Gosnell: The Untold Story - Gruesome Discoveries and Drug Dealing

My quarantine reading is the audiobook of Gosnell: The Untold Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer, by Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer. So far I've written up background about why I believe I have something unique to offer in commentary. Next, a review of notable instances of press coverage of abortion atrocities. Then how the prochoicers seem fine with abortionists breaking the law. I also dug into thoughts that came up while reading the preface. After that I explained exactly how much courage it took to go after Gosnell, considering the fate of others who took on abortion cases and how little the press would care about the death of a plain-faced middle-aged minority woman.

Stumbling Across the Gruesome

Procedure room at Robert Alexander's clinic

Later in Chapter One, Ann and Phelim address how the raid wasn't an abortion case; it was a drug case. One of the most powerful factors in the Gosnell case is how it was police coming to the clinic for an unrelated reason that uncovered what deplorable conditions some abortionist considered good enough for his patients. In December of 2014 I wrote a post noting Gosnell and two other abortionists whose appalling clinics were only uncovered when the cops were there for another reason: Krishna Rajanna and Robert Alexander. And of course, just as in the Gosnell case, any time a filthy abortion mill is uncovered the prochoice movement tsk-tsks at the "outliers" and waits for it all to blow over. And, of course, the media commit their own kind of malpractice by failing to ask what's under the other rocks that the authorities haven't turned over. I've said it before and I'll repeat it here: The real outliers aren't abortionists like Gosnell. They're prochoicers who care enough about the women to speak out.

Drug-Dealing Abortionists

Of course, there's also the issue of a combination abortion clinic/pill mill. David Gluck, who had been Medical Director of the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health when they got caught charting a dead patient as alert and responsive, had already been busted for selling Dilaudad. Dr. Joel Match had his license suspended for prescribing narcotics without doing a proper work-up.

When we were writing Lime 5, we uncovered a lot of drug-dealing connected to abortion practitioners. Suresh Gandotra (John Roe 209), who committed such egregious fatal malpractice on Magdalena Rodriguez that he had to flee the country, had lost his license in New York and served time for drug charges. Dr. George Wayne Patterson (John Roe 652), later gunned down in possible gangland hit related to his gambling debts, had to close his Mississippi abortion clinic after two of his employees were caught distributing drugs.

Alas, since when writing Lime 5I we did not name abortionists but instead gave them John Roe names, I've been unable to determine who John Roe 18 is; he had his California license suspended and pleaded guilty in 1986 for illegally prescribing controlled substances. I've also been unable to find the name of John  Roe 420, who had been selling drug dealers Dilaudid prescriptions for $50 each. Dr. Ming Kow Hah (John Roe 47 in Lime 5), who later put abortion patient Sylvia Moore in a wheelchair and shoved her out the door to die, was caught prescribing narcotics illegally in 1975.

In more recent examples, Live Action published a piece in 2018 about drug-dealing abortionists.

Since both abortion and drug dealing are ways to profit from people wanting to escape their dismal circumstances, I guess it's hardly surprising how often the two go hand-in-hand.

Gosnell: The Untold Story - Chapter One, the Courage of Detective Wood

Stuck at home during the quarantine, I'm listening to the audiobook of Gosnell: The Untold Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer, by Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer. So far I've written up some background information about why I believe I have something unique to offer in commentary on the book. I followed up with a review of notable instances of press coverage of abortion atrocities. Then came a rant about how the prochoicers seem fine with abortionists breaking the law. I also dug into thoughts that came up while reading the preface.

In this series of commentaries, I won't be reiterating what Ann and Phelim say, because I think that it's important for people to read the book to get the full context. I'm only addressing areas where I think my odd expertise adds something important.

Detective Woody Cared

Ann and Phelim praise Detective Jim Wood to the skies, and he absolutely deserves it. People who haven't followed the atrocities committed in abortion clinics can't grasp that it's a swim up the Niagara river to pursue a case against an abortionist. You can end up like Phil Kline in Kansas, getting swept over the falls and destroyed. Woody risked his reputation and his career.

Why Only Woody Cared

Holly Patterson

Woody focused on Karnayama Mongar and how much she and her family deserved justice. The Mongar case had nothing going for it. Karnamaya wasn't a young, cute, blond-haired white girl like Holly Patterson. Holly's death from toxic shock syndrome triggered by off-label administrating of the second-stage drug of the "abortion pill" regimen gathered national attention. Of course, nothing changed, but at least the public cared for a little while. The mainstream media just can't get enough of bad things happening to young, cute, blond-haired white girls.

Karnamaya Mongar

Karnayma Mongar, on the other hand, was 41 years old, brown-skinned, with scant black hair barely covering her scalp. Her face wasn't one that would launch a thousand ships. She was a refugee who had spent 20 years living in a hovel in Nepal before coming to the US. She lived crammed into tight quarters with her family. Karnamaya wasn't one of the Beautiful People that the press loves to lavish attention on.

