Latachie: Not Even Noticed

The idea that the abortion researchers at the Centers for Disease Control actually care about women's deaths from safe, legal abortion should be blown out of the water by looking at how they dealt with the death of Latachie Veal.

Latachie was 17 years old, and 22 weeks pregnant, when Robert Dale Crist performed an 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. They 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 dead on arrival at Ben Taub Hospital.

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. So the CDC would be notified of Latachie's death through the NCHS only if the death certificate was properly filled out, and Latachie's death certificate was among those abstracted and sent to the NCHS.

But still, according to abortion defenders, Latachie's death would nevertheless be automatically 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 abortionists, abortion facilities, hospitals, and state health departments, but it does not mention that the reporting is not mandatory.

This does not mean that Latachie's death went utterly unnoticed.

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?

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.) Crist blamed the death not on malpractice, but on disseminated intravascular coagulopathy -- a clotting disorder that can be triggered during an abortion.

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.

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?

What a Post-Viability Abortion Practitioner Has to Say

An interview with one of the four abortion doctors in America who openly do post-viability abortions. Regarding some of her late-abortion patients:

Well, a large percentage of our patients had no idea that they were pregnant. People go, “How could this possibly be?” Well, look at that reality show. It happens. .... They have no idea they’re in their 24th week. So they make an appointment for an abortion, and it takes a few weeks, and they have their ultrasound and find out that they’re at 27 weeks, which is too far for an abortion anywhere. So then what happens? They either give up or have a baby, or they go on the Internet and they find us.

When asked where she draws the line on aborting health fetuses, she says,

It’s hard. Essentially I have to say to myself, “Is this a very compelling story?” ....How do we draw these lines? What is the ethical difference between doing an abortion at 29 and 32 weeks? Is there a meaningful ethical difference? Can I justify it? Will I have to justify it, and to whom? .... For example... I had a patient from France and she just desperately did not want to be pregnant — but she was 35 weeks, and gestational age is plus or minus three weeks, so she could’ve been at 38 weeks, and that’s just too far along. It wouldn’t be safe.

Gosnell and Viability: Where's the Line?

Kermit Gosnell

Last year Dr. Kermit Gosnell was convicted of murder in the deaths of three of the hundreds of newborn babies he had killed by severing their spines while their mothers lay nearby, overdosed to the brink of death by his accomplices.

Whether Gosnell was guilty of murder hinged on the question of whether he had done the killing before or after the baby had fully emerged from the birth canal.

Gosnell's attorney, Jack McMahon, argued that these killings were perfectly ordinary abortions that accomplished what Gosnell was paid to do, which was whatever was necessary to make sure that the viable unborn baby was rendered lifeless before it left the mother's body.

All of this was so gruesome that even Gosnell's attorney walked away from the trial convinced that the legal limits for abortion should be pushed back to perhaps 16 weeks to prevent any more viable infants from being killed

The Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act places the limit for on-demand abortion at 24 weeks. Is that early enough in the pregnancy to prevent the killing of an unborn baby that could survive if born alive and provided with care? We can start by looking at the preemie survival rates at Preemie.web:

22 weeks:   0-10% survival rate

23 weeks: 10-35% survival rate

24 weeks: 40-70% survival rate

25 weeks: 50-80% survival rate

26 weeks: 80-90% survival rate

27 weeks:   > 90% survival rate

At first blush, one might think that setting the cutoff at 22 weeks would do the job. However, we have to take another factor into account.  Military Obstetrics & Gynecology addresses errors in estimating gestational age: "The accuracy of ultrasound in predicting gestational age gets worse as the pregnancy advances. By 20 weeks, ultrasound is accurate only to within plus or minus two weeks, and by the third trimester, its accuracy falls to plus or minus 3 weeks."

Ultrasound is the most common method of estimating gestational age in abortion practice. Many women are going in for late abortions because they'd lost track of their cycles and weren't sure they were pregnant at all, so dating from the woman's last menstrual period isn't an option. The doctors are having to rely almost entirely on ultrasound.

Here are some cases of abortion doctors miscalculating gestation age: a supposedly 21-week baby who turned out to be 30 weeks, a supposedly 11-week baby that turned out to be 27 weeks, a baby that was believed to be about 12 weeks and turned out to be 28 weeks, and a supposedly 6-week baby that turned out to be 26 weeks. I'll recognize, however, that these are unusual screw-ups. I'll just focus on being within the margin of error for a doctor who is taking reasonable care.

