Two Doctors' Fatal Work Before Legalization

The mantra among abortion-rights organizations is that before legalization, the world of abortion was a world of rusty coathangers and untrained quacks. Frankly, it's an insult to the abortion-minded women of yesteryear to assume that they were all so mentally unhinged or utterly mindless. The vast majority sought out professionals of the same caliber they'd go to for any other cause.

Here are two typical Chicago cases from the early 20th century:

On October 11, 1913, 28-year-old Frances Odochowski, a married woman, died in Chicago at the scene of an abortion perpetrated that day by Dr. Arthur L. Blunt. Bunt was arrested and held by the Coroner on November 7, and brought before a Grand Jury, but the case never went to trial.

On October 11, 1926, Jeanette Jarrett, a 28-year-old Black woman, died from complications of a criminal abortion performed on her that day. A Black doctor, Roy Shell, was held by the coroner on October 29. On November 1, he was indicted for felony murder.

Gertrude Pitkanen

Later in the century,  on October 11, 1936, 18-year-old Margie Fraser died in a hospital in her hometown of Helena, Montana from complications of a botched abortion she had sought from Gertrude Pitkanen (pictured), who had completed nurse's training at Cook County Hospital in Chicago and became one of the first surgical nurses at St. James Community Hospital, Butte, Montana. There, she assisted her husband, Dr. Gustavus Pitkanen. Dr. Pitkanen was an abortionist until he was jailed for sedition in 1917, whereupon Gertrude, trained by him and well-versed in surgical procedures, took over the locally-tolerated abortion business.

Abortion-rights groups dismiss post-legalization deaths with a flippant assertion that "all surgery has risks," but do not accept that the same was true prior to legalization. Surgery was riskier then, so abortion was riskier as well. As the 20th century progressed, all maternal mortality, including abortion mortality, fell as medical care improved. Antibiotics and blood transfusions -- along with overall better health due to increasing prosperity -- deserve the credit for falling mortality, which was hardly caused retroactively by the 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling striking down all the nation's abortion laws.

US maternal mortality rates, with Roe vs. Wade marked with vertical line.

No doubt there was quackery prior to legalization -- but such quackery persists today. Removing the threat of jail for any but the most egregious behavior does not provide motivation to run a tight ship. Three erstwhile criminal abortionists that I know of -- Benjamin Munson, Milan Vuitch, and Jesse Ketchum -- didn't lose a single abortion patient until after legalization made them less fearful of repercussions and thus far more careless. Each went on to kill two legal abortion patients, not out of simple surgical complications, but due to appalling quackery.

If abortion-rights groups were as concerned with women's lives as they are about the Holy Grail of "access," women could only benefit. If only half of the effort put into investigating and trying to shut down prolife pregnancy help centers were put into investigating and trying to shut down seedy abortion mills, only abortionists would suffer. Women would benefit. Whose side are they really on?

It's time we got real about how little is different between illegal and legal abortion practice: the main difference is how much risk of being shut down or sent to prison the safe-and-legal abortionist faces.

Geri the Poster Child and Why "Never Again" Rings Hollow

Geraldine "Gerri" Santoro is the woman in the infamous photo used by abortion advocates to illustrate the horror of illegal abortion. The photo showed Gerri, nude, face-down with her knees under her, on the floor of the motel room where she died. Ms. Magazine first published the photo in 1973, and abortion advocates continue to use the picture in posters. And in 1995, Boston filmmaker Jane Gillooly produced a film, "Leona's Sister Gerri," to rally people behind the cause of readily available abortion, on PBS, at taxpayer expense. An icon in death, who was Geraldine Santoro in life?

Gerri's Marriage

Born August 16, 1935, Gerri's best friend from high school described her as fun-loving, given to playing hooky and getting sent to the principal's office for mischief. Gerri wanted to beat an engaged friend to the altar, so she got married at age 18 to Salvatore "Sam" Santoro, three or four weeks after she had met him at a bus stop. 

But Santoro was abusive. Gerri's sister reported often seeing her covered with bruises, and seeing the children beaten with a belt. Santoro reportedly blamed the abuse on sinus problems that gave him headaches that made him irritable, so he moved his little family to California. But the abuse continued. Gerri's daughter later recounted hearing her mother screaming, going into the bedroom, and seeing her father atop Gerri, his hands around her throat. So in 1963, Gerri left Sam Santoro and took their two daughters to live on her family's farm in Coventry, Connecticut.

The Pregnancy 
 
Gerri got a job at Mansfield State Training School. There she met Clyde Dixon, a 43-year-old married man who worked with her. Gerri spoke to her sister of one day marrying Dixon, fantasizing about how her children could play in his yard and have their own room. The two had an affair, and Gerri got pregnant. 