Looking back over the Cemetery of Choice's list of safe-and-legal abortion deaths, you see a lot of women with darker complexions: Charise Ards, Belinda Byrd, Mary Ann Dancy, Tamika Dowdy, Edrica Goode, Carolina Gutierrez, Diana Lopez, Kathy McKnight, Venus Ortiz, Vanessa Preston, Tonya Reaves, Antonesha Ross, Tamiia Russell, Michelle Thames, and Lakisha Wilson, to name just a few. The women who pay with their lives for trusting the abortion lobby are disproportionately minority women. As Belinda Byrd's mother said, "Nothing ever happens to ... abortionists who leave young Black women dead."

The Gosnell Grand Jury castigated the world on this point. One of the tree reasons they gave for the blind eye society turned was "because the women in question were poor and of color...."

Eventually Assistant District Attorney Christine Wexler joined Woody on his perilous mission to get justice for Karnamaya Mongar as well as the helpless born-alive babies who met their end at 3801 Lancaster Avenue. Even abortion victims -- abortion victims who lack that ivory complexion and those golden tresses -- deserved justice, as far as Woody and Christine were concerned. They, not Gosnell, were the ones who went rogue. They weren't going to play by the rules that gave abortionists permission to play Russian roulette with women's lives.

"Playing Russian Roulette With Patient's Lives"

On March 25, 2000, 22-year-old Maria Rodriguez went to Steve Lichtenberg's Albany Medical Surgical Center for a late second trimester abortion. At about 9:00 a.m., Maria was showing signs of shock from hemorrhage. Lichtenberg had failed to notice that he had ruptured Maria's uterus. Rather than transport her to a properly equipped hospital, Lichtenberg tried to treat his patient's deteriorating condition in his clinic, without determining the cause of the problem.  It wasn't until an hour and a half after Maria suffered her life-threatening injury that it occurred to somebody to call 911 and have Maria taken to a properly equipped hospital. By then, Maria had lost so much blood that there was nothing that doctors could do to save her. 

When we think about Maria's death, we need to remember something about Steve Lichtenberg. At a National Abortion Federation Risk Management Seminar in the 1990s*, Michael Burnhill of the Alan Guttmacher Institute scolded Lichtenberg for "playing Russian roulette" with patients' lives by performing risky abortions in an outpatient setting and treating serious complications on site in his procedure room rather than transporting them to a hospital. Evidently Lichtenberg chose not to listen to Burnhill's warning. In fact, I think that Deanna Bell had lost her life in Lichtenberg's deadly game before Burnhill gave Lichtenberg his scolding. Deanna died in 1992 when Lichtenberg gave her a massive overdose of Brevital, a drug not approved for use in pediatric patients like 13-year-old Deanna. 

Lichtenberg had, I'm sure, already gotten his warning before Nakia Jorden stepped into his facility in 1998. Like Deanna Bell, Kia died due to sloppy anesthesia practices. Ditto Maria Leho, who died at Albany the following year.

*I listened to years of tapes of National Abortion Federation meetings when I worked at Life Dynamics in the 1990s, and unfortunately did not take a copy of our files about what was revealed in those NAF tapes with me. I only have my memory and thus don't know what year the event in question took place. This exchange between Lichtenberg and Burnhill was seared into my mind because of Deanna's death.

Gosnell: The Untold Story - Preface

Stuck at home during the quarantine, I'm listening to the audiobook of Gosnell: The Untold Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer, by Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer. So far I've written up some background information about why I believe I have something unique to offer in commentary on the book. I followed up with a review of notable instances of press coverage of abortion atrocities. Then came a rant about how the prochoicers seem fine with abortionists breaking the law. In this series of commentaries, I won't be reiterating what Ann and Phelim say, because I think that it's important for people to read the book to get the full context. I'm only addressing areas where I think my odd expertise adds something important.

Straight from the Horse's Mouth

In the preface, Ann and Phelim talk about how the fact that the abortion photos and information in the Gosnell trial were believable to them because they were from the horse's mouth, and were shared under oath.

In Gonzales v Carhart, abortionist LeRoy Carhart was questioned about how he performed the unchallenged D&E abortions as part of his assertion that the law was vague and that an abortionist might inadvertently end up perpetrating a forbidden D&X ("partial birth abortion") during such a procedure. Surely there were press present during the graphic testimony, press present who heard about how D&X had been developed and how it had been performed. Evidently they were not moved by the truth nor moved to share it. Martin Haskell's presentation paper about D&X for the National Abortion Federation was widely circulated. Quotes from Dr. Warren Hern's book Abortion Practice were shared both online and in print. In this book Hern describes the use of scissors to decapitate the fetus. Prolifers brought copies to hearings and town hall meetings and showed passages to legislators. The book was available to anybody who wanted to find out if those prolifers were telling the truth or not. The truth is that they don't want to know.

Abortion Methods

Ann describes abortion methods. She is mistaken in her assumption that potassium chloride is routinely used to stop the heart prior to all abortions. Lethal cardiac injections (often using digoxin rather than potassium chloride) are only ever used in later abortions, typically 20 weeks and later. The injections are performed for three reasons: to allow the baby's tissues to deteriorate overnight so that he or she is easier to dismember, to ensure that the baby is dead on Day One so that the woman can't change her mind before the abortion is completed, and to prevent a live birth and all of the legal troubles such births carry with them. These issues, and the fact that these injections make the fetal tissues and organs useless for medical research, are discussed at length in the Center for Medical Ethics tapes.