With the range of error of properly performed ultrasounds, a "22 week" baby with an estimated 10% or less chance of survival may just as readily be a 20 week baby with no chance of survival or a 24 week baby with a 40-70% chance of survival. An estimated 20 week baby might only be 18 weeks but might be a 22 week baby with a survival rate of up to 10%.

This clinic advertises to 28+ weeks.

Different states vary at where they draw the line. In some states, there is no gestational age limit at all for on-demand abortions. The only limit is how late in the pregnancy the doctor is willing to kill the baby. some facilities openly advertise elective abortions past 28 weeks -- babies that have a greater than 95% chance of survival, and who may actually be three weeks older than estimated. They might be as old as 31 weeks, as likely to survive as a term infant, albeit with intensive support during the first weeks after birth.

Thus, the current state of medical care and ultrasound skill means that to avoid aborting a viable infant, the legal cut-off must be at 20 weeks.


Of course, regardless of gestational age, if you sever their spinal cords they have a 0% chance of survival. 

Filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney have launched a crowdfunding effort to produce a movie about Gosnell's crimes.  Bringing the story of Kermit Gosnell out before as large an audience as possible can move this country toward an awareness of the vulnerability of viable unborn babies.

For more about why it's vital that this movie be made, read (and don't forget to tweet!):

• Verified: Gosnell Got Snipping Idea at NAF Seminar
• Gosnell Clinic Even Nastier than Grand Jury Reported
• The Gosnell Patient Who Barely Escaped With Her Life 
• Kermit Gosnell and the Milgram Experiment 
• Gosnell: The One That Got Away &  Hope for Others
• Gosnell and Post-Viability Abortions
• Gosnell: Location Can Mean Misdemeanor vs. Murder 
• Gosnell: The Grand Jury Convened 
• Why the Left must Censor us on Gosnell: The "Outlier" Lie
• "Snipping" and why the Left Must Silence Us on Gosnell
• Semika Shaw and Why the Gosnell Story Must be Told
• Why "Gosnell" Must Be Told: The Compton-Carr Effect

The Beatriz Conundrum: Killing Versus Letting Die

Many people prochoice people have expressed bewilderment as to why the life of Beatriz's baby should even have come into account in making decisions about how to deal with the mother's pregnancy complications, since the baby was doomed to die anyway due to anencephaly. Some have even expressed outrage that any thought at all was given to the baby's life or comfort.

The procedure used to treat Beatriz's health issues was carried out past the point of typical viability at 24 weeks, so it was not any kind of abortion, be it direct or indirect abortion, but was rather garden-variety emergency c-section. However, the most strident abortion rights activists are insisting that the delivery was a hysterotomy abortion, which is performed like a c-section but with the direct intent of achieving the baby's death. The plan when performing a hysterotomy is to set the child aside to die alone from hypothermia and oxygen deprivation. Clearly this was not the case when Beatriz's baby was delivered, since she was taken to the nursery, placed in an incubator, and provided with all the care that was appropriate for a baby with anencephaly. However, just to avoid getting sidetracked into an argument about whether an emergency c-section to deliver a moribund baby is actually a hysterotomy, for the sake of discussion I will proceed as if this life-saving, baby-sparing c-section was actually an indirect abortion.

There is a thought experiment that I think illustrates the distinction between direct abortion (the deliberate killing of the fetus) and indirect abortion (treating the mother's health problems even if that inevitably causes or hastens the death of the baby).

Imagine that two people are trapped in a collapsed building. Sally is fatally injured; she has suffered such severe crush injuries to her internal organs that nothing can be done to save her. However, the pressure of the rubble on her body is pinching shut major blood vessels and keeping her from rapidly bleeding to death.

Jane, on the other hand, has treatable injuries, and needs to be transported to a fully equipped hospital. The faster she is rescued and gotten to the hospital, the greater her chances of a full recovery.

The dilemma for the rescuers is that they can not reach Jane without first getting Sally out of the way.