This was in 1964. Sam Santoro announced he was coming from California to visit his daughters. Gerri, 28 years old and six and a half months pregnant, reportedly feared for either for her life, or that she would lose custody of her children.

Seeking Abortifacients
 
Gerri asked a friend for some ergot, ostensibly for a another friend. But evidently nothing came of this. Her sister realized Gerri was pregnant, and Gerri asked her, too, for some ergot. But Leona didn't think this was safe and dissuaded her sister from pursuing this avenue. Leona said she managed to pull together about $700 or $750 for Gerri, thinking Gerri could go someplace far way, to an organization like Catholic Charities, to get help. Sadly, though there were resources available to help her, Geri rejected those resources for reasons we do not know.

The Abortion 
 
On June 8, Gerri and Clyde Dixon checked into a motel in Norwich, Connecticut under aliases. The plan was for Dixon, using surgical instruments and a medical textbook he'd gotten from a co-worker at Mansfield State Training School, to perform an abortion. The co-worker had access to the instruments and book because his wife was a physician. 

Dixon started the abortion by inserting a catheter into Gerri's uterus. However, Gerri began to hemorrhage. Dixon abandoned her, leaving her to bleed to death. Her body was discovered by a maid the following morning.

The Aftermath
 
Lorena had to go to the hospital to identify her sister's body. The family told the children that their mother had been hit by a car. 

Dixon had fled the state. Three days later, out of gas and out of money, he turned himself into police in Morgantown, West Virginia. He pleaded nolo contender to manslaughter and conspiracy to commit abortion, and was sentenced to a year and a day to three years. 

 It wasn't until after Ms. published the photo that Gerri's daughter, Joannie Griffith, then 17, was shown the picture by her aunt and told the truth of her mother's death. She was outraged at how Ms. was using the photo, saying, "How dare they flaunt this? How dare they take my beautiful mom, my beautiful, beautiful mom, and put this in front of the public eye. And who gave them permission. I was pissed."

The Exploitation 
 

The headline in Ms. was "Never Again." Never again, they said, would women die from dangerous abortions as Gerri had died, because the Supreme Court had handed down Roe vs. Wade.

And with that, mainstream feminist interest in women's needless abortion deaths was layed to rest. Only if a woman's death can be used to agitate for the abortion-rights agenda do those who proclaim themselves to be champions of women's live deign to even notice. 

Post-Legalization Reality

Women continue to die horrible deaths. They were already dying horrible deaths from legal abortions even before Roe.



Jesse Ketchum, a criminal abortionist from Michigan, carpetbagged to New York when that state legalized abortion-on-demand in 1970. Though he had no deaths attributed to him in his criminal practice in Michigan, he managed to let two women, Margaret Smith and Carole Schaner, bleed to death within four months of each other in 1971. Carole, like Geri, bled to death in a motel room. 

When Roe was handed down in 1973, striking down every anti-abortion law in the United states, it did nothing to put the back alley butchers out of business.

Benjamin Munson

In 1973, Linda Padfield was sent home with more than half of her five-month fetus still in her body; she died of infection. Rather than express outrage, prochoicers rallied around the abortionist, Benjamin Munson. Munson had been a "back alley butcher" -- a criminal abortionist -- prior to Roe. He had no dead women to his discredit. But after a stroke of the pen converted him to a provider of safe and legal abortions, he killed not only Linda, but also Yvonne Mesteth.

Milan Vuitch

Former District of Columbia criminal abortionist Milan Vuitch killed Wilma Harris in 1974, and Georgianna English in 1980. Like Ketchum and Munson, Vuitch never had a criminal abortion death linked to him. And, like Benjamin Munson, Milan Vuitch remained a hero to the abortion-rights cause despite the appalling quackery and the dead women.

Legalization was a failure

It was improvements in medical care, not a more abortion-friendly legislature, that reduced women's deaths from abortion. Women continue to die wretched deaths, abandoned by the abortionists who injured them. What has changed is that instead of being outraged and demanding corrective action, abortion-rights activists demand even laxer oversight of abortion and sometimes even start legal defense funds for the butchers who kill women. Though individual prochoicers no doubt would be outraged to learn about how much butchery continues, the leaders -- who know about these deaths -- sweep them under the rug. They work to serve the needs of the abortion practitioners, not abortion patients. It is the abortionists who have the money to purchase political power.

Until women's lives become more important than political power, women will continue to die. Does it matter what the credentials are of the person who kills them?