She is also mistaken in the belief that suction is the only method used to collapse the fetal skull. Grabbing the skull with forceps and crushing it is also common. Warren Hern indicates that he prefers this method because it reassures him that he has indeed grabbed the skull and not part of the woman's body. Hern recommends emptying the skull prior to removing it because fetal brain matter is, of all fetal cells, the most likely to cause potentially lethal clotting problems if it gets into the mother's bloodstream through small tears in the cervix. I truly wish that copies of tapes of National Abortion Federation seminars were readily available to the public. I would love to make pro-abortion politicians listen to the lively argument between Warren Hern and Mildred Hanson ("Warnie" and "Millie" to their friends) about how to best prevent this complication.

Emotional Responses

Ann talks about weeping at her computer. It's odd that though I've delved deeply into Gosnellesque horrors for over thirty years, few things have brought me to tears: seeing original source documents about women's abortion deaths on the back of a set of "tombstone signs;" reading the death certificates of a handful of dead Chicago women and realizing that since they were all Black women, nobody would ever care; reading the warnings from Takashi Wagatsuma and Yukio Manabe that saline abortions were deadly to women and should be abandoned (somehow making specifically the death of Cristella Forte all the more tragic); and reading the autopsy report of Jammie Garcia. I'm sure there were other times, but those were the real crying jags.

When my clinical detachment fails my default emotion is anger. Strangely enough, my anger is far more often directed towards prochoice enablers than towards the abortionists. I guess that's because I don't expect much of abortionists. They are what they are and expecting them to treat the women like valuable human beings is like expecting Ted Bundy to treat his victims like human beings. It's asking the patently impossible. But the activists who claim that they're motivated by concern for women are the one feeding women into the abortion mills and handing them off to the butchers. What's their excuse? I want to literally rub the noses of various blasé prochoicers in the graves of the women their indifference has killed. I want to scream at them, "This is your handiwork! Are you proud of yourself?" I had to give up on sidewalk counseling because of how my rage would built up. One day the other prolifers had to physically restrain me when I tried to launch myself at the "escorts" who would laugh, cheer, and exchange high-fives as each weeping woman was shoved through the clinic doors. "This isn't a game!" I shouted. "This is the worst day of her life and you treat it as if all that matters is that you score points!" Of course, they just laughed and cheered all the louder. For them, it truly was only a matter of scoring points, with each aborting woman a tally mark in their "See? Women want access to abortions!" column. The women's tears told another story, but the tears were something those escorts wouldn't let themselves see. I couldn't tolerate their attitude. I had to do my prolife work at a distance.


Black Humor

Ann wrote about the clinic workers joking and laughing about the babies. I think that this is just black humor, a way of coping and distancing. When I worked at Life Dynamics we resorted to black humor. When Mark and Dzintra went to a bindery, Dzintra came back with a handful of colorful plastic spiral bindings. They looked like little springs. She carried them into our offices, holding them out to show us and always getting the same response, "Harvey comes in designer colors!" We were referring to Harvey Karman and his "super coils." They weren't a laughing matter, but if you don't laugh you cry and then you can't get any work done. We referred to Ronachai Banchongmanie as "Raunchy Botchamany." Any mention of Scott Ricke ("Icky Ricke") was greeted with someone making a "Pop!" noise in reference to the time he got his hand stuck in a patient. I can totally understand black humor.

Here are more examples of abortion workers joking and laughing about the babies which we documented in Lime 5:

A patient's mother returned to Raymond Showery's Texas abortion hospital several days after her daughter's abortion. She bore a milk carton containing a three-inch fetal head that the girl had passed. One or two weeks later an employee opened the freezer and found the milk carton with the head still in it. A sign had been taped to the carton saying, "Hi, do you remember me?" The carton, head, and sign had been left as a surprise for another employee who was due to return after being off work for a while.

During the April, 1994 National Abortion Federation conference in Cincinnati, participants laughed as they discussed how to respond when somebody asked them what they did with the remains of the babies. Responses included, "We buy a lot of Drano" and "Don't come for breakfast."

For more examples of black humor in abortion clinics, read "Abortion Workers Joke About Dead Babies."  In a graphic video here, abortion workers laugh as they hold up aborted babies like puppets to make them dance to music.

Raymond Showery and the Head in the Milk Carton

The April 5, 1981 El Paso Times recounts a nightmare endured by one of the hapless patients of Dr. Raymond Showery.

I'll call the patient "Mandy." She was in an advanced state of pregnancy when she went to Showery's Family Hospital for an abortion Showery struggled to perform it for perhaps two hours. One of his employees reported that he emerged from the procedure room drenched in sweat.

Several days later the patient's mother came to Family Hospital carrying a milk carton containing a 3-inch diameter severed baby head. She gave the carton to an employee named Olga and told her that Mandy had expelled the head while her mother was massaging her abdomen. "I remember the eyes were bugging," Olga told the Times reporter. "That's when I decided to quit."