There are four options:

1. Do nothing that would hasten Sally's death, but wait for her to die before rescuing Jane, even if this might mean that Jane dies. This would be comparable to taking no action to end a life-threatening pregnancy.
2. Carefully remove Sally from the rubble even though this will hasten her death. This would be comparable to an emergency delivery that would hasten the baby's inevitable death.
3. Kill Sally via lethal injection prior to removing her body from the rubble. This is comparable to the abortion methods that use lethal injection to kill the baby before either mechanically removing it or inducing labor.
4. Simply wrench Sally out of the rubble, pulling her body apart by force so that the dismemberment, rather than the removal of the rubble, is what directly causes her death. This is comparable to a standard D&E abortion.

I don't think anybody would recommend Option 1.

Prolifers advocate Option 2, which is to treat Sally with respect and gentleness while saving Jane's life, and taking no action to directly kill her.

This is the option that the courts in El Salvador instructed doctors to follow when caring for Beatriz. From our perspective, prochoicers are angry that doctors did not legally have Option 3 or Option 4 -- flat out killing Beatriz's baby -- as a choice. And we're shocked and bewildered that doctors had to be forced to treat Beatriz's baby with gentleness and respect, that they wanted to just flat out kill the baby rather than allow her to have her short time experiencing the world outside the womb. She was kept warm and comfortable, and if there was not such indifference or outright hostility toward her, she could have been held, loved, and nurtured if only for a brief time. We can't understand why anybody would begrudge her that.

Nobody wanted Beatriz left to die. We just didn't want her baby to be utterly forsaken and treated like a burst appendix or a tumor. We just wanted her to have the simple dignity that is due to every human being.

To us, that doesn't seem to be that much to ask.

More About "Pregnancy [That] Goes Horribly Wrong"

The Congressional debate regarding a possible nationwide ban on abortions past 20 weeks has the abortion lobby going into paroxysms of rage. The focus of their public talking points is that these abortions are supposedly necessary "when a pregnancy goes horribly wrong."

Let's revisit this, shall we?

William Robert Johnson has done a spectacular job of compiling studies on why women in the United States undergo abortions. He compiled this chart showing the results of numerous studies of what percent of women reported that they were seeking abortions because of fetal indications. The oldest number, from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, was 3%. More recent data from states that track abortions and the reasons women cite indicate that fetal indications account for .1% (one-tenth of one percent) to 1.54% of abortions. So fetal indications are a rare reason for abortion to begin with.

What about if it's broken down for later abortions? The Alan Guttmacher Institute released a survey of why abortions are done after 16 weeks, with only 2% being done because of possible fetal indications. The Centers for Disease Control numbers indicate that of abortions done past 16 weeks, 24% are done past 21 weeks. That means for every 100 abortions done past 16 weeks, 2 are for fetal indications and 24 are past 21 weeks. If we assume that the 2 fetal indications abortions are done past 21 weeks, that means that 2/24 (8%) of late abortions are done "when a pregnancy goes terribly wrong" and the remaining 22/24 (92%) are elective.

This blog quotes an article in the New York Times noting that some "fetal indications" are a far cry from anencephaly or even from Down Syndrome:

Dr. Jonathan Lanzkowsky, an obstetrician affiliated with Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, described one woman who had been born with an extra finger, which was surgically removed when she was a child. Her children have a 50-50 chance of inheriting the condition, but she is determined not to let that happen. Detecting the extra digit through early ultrasounds, she has terminated two pregnancies so far, despite doctors' efforts to persuade her to do otherwise, Dr. Lanzkowsky said.

Then, of course, we have the issue of women who are seeking abortions for fetal indications that don't really exist. These women were either misdiagnosed, given false information, or flat-out lied to. A percentage of the "fetal indications" abortions are these women, who wouldn't be undergoing abortions at all if they were being given accurate information.

How common is this problem? To my knowledge, nobody is collecting data. "Pro-choice" organizations are far too busy fretting that that women might go into prolife centers thinking they do abortions to worry about how many women are aborting loved and wanted babies that are healthy after all. One way to gather the data would be to require examination of the fetus after a "fetal indications" abortion to find out if there actually was anything wrong with the baby. But I'm not holding my breath. Regardless of how the women in question feel about it, NARAL et al. seem to believe that an unwanted abortion, even of a loved, planned for, and desperately wanted baby is better than no abortion at all.

