights web site. Usually they just copy and past a blub from another site without first verifying the story. This has led to at least two instances I know of in which there was no actual evidence that an illegal abortion was involved: Becky Bell and Pauline Shirley. To this day, Wikipedia insists that Becky died from an abortion in spite of the fact that her autopsy report shows otherwise. Kudos to the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project for doing their homework.
According to her obituary, Claudette left behind a son and daughter, her parents, and three brothers.
Veteran pro-life investigator Kevin Sherlock asks people of good will to help him have Planned Parenthood prosecuted for profiteering from the rapes and incests of underage girls many thousands of times each year.
Sherlock has pulled the police records of hundreds of cities and has pulled the child protective services records of multiple states to prove Planned Parenthood staffers are violating mandated reporting laws designed to protect girl victims. But there is more to be done. Sherlock will make sure more and more evidence gets to federal and state prosecutors who care about protecting girls from abusers and profiteers.
Thank you for doing what you can to help girls and fight sexual predators and rape profiteers.
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