Some wag decided to attach a sign to the carton reading, "Hi, do you remember me?" and leave it in the freezer as a surprise for an employee who was away for training.

Nobody could recall who had finally disposed of the head, or how. Showery insisted that he wouldn't send a patient home with a retained fetal head and that it must have just been a large clot that looked like a baby's head.

OB/GYNs questioned by the Times noted that it was entirely possible -- albeit irresponsible -- to send a patient home with a retained fetal head. From the size that Showery's employees described, they indicated that the baby would have been of about 6 1/2 months' gestation.

Source: "Woman brought baby's head to hospital in milk carton," El Paso Times, April 5, 1981

Icky Ricke

P. Scott Ricke, "John Doe 16" in Lime 5, performed illegal third-trimester abortions, botched abortions, and engaged in sexual relations with his patients. I'm posting an article from the August 13, 1987 Tucson Citizen that covers these issues -- including the time he got his hand stuck in a patient's body.

The patient, identified as "S. P.," didn't realize how far advanced her pregnancy was when she went to Ricke's clinic. The procedure should have taken 20 minutes, but dragged on for over three hours because the fetal head got stuck in the woman's vagina.

"He told me to be calm, that I would feel a slight pinch," S.P. said. "I felt the pull.... There was a lot of noise and the pulling went on for a while. He stopped. They told me, 'Honey, you're a lot further along than we thought....'"

Several times Ricke left the woman with a female employee who tried to comfort her.

When S.P. screamed in pain, Ricke told her to be quiet because she was scaring the other patients. When she asked for medication for the pain, Ricke told her that he didn't have any. She begged Ricke to take her to a hospital, but he told her that no hospital would take her. At one point he threw his hands in the air.

S.P. asked Ricke to call an ambulance for her. He asked her if he should crush the fetal head so he could get it out, then reached in with his hand and tried to grab it. He got his hand stuck. "He was pulling and tugging. He told me to relax so he could get his hand out. When he finally got his hand out, he yelled at me because his hand hurt. Then he started pulling again." S.P. said she kicked Ricke, then finally closed her legs and refused to let him manhandle her any further.

Ricke finally had S.P. transported to the hospital in an employee's car, with the majority of the fetus dangling outside her body. Ricke completed the abortion in the hospital using general anesthesia. It turned out that S.P.'s unborn baby was of more than seven months' gestational age and had weighed more than 2 1/2 pounds.

Sources: 

• "Witness recalls unheeded pleas during abortion," Tucson Citizen, August 13, 1987
• "Abortionist pleads for career, vows improvements, Tucson Citizen, August 13, 1987

Gosnell: The Untold Story - Anger and Law-Breaking

Stuck at home during the ChiCom Virus quarantine, I started listening to the audiobook of Gosnell: The Untold Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer, by Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer. First I wrote up some background information about why I believe I have something unique to offer in commentary on the book. I followed up with a review of notable instances of press coverage of abortion atrocities. In this series of commentaries, I won't be reiterating what Ann and Phelim say, because I think that it's important for people to read the book to get the full context. I'm only addressing areas where I think my odd expertise adds something important.

In the foreword, Alan Robertson wrote of his anger towards everybody involved: Gosnell, his staff, the enablers in the state bureaucracy, the media, and the abortion lobby. I would add my own thirty years of built up anger against ordinary garden-variety prochoicers, who steadfastly refuse to see that there are systematic problems. Yes, the media and the abortion lobby provide them with handy excuses, but an excuse is an excuse, whether it's prefab or one you invent on your own. I have been telling prochoicers about the reality of how abortion is practiced in America since I stumbled across the deaths of Ellen Williams and Gloria Aponte in the mid-1980s, and I have yet to encounter one who doesn't brush off even the most appalling cases as not worthy of attention. "The authorities are dealing with it. You're being silly to think there's any kind of ongoing, systemic problem." The fact that I've been researching and documenting abortion deaths for over 30 years counts for nothing. And as I noted in my write-up about the media, even when a prochoicer does speak out, he or she is quickly silenced by the mainstream of the movement. It's simply not okay to question. In prochoice America, it's the person who puts the safety of the women first who is the true outlier, not the seedy abortionist.

Pennsylvania's failure to enforce the law is hardly unique.

When Phil Kline tried to hold George Tiller accountable for his illegal third-trimester abortions, Kansas authorities not only covered up for Tiller, they launched a career-destroying vendetta against Kline. Of course the media went along with it unquestioningly and provided the abortion lobby with material for their victimization claims. Considering how often Gosnell referred to Tiller as his friend, and how often the two must have met at National Abortion Federation seminars, one must wonder if Tiller provided Gosnell with tips about which palms to grease and how to make it all look legit.

We can also look at the well-founded allegations against Douglas Karpen, the "Texas Gosnell." Karpen had a history of malpractice, including the death of Denise Montoya. Like Gosnell, he flushed fetal remains down the toilet. Three of his employees came forward with credible evidence -- including, like Gosnell's employees, photographic evidence (WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC) -- that Karpen was delivering and killing live, viable babies. Though all of the evidence was forwared to Texas authorities, who convened a grand jury, Karpen was never charged for his crimes. (If I recall correctly, Texas will not prosecute for murder unless they have a body. This might be Karpen's escape hatch.) He might also be getting support via the National Abortion Federation, of which he is a member.




