A Hundred-Year Span of Abortion Deaths

St. Louis, 1878

A St. Louis grand jury indicted Charles P. Emerich in the 1878 abortion death of 19-year-old Maggie Gibbons.  Maggie was living at Emerich's home. He owned the laundry where Maggie work and was the father of Maggie's baby.  When she told him she was pregnant in December of 1877, Emerich went to Dr. Thomas F. Smith, who provided abortifacient powders which failed to produce the desired effect.  It is unclear whether Smith perpetrated the fatal abortion on Maggie or if he just provided the instruments. The abortion in question was performed on December 30.

Maggie took sick afterward and was relocated to her mother's house. Dr. W. D. Hinckley was called in to care for her. It was then that Maggie's mother learned about the abortion, though Maggie refused to name the father. Dr. Hinckley called in Dr. J. O'Reilly for a second opinion. Both doctors agreed that she was suffering from a servere case of peritonitis and that there was no hope for her.  Maggie languished, finally dying on January 2 of 1878.  Emerich was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter in Maggie's death, and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Chicago, 1918

Margaret Crowe, age 25, died from Dr. Anna Sorenson's dubious care at Chicago's Norwegian Deaconess Hospital, purportedly on January 2, 1918. Sorenson had already managed to kill Emelia Gorman on August 10, 1917, and Margaret Linstrom on November 12 of that year. Sorenson's fatal spree was put to an end with her death in prison on November 17, 1917 while awaiting her trials.  I've been unable to determine if Margaret languished for so long that she outlived her abortionist, or if the Homicide in Chicago Database is mistaken about the date of her death. Since the database is incorrect about the date that Sorenson died, giving it as January 2, 1918 rather than November 17, 1917, this is likely.

New York, 1970

"Amy" was 35 years old when she had a legal abortion somewhere in the state of New York on December 24, 1970, taking advantage of the state's new law granting outpatient abortion-on-demand up to 24 weeks of gestation. Amy was 14 weeks pregnant. During the abortion, Amy suffered from a massive pulmonary embolism. Efforts to save her life finally failed, and she died on January 2, 1971, leaving behind two children.

Though Amy was the first woman identified as an abortion victim in 1971 as states experimented with legalization, she wasn't the last. Other women to die from purportedly safe legal abortions that year include Cassandra Bleavins, Janet Forster, Doris Grant, Betty Hines, "Annie" Roe, "Andrea" Roe, "Anita" Roe, "April" Roe, "Audrey" Roe, "Barbara" Roe,  Beth" Roe, "Monica" Roe, "Roseann" Roe, "Sandra" Roe, "Tammy" Roe, "Vicki" Roe, LaSandra Russ, Carole Schaner, Margaret Smith, and Kathryn Strong.

Chicago, 1978

Sherry Emry

On December 28, 1977, 26-year-old leather shop owner Sherry Emry went to Water Tower Reproductive Center in Chicago for a safe and legal abortion. Arnold Bickham,(pictured below) who owned the facility, did not have his staff do pathology exams on abortion tissues; instead they threw them away.

After her abortion, Sherry returned to her home in Hammond, Indiana. She was in pain on New Years Eve. She consulted with the clinic instruction sheet and concluded that her pain was normal. By January 1, Sherry was quite ill and unable to arise from her bed. Her worried friends urged her to seek medical care, but Sherry thought that she just had the flu, so she kept to her bed. She slept fitfully, with chills and sweating. When her friends came to check on her the morning of January 2, they found her dead in her bed and called the police.

Sherry's fetus had been implanted in her fallopian tube, which ruptured. She bled to death. The coroner blamed Sherry's death on the fact that Water Tower threw fetal remains away without a pathology analysis. However, the police found that Sherry had a receipt from Water Tower indicating a $50 discount. They hypothesized that staff might have noted the lack of a fetus in the aspirator, concluded that Sherry hadn't been pregnant, and given her a partial refund.

Arnold Bickham

A CDC report about Sherry's death says, "At this clinic the physicians did not routinely examine the products of conception except through the wall of the transparent suction tubing as tissue was aspirated.... The tissue was neither weighed nor examined.... The aspirated material from all patients was collected together in a single bottle." "Autopsy revealed 4,000 ml of blood in the peritoneal cavity and a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.... fetal size was consistent with a 10 weeks gestation."

When Sherry's survivors filed suit against Bickham, he refused to turn over her medical records, first saying that they were privileged, then by claiming that they were his personal property and that Sherry's family had no right to them. Bickham was held in contempt of court for his refusal to cooperate with the courts in the matter.

Sherry wasn't the only woman to die after abortion in a Bickham facility. Sylvia Moore, age 18, died after Bickham shoved her out the door of his clinic New Years Eve of 1986.

From the "Back Alley" to "Safe and Legal"

On August 10, 1917, 29-year-old Emelia Gorman died at Chicago's St. Mary's Hospital from a criminal abortion perpetrated that day by Dr. Anna Sorenson. Although Sorenson was indicted by a Grand Jury on September 1, she remained free to perform fatal abortions on Mrs. M. Linstrom in November and Margaret Crowe in January of the following year. Sorenson was finally arrested on January 15, and her killing spree came to an end when she herself died in prison while awaiting trial.

Let's move ahead to the era of safe, legal abortions in freestanding clinics.

Bernard Nathanson

Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health ("CRASH") was the model abortion clinic -- a published review of their earliest patient records, published by Bernard Nathanson, played a key role in "proving the safety of legal outpatient abortion."

On August 10, 1988, 19-year-old K.B. was given anesthesia for a safe, legal 14-week abortion. Since Life Dynamics calls her "Kelly" on their "Blackmun Wall" of women killed by abortion, I will refer to her as Kelly as well.

Shortly after the procedure, she showed signs of distress, but emergency measures were not instituted for almost an hour. Kelly was transported to Cabrini Medical Center where she was pronounced dead from complications of anesthesia.

After Kelly's death, the health department investigated and found a mystery: Kelly's chart listed her post-operative condition as "pink, responsive, alert," even though she had gone into full cardio-respiratory arrest by the time indicated on the assessment. They learned that the note had been entered into the chart before the abortion was even performed.

The inspectors noted that CRASH "did not employ proper monitoring equipment or procedures," "had no working EKG machine," and didn't have a cardiac defibrillator. They noted that no one on staff was qualified to perform CPR. No one on staff was qualified to administer anesthesia, and they did not use proper procedures or equipment. Anesthesia was administered "by eye," with no means of accurately measuring the dose. Dosage was estimated to be twice that recommended in the procedure manual.

The operating rooms were found to be ill-lit, and there was no soap or paper towels at the scrub sink. The scrub sinks were stained, the walls and floors dirty, trash was stored in the scrub room. There were red make-up stains on the oxygen masks and nitrous oxide masks, dusty tubing on the suction machines, and blood on the wheels of the operating table.

David Gluck

CRASH had no documentation verifying the credentials or qualifications of medical director David Gluck. Gluck had been previously convicted of felony charges related to the sale of 48,000 Diluadid tablets to pay off gambling debts. His license had actually been revoked two months before K.B.'s death, but had been restored by judicial stay.

There was no evidence at the investigation two weeks after Kelly's death that Gluck had reviewed her chart, or the charts of 18 other patients identified as having suffered complications.

The state closed CRASH for 60 days, but it never re-opened.

Dr. Gluck went on to perform the fatal abortion on Alerte Desanges in 1994.