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| Latachie Veal |
Claims about the safety of legal abortions rest upon the presumption that the Centers for Disease Control keep track of abortion deaths. The case of Latachie Veal should lay that presumption to rest.
Cries For Help Go Unheeded
Latachie was 17 years old, and 22 weeks pregnant, when Robert Dale Crist performed the second stage of a two-stage abortion on her at Houston's West Loop Clinic November 2, 1991.
According to Latachie's family, she bled heavily at the clinic, and cried out to the staff for help. Staff told her that her symptoms were normal, and sent her home.
Several hours later, Latachie stopped breathing. Her brother-in-law called 911 while her sister did CPR, to no avail. Latachie was pronounced dead on arrival at Ben Taub Hospital at 6:30 that evening.
Should They Have Noticed?
If Latachie's death certificate had been filled out properly, with the notation of the abortion in the proper box, using the proper ICD-9 code, then theoretically the National Center for Health Statistics would spot the abortion code and report it. But most states send only a statistical sample of their death certificate data to the NCHS. The CDC would be notified of Latachie's death through the NCHS only if the death certificate was properly filled out and if Latachie's death certificate was among those abstracted and sent to the NCHS.
Still, according to abortion defenders, Latachie's death would nevertheless be reported to the Centers for Disease Control. They're not clear on who is supposed to report the death. Was West Loop Clinic supposed to report it? Was Crist supposed to report it? Was Ben Taub Hospital supposed to report it? Was the medical examiner supposed to report it? Was the Texas Department of Health supposed to report it? The CDC says it gets abortion death information from abortion practitioners, abortion facilities, hospitals, and state health departments, but the reporting is not mandatory.
Spotlight on Crist
This does not mean that Latachie's death went utterly unnoticed.
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| Robert Dale Crist |
Latachie's family filed suit, retaining the flamboyant "Racehorse" Haynes as their attorney. The case was highly publicized, both in Texas and in Missouri, where Crist had performed a fatal abortion on Diane Boyd, a 19-year-old developmentally disabled woman who had been raped in the institution where she'd lived.
The mainstream publicity went beyond the usual newspaper articles, with Crist giving television interviews calling the publicity "media hype" and "a political event."
Haynes retorted, "I wish he would have a copy of the 911 tape.... If he would talk to the parents, if he would talk to the sister as she gave her CPR or talk to the brother-in-law as she was breathing her last breath and see then if he thinks it's a media event."
With all this mainstream publicity in two states, prolife organizations picked up the story, and it was reported in prolife newsletters around the nation.
A lot of people very quickly found out about the abortion death of 17-year-old Latachie Veal. But did the CDC?
A Lost Opportunity
At the 1992 National Abortion Federation Risk Management Seminar in Dallas, Crist spoke openly of Latachie's death. (He did not, of course, mention her name; I've concluded that he's discussing Latachie's death, since there's been no evidence of any another 17-year-old abortion patient of his who died in 1991, though he did send another teen to the hospital a few weeks later; after multiple transfusions and an emergency hysterectomy, that girl survived.) Crist blamed the death not on malpractice, but on disseminated intravascular coagulopathy, a clotting disorder sometimes triggered by injury or infection.
Present at that Risk Management Seminar, where Crist chattered about Latachie's death, were two -- count 'em -- two-- staffers from the Centers for Disease Control's abortion surveillance activities area: Stanley Henshaw and Lisa Koonin.
Henshaw's presence isn't quite as remarkable as Koonin's. It was Lisa Koonin, specifically, whose job it was to "verify" abortion deaths, and obtain copies of death certificates. These she was to pass on to a research fellow, Clarice Green, who would then gather the full information about the case.
Latachie's Vanishing Act
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| Lisa Koonin does what they pay her to do. |
In spite of all the publicity, in spite of the lawsuit, in spite of the prolifers shouting from the rooftops, in spite of the abortionist discussing the death at an event attended by the very woman whose job it was to notice abortion deaths, the Centers for Disease Control did not notice Latachie's death. Their 1991 Abortion Surveillance Report, published in May of 1995, did not even make any mention of abortion mortality. And when we at Life Dynamics filed a request for information about abortion deaths, we found that the CDC counted zero -- count 'em -- zero -- abortion deaths among women of Latachie's race in the 15 - 19 age range. In other words, they didn't even notice.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the CDC failed to notice this highly-publicized death, discussed openly at an event attended by two of their abortion surveillance staffers, exactly what does it take to get them to notice an abortion death? And how can we even pretend to believe that any serious attempt to accurately count abortion deaths was being made?
- "Doctor investigated in post-abortion death," Kansas City Star, November 6, 1991
- "Young woman dies after having abortion," The Houston Post, November 7, 1991
- "Abortion probe leads to Springfield," (Springfield) News-Leader, November 24, 1991
- "Secrecy veils state probes of abortion clinics," Houston Chronicle, February 9, 1992
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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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