Planned Parenthood's brazen law-breaking is an issue unto itself. I can't recall any state in the union that has held them accountable.

Of course, letting abortionists brazenly break the law is nothing new. Arlen Spector was Pennsylvania Attorney General during the "Mother's Day Massacre." Gosnell faced no legal consequences and Harvey Karman, the unlicensed psychologist who masterminded the "super coils," got away with a slap on the wrist and died an abortion-rights hero. The women he injured -- and Joyce Johnson, the woman he killed in an illegal abortion in 1955 -- simply don't matter.

Here are a few older examples of abortionists getting away with murder:

1970: William Day, a microbiology student with ambitions of becoming a doctor, got a suspended sentence in the abortion death of his girlfriend, Nancy Kierzek.

1956: Dr. Robert Spencer, hailed by abortion enthusiasts as "The Angel of Ashland," managed to be acquitted after the death of Mary Davies -- ostensibly because nobody could prove that the baby hadn't already been dead, but more likely because he was a popular small town doctor.

1942: Cleo Moore named Dr. Frank Marino as her abortionist before dying of her injuries. Marino, who frequently golfed with the prosecutor, was of course acquitted.

1930: Ethel Crowell died of abortion complications in the Chicago office of Dr. Hans Paulsen. The indictment against him was quashed under circumstances that the Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database describes as "circumstances suggesting judicial corruption."

1920: Dr. Charles W. Milliken perpetrated a fatal abortion on Frances Karies. Evidently no action was taken against him because he was still free to perform fatal abortions on Iva Triplet and Florence Cobb the following year.

1921: Evidence is strong that the death of Virginia Rappe, for which Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was wrongfully prosecuted, was actually the result of an abortion perpetrated at Wakefield Sanitorium. Wakefield was a very thinly disguised abortion mill, and a reputed abortionist performed Virginia's autopsy there, disposing of her reproductive organs and thus evidence that would have implicated any Wakefield associates. The vigorous attack on Arbuckle and the utter lack of attention focused on Wakefield bears notice. Were people in high positions availing themselves of Wakefield's dubious services?

1913 - 1934: Dr. Anna Adler was implicated in six Chicago abortion deaths. She was indicted for the 1913 death of Anna Adler but the case never went to trial. She was held by the coroner but never indicted for the 1924 death of Mary Whitney. She was indicted for the 1928 deaths of Anna Borndal and Esther Wahlstrom. I've only found evidence of a trial for Esther's death. Davis might have been convicted, but she was freed on appeal. Irene Kirschner died after an abortion attributed to Davis in 1932, and though police found another abortion-injured woman at Davis' house, the abortionist evaded capture. She was tried three time for the 1934 abortion death of Gertrude Gaesswitz, with trials ending in a hung jury, an overturned conviction, and an acquittal.

1891 - 1926: In spite of being implicated in thirteen abortion deaths in Chicago, Dr. Lucy Hagenow was only jailed three times and won early release every time. Hagenow had been implicated in four San Francisco abortion deaths in the 1880s and 1890s, working as "Dr. Louisa Hagenow," and had relocated to Chicago when it became clear that San Francisco authorities wouldn't let repeated hung juries stop them from prosecuting her.

If there's one thing I've learned from over 30 years of researching abortion deaths, it's the degree to which women's safety hinges on two things: how much quackery the women and their associates consider allowable and how willing the authorities are to crack down on quackery. All of the people who contributed to women's abortion deaths have been people who consider abortion an acceptable way to deal with pregnancy. In other words, every abortion death was, start to finish, the work of prochoice people. No prolife person has ever lead a vulnerable woman to her death, yet somehow we're the ones who get the blame. Prochoicers cause the deaths by their unwillingness to hold abortionists accountable. It's always been that way. And that's another reason why those are the people who deserve the most anger.

Gosnell: The Untold Story - Foreword (The Media and Abortion Horrors)

Stuck at home during the ChiCom Virus quarantine, I started listening to the audiobook of Gosnell: The Untold Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer, by Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer. Yesterday I wrote up some background information about why I believe I have something unique to offer in commentary on the book. I won't be reiterating what Ann and Phelim say, because I think that it's important for people to read the book to get the full context. I'm only addressing areas where I think my odd expertise adds something important.

So here we go with the Foreword, written by Alan Robertson. He writes of the importance of a free press. And indeed, when the press has been responsible and diligent, they have uncovered many appalling examples of abortionists behaving badly. Some of the most memorable examples are:

"The Abortion Profiteers" in the Chicago Sun-Times in late 1978:

Live Action recently did a multi-part summary of what a five-month undercover investigation by Pamela Warrick and Pamela Zekman uncovered: "The abortion assembly line," "Used car salesmen as abortionists,"  "'We are in the business of selling abortions,'" and "A dozen women died. The health department knew nothing." Of course, one must never besmirch the abortion industry as a whole, so the paper also did a puff piece for the recently-launched National Abortion Federation. Just the previous year a NAF member clinic had sent Barbaralee Davis home to die with the face and spine of her unborn baby lodged in a tear in her uterus, but that's nothing that would diminish the press's adoration of the abortionists' guild. "Yes, there are some bad apples but NAF is above reproach" is a consistent theme, even when the truth is staring reporters in the face.