And several women have died after seeking abortions for fetal indications, including mothers who were lied to in order to convince them to abort. Here are some of them:

• - Marla Cardamone, healthy baby; mother lied to
• - Michelle Madden, doctor referred without diagnostics or verification
• - Margaret Smith, self-referred; possible but unverified indication
• - Linda Boom, diagnosed but no autopsy to verify
• - Allegra Roseberry, healthy baby; mother lied to

Fetal indications are repeatedly cited as a reason to keep abortion readily available, but clearly they account for a miniscule number of abortions in the first place. And even in many of these cases, there's either nothing wrong with the baby, or his condition is either perfectly consistent with living a fulfilling life (such as Down Syndrome), or her condition is treatable.

Should we really be maintaining unfettered abortion on the grounds that some tiny percentage of the tiny portion that are for fetal indications might spare some gravely ill or deformed baby suffering -- especially now that perinatal hospice is coming of age for families who face grave fetal diagnoses? Or are abortion advocates just using the rare and moving stories of a few stricken women to further an agenda that has nothing to do with the real needs of these women and their families?

Gosnell, Carhart, and the PBA Ban (Part 2)

In Part 1, I gave a bit of background to the whole practice of post-viability abortions, which were invented by the Supreme Court in 1973 and embraced wholeheartedly by a select group of intrepid abortion practitioners who weren't about to let a little thing like a baby thwart their ambitions.

Post-viability abortions are a subset of abortions past the midpoint in pregnancy, at which point the baby is too big and sturdy to easily dismember. It was for these abortions in general, and not post-viability abortions in particular, that a solution was sought.

Hysterotomy (delivering a baby via c-section and just letting it die) is a massively invasive procedure and can lead to unpleasant legal ramifications if somebody in the OR realizes that you're killing a viable baby and is enough of a retrograde throwback to have a problem with that.

The old-style instillation abortions (putting poison in the amniotic fluid) were, like hysterotomy, too dangerous to do outside a hospital. Not only was that prohibitively expensive, but in a hospital, the doctor didn't have as much control over who dealt with the patients, and thus he was risking the problem I mentioned before of buttinski nurses who would see a live baby and wouldn't just drop it in the bucket and stick it in the closet per instructions.

Once ultrasound machines became common, however, abortionists discovered that rather than just load the amniotic fluid down with poison and hope the baby swallows and inhales enough of it to die, they could jab a needle straight into the baby's heart or brain and deliver a lethal dose much more reliably.

Once the baby is dead, the abortionist can let it soften overnight -- "like meat in a crock pot" as LeRoy Carhart said -- and take it out in pieces the next day, or he can induce labor and let the mother deliver it into the toilet, as George Tiller preferred to do.

Some doctors, however, found the crock-put baby thing a bit troubling. Among them was Dr. James McMahon in California, who had two issues brewing.

First of all, he had a strange fascination with the idea of dilating the cervix as wide as he could. He quoted another abortionist as describing opening the cervix "like a lotus in the moonlight." Personally I find that creepy, but then I have a problem with dropping a live baby into a bucket and covering it with formaldehyde so I'm clearly an unenlightened busybody like those troublesome nurses that couldn't be trusted to deal appropriately with saline survivors.

Second of all, many of his patients were aborting wanted babies that had been diagnosed with some problem. These parents wanted to see the baby after it was dead. A macerated, mutilated fetus isn't a pretty sight.

McMahon came up with a solution, which he dubbed "intrauterine cranial decompression." He'd drag the living baby out feet-first, then stop just before delivering the head to suck out the brains, "decompressing" the "cranium." All he'd have to do was have a nurse stuff the collapsed head with cotton batting to round it out and he'd have a very presentable dead baby to show the parents.

"Intrauterine cranial decompression" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, and perhaps because of this it didn't catch on very quickly. Then in 1992, Dr. Martin Haskell made a presentation to the National Abortion Federation Risk Management Seminar in Dallas. He tweaked McMahon's technique and dubbed it "D&X," for "dilation and extraction." With such a catchy name, how could it fail?

The method caught on, but the prolifers caught wind of it, and the proverbial shit hit the fan. The prolifers gave the procedure the name that finally stuck -- Partial Birth Abortion -- and managed to get it banned.

What a bunch of killjoys.