Dr. Raymond Showery in the El Paso Times, primarily in 1981, 1983, 1984, and 1985:

Showery was the original Texas Gosnell. The El Paso Times pulled no punches when covering Showery's shenanigans. They informed readers about the conditions in his filthy abortion hospital, the botched abortions, the murder of a born-alive baby, and an assortment of illegal and even bizarre behavior. They also covered the covey of Showery supporters who rallied outside the courthouse while he was being tried for manslaughter in the death of Mickey Apodaca. The articles are available for subscribers at Newspapers.com. If there is enough interest expressed, I'll gather the articles and write up a summary.

Dadeland Family Planning in The Miami Herald, 1985 and 1989:

I only just discovered that the Left-leaning magazine Slate took notice of "The Kermit Gosnell of Florida" in the aftermath of the Gosnell story. Kudos to Slate for that article, along with "The Sunshine State," a gruesome summary of the Herald's larger 1989 expose. The filthy conditions, deceitful practices, unqualified staff, grotesque malpractice, and death of Ellen Williams were exposed to the world. I wrote a multi-part summary of Dadeland's horrors that is still available on the Internet Archive: "Meet the Easons," "Welcome to Dadeland," "'Act Now! We Can't Hold this Price!'" "Tea and Sympathy," "Kast's Botched Abortions," "Enter Nabil Ghali," and "Eason Rises From the Ashes." The Herald also exposed the prochoice movement's successful efforts to block any efforts to protect women, even quoting Janis Compton-Carr's infamous comment: "In my gut, I am completely aghast at what on at that place. But I staunchly oppose anything that would correct this situation in law." Such efforts, of course, continue to this day.

Alas, I can't think of any major reporting on abortion malpractice in the mainstream press since 1989. Diane Sawyer's people contacted us at Life Dynamics in 1995, saying that she was thinking of doing a piece on abortion clinics selling abortions to women who weren't really pregnant. We provided her with dossiers on clinics that had been caught doing that and were still open, and also provided her with dossiers on clinics that had been caught committing egregious malpractice and were still open. We even got a scoop on a nurse who was willing to talk to Sawyer about appling conditions she was reporting to the medical board about Lawson Akpolonu. Sawyer's people got back to us to say that she had determined abortion malpractice to be "a non-story." After the Akpolonu story broke locally, women came forward to report that he'd raped them in his filthy, unsafe clinic. A non-story indeed. Just like Gosnell was merely "a local crime story."

Every single case of the lid being blown off the egregious goings-on in abortion clinics is followed by empty promises and the sound of crickets. I have no idea what to do to get people mobilized and aware that they can not trust the abortion lobby. This indifference to what happens to the women as long as the abortion takes place is something that goes back long before abortion was legalized, as I've learned while researching criminal abortion deaths for the Cemetery of Choice. There's something about abortion that poisons the soul, I guess. Once you accept abortion, it seems, you're willing to accept all of the evil that comes with it.

I'd love to hear from prochoicers who are demanding better, or from former prochoicers who can explain why they ignored and/or tuned out the horror stories. Maybe there is a way to reach prochoicers. But I'm not holding my breath hoping to find it.

Gosnell: The Untold Story - Background

Stuck at home during the ChiCom Virus quarantine, I started listening to the audiobook of Gosnell: The Untold Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer, by Ann McElhinney and Philem McAleer. I was surprised by how little I remembered from having read the hard copy version. As I listened, I found myself wanting to comment again and again to McElhinney and McAleer. I've realized that over 30 years of studying abortion malpractice and malfeasance gives me a unique perspective. I want to share that with my readers -- and with the authors of this groundbreaking, must-read book. I am not going to give a blow-by-blow account of what the authors cover. My commentary will be limited to what I can add from what I've observed.

I began research into abortion in the fall of 1983, after becoming pregnant with my son in very difficult circumstances. I had been taught in college that poor women who can't feed the children they already have need abortions. It's the only way they can fulfil their responsibilities to their born children. There I was in that situation. My husband and I had pawned our wedding rings to buy food for our daughter. I was skipping meals myself. At four months into the pregnancy I was still able to fit into clothing from the girls' department, a miniskirt and top for a job running a golf swing analyzer at a mall kiosk. I wasn't even beginning to show.

I knew that the entity growing inside my body was a baby, as precious as my daughter. But I had only just graduated from college in June. During those four years I'd absorbed a lot of the Leftist culture of the university setting. The only way I could afford to feed my daughter was to starve myself, which was starving my unborn baby. My primary responsibility was to feed Lisa. It was clear that I had to bite the bullet, to go against my conscience, to bear the moral and emotional burden of aborting the growing child within me.

There was a Planned Parenthood within walking distance. All I had to do was pick up the phone and make the appointment.

But I couldn't do it.

If I'd had prochoice friends, I'm sure that the phone call would have been made. My friends would have reassured me that I was making the right choice, however difficult it was. I had to think of Lisa. I had to think of the damage I'd inflicted on my unborn child already by starving myself to feed her. I had to do it.

Fortunately, there was somebody different in my life. My husband's best friend, Eddie. Eddie was the prochoice movement's worst nightmare: a prolife Catholic man. But Eddie was able to see what my husband and I couldn't see: that the problem was our living situation. My husband was in the Army, stationed at Fort Ord. We only had one month of temporary housing provided so we'd had to find a place quickly. The apartment we'd found was in Salinas, over a half-hour drive from the Presidio of Monterey where my husband commuted daily to the Defense Language School. We were far from the commissary or even an ordinary grocery store. And our apartment hadn't come with a refrigerator. We'd only been able to afford a bar fridge. We didn't have enough room to store enough food for a week. I made trips to a local mini mart where food was astronomically expensive. The cost of gas for my husband's commute was draining what little money we had. Clearly, Eddie insisted, we needed to find a cheaper place closer to the Presidio.

My husband and I balked. We'd searched. The area around Fort Ord was notorious for expensive housing and enlisted personnel who couldn't afford to feed their families. A 13-year-old boy, Danny Holly, had hanged himself in the hopes that having "one less mouth to feed" would ease his family's desperate financial situation. What hope was there that we could find a better place to live? We were convinced that it was hopeless. Eddie persevered. He pestered and finally one Saturday morning he physically pushed us towards the door and said, "You're looking for an apartment. Now."

We found one that day. It was much nicer, much cheaper, across the street from a grocery store, and in a spot where my husband could carpool to work. Within a few months we were caught up on our debts and not only feeding ourselves but able to invite guests to dinner.

The experience left me with a profound distaste for the prochoice movement, whose rhetoric had very nearly led to the needless death of my unborn son. I quickly volunteered at the local Birthright, where part of my training was to read Bernard Nathanson's Aborting America, a memoir of his role in launching NARAL -- then the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, now NARAL Pro-Choice America. I learned that deceit had been part and parcel of the prochoice movement from its inception. I have a low betrayal tolerance. I became determined to dig deeper.

I started doing research at the library, looking at News Bank. There I discovered the first two of the hundreds of abortion deaths I've since documented: Gloria Aponte and Ellen Williams. Both had died due to appalling malpractice. Gloria's abortionist, Hanan Rotem, had allowed his receptionist to administer general anesthesia. The clinic where Ellen had her abortion, Dadeland Family Planning, was a hell hole. Both deaths bear witness to the type of systematic slovenliness that would reach its full flower in Kermit Gosnell decades later. The response to the revelations about Dadeland -- a closing of ranks by the self-appointed protectors of women's rights -- sowed the seeds for that deplorable blossom. I only came to see this myself gradually.

During the 1980s, Operation Rescue began a program of blockading abortion facilities. News coverage of one of those blockades include a photo of a group of prolifers holding signs shaped like tombstones, each commemorating a woman who had died from a "safe and legal" abortion. Clearly Ellen and Gloria had not been flukes. I attended a prolife rally in DC. Somebody had left behind an "Abortion Death Log" that fell into my hands. I tracked down its author, Kevin Sherock. Sherlock was a dogged abortion death researcher who documented his work well. He went on to publish Victims of Choice based on that research. Sherlock's research uncovered scores of deaths, some with very few details available, some with an abundance. I'd encounter Kevin Sherlock again.

I went to work at Life Dynamics, a renegade prolife organization headquartered in Denton, Texas. We provided litigation support to plaintiff malpractice attorneys representing abortion-injured women and the families of those who died. What started out as a report to summarize what we had in our files turned into Lime 5, an expose of the scope of the malpractice problem and the combination of cover-up and emabling by the abortion lobby -- especially the National Abortion Federation -- and bureaucrats at the Centers for Disease Control.

While at Life Dynamics I experienced another eye-opener. We had obtained tapes of years and years of meetings and seminars held by the National Abortion Federation. If I had my wish, every recorded minute of every word spoken at those seminars and meetings would be readily available to the public. They include some of the most damning words ever uttered about what goes on behind the scenes in America's abortion clinics. The things David Daleiden recorded came as no surprise to me. They were totally in keeping with what I'd heard on those tapes from the late 1980s through mid 1990s. Nothing has really changed beyond technology making even more ghoulish endeavors possible.

When I left Life Dynamics, I took my files on a CD-ROM and eventually started first a web site, then a blog, then a wiki devoted to abortion deaths. I branched out to include deaths from the pre-legalization era as well because I don't believe that only one type of abortion death is tragic and unnecessary. The site that hosted my wiki closed down, but I was able to salvage most of the content, now at the Cemetery of Choice.

I have kept up-to-date on abortion deaths and malpractice and owe a massive debt of gratitude to Operation Rescue for how meticulously they document every cause of malpractice and death they encounter. They have prevented cover-ups with their perseverance and determination to dig until they get to the truth.

When the Gosnell story broke, I got a copy of the Grand Jury Report as quickly as I could and spent nearly a week of sleepless nights converting it into a searchable wiki plus commentary -- alas since relegated to the Internet Archive after my wiki host shut down. In all honesty, the only thing that really shocked me about the Gosnell story is that he was vigorously and successfully prosecuted. Yes, he was the worst I'd ever seen, but it was a mere matter of degree. Animals in clinics, filth, untrained staff, stockpiled fetal remains, bureaucratic indifference, and the abortion lobby getting away with their lame excuses because a complicit media spreads them unquestioningly are all par for the course in abortion practice. The aftermath -- that nothing has changed -- is also no surprise. Filthy clinics are uncovered, stockpiled fetuses are stumbled across, bureaucrats and officials turn a blind eye, babies are born alive and killed, women's lives are cut short by malpractice, and the media continue to uncritically defend the indefensible by covering it up.

I had long hoped that if given enough information about how appalling abortion practice really is, prochoice citizens would rise up and demand that the "safe" part of "safe and legal" be taken seriously. After thirty years, I'm ready to abandon that dream. Once you start to really care about how the women are treated, becoming a prolifer is inevitable. Once you become a prolifer, you are dismissed out of hand. Of course you say bad things about abortion -- you're one of Them. The fact that we are Them because the bad things are true can't penetrate the wall of fog the abortion lobby and its media lapdogs create. Denial: It's Not Just a River in Egypt.

I have no idea how long it will take to reach the tipping point, where the entire house of lies collapses under its own weight. I have come to doubt that it will come in my lifetime. Still, if I can even poke at that foundation of lie, maybe I can do my part to undermine it. Maybe, for my granddaughters, the days of Safe and Legal Abortion will be universally seen as shameful as the days of The Peculiar Institution of slavery.

In the mean time, I will do everything I can to get the truth out. One piece of that will be sharing and adding to the work of McElhinney and McAleer. Hats off to you, Ann and Philem. Would that all journalists were as honest and courageous as you.

Erna Fisher New Clipping

Eighteen-year-old Erna Mae Fisher's mother held her hand as Dennis W. Miller performed a safe and legal abortion on her on March 10, 1988. During the abortion, Erna suddenly sat up, went into convulsions, and began to vomit.

Miller continued with the abortion while Erna choked to death on her own vomit. When an ambulance crew arrived, they found Erna's airway still full of vomit. Miller was making no attempt at resuscitation, but was holding Erna in his arms. He justified failing to check her airway or provide her with oxygen by saying, "Since I didn't realize what was going on, I didn't think it would have made any difference."

Miller later admitted that he had given Erna pain medications that he knew could cause vomiting, and that he hadn't asked her when she had last eaten.

Miller settled out-of-court with Erna's family for $475,000.

Miller had already settled six malpractice cases in the Kansas City area. He had failed the Missouri state medical exam three times before finally giving up. It took nine tries for him to pass the exam to be licensed in Kansas.

Newly added source:

• "Doctor has high number of settlements," Manhattan Mercury, June 4, 1990

Betty Jane Damato Updated and with New Clippings

At around 9 a.m. on February 22, 1980, 26-year-old Betty Jane Damato's sister, Mary Zellers, dropped her off at Abortion Clinic of Denver where Dr. James Franklin was to perform a safe, legal abortion.

That afternoon, Mary called the clinic and talked to her sister, who said that she'd had complications during the abortion. Mary went to pick Betty up and found her pale, weak, and in pain, clutching her stomach.

When she helped Betty get out of the car at her apartment, Mary notice a blood stain on the seat where Betty had been sitting. She decided to take Betty to spend the night with her at the Zellers home.

The morning of February 25, Betty was taken by ambulance to the emergency room at Porter Memorial Hospital, where she was found to have gone into total cardio-respiratory arrest. She was pronounced dead shortly after arriving. 

An autopsy revealed that Betty had died from massive infection originating from "a partially truncated and macerated fetus." Franklin had removed little more than the arms. 

According to Betty's family, Franklin knew that he had not removed all of the fetus. He instead had given Betty a trash bag, and instructions to collect whatever she expelled in the bag and bring it to him.

Franklin, an osteopath, told a grand jury that he did not perform the fatal abortion. He claimed that he had examined Betty, found the decomposing foot and ankle of the fetus protruding, and sent her to the hospital. However, when Betty was examined at the hospital, the fetus was protruding head first, making it impossible for Franklin to have observed its ankle since, as an expert witness testified, it's impossible for a dead fetus to turn around in the vagina and emerge head first.

A jury convicted him of manslaughter in Betty's death on October 19, 1981, and he was sentenced to prison for three years. Franklin already had a history of malpractice including causing an 11-year-old boy to be left paralyzed after a botched appendectomy and a man who died while hospitalized under Franklin's care.

Sources:

• "Denver Doctor Found Guilty of Manslaughter," Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, October 20, 1981
• "Ex-City Doctor Found Guilty Of Slaying," Albuquerque Journal, November 5, 1981
• "Doctor Gets 3 Years in Fatal Abortion Case," Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, December 4, 1981