Wednesday, January 15, 2025

January 15, 1989: Immigrant Dies Abandoned by Abortion Doc at Fake Clinic

Seeking a Better Life

In April of 1988, Eurice Agbagaa, age 26, flew from her home in Ghana to Dallas to look for work. She had been working with her widowed mother selling fabric in a street market, but she wanted more from life. She wanted to earn money to send home to her family, especially her five-year-old daughter. Eurice hoped to study nursing so that she could get a good job and bring the child to join her in the United States.

Eurice stayed in Dallas for several weeks but wasn't finding employment, so the friend with whom she was staying suggested that she try her luck in New York, where there was a growing Ghanaian community. She moved in with a woman I'll refer to as Ms. X, because her name is never given in news coverage. Ms. X had come to the United States from Ghana five years earlier and was eager to help her friend get settled. Eurice found a job working illegally as a housekeeper in Paterson, New Jersey, where she earned $170 a week, which is around $432 in 2025 dollars. Eurice lived in the home in Patterson during the week then stayed with Ms. X on weekends to be part of a community of others from her native land.

Eurice sent money home, where it made a big difference to her family. In December of 1988, Eurice was able to purchase five dresses to send home to her daughter -- the first Christmas gifts the child had ever received. 

In addition to Ms. X, Eurice had another local friend, Eddie Agboh, who had come from the same town in Ghana and was working in the US as a travel agent. He was one of the elders in the close-knit Ghanaian community. Eddie's brother, Kenneth Agboh, also spoke with Eurice by phone sometimes while she was in New Jersey. 

But an affair with a married Ghanaian man, never identified in news coverage, started Eurice down a tragic road.

Fake Clinic, Unqualified Staff

Eurice had been in the United States only nine months when she went to Y.P. Woman's & Medical Association in the Bronx, NY at  11:30 a.m. on January 7, 1989. Though the facility looked like a clinic, it was run by non-physicians who hired a nurse, scheduled appointments, and rented space to doctors who would independently use the space to see patients. It was, in short, a fake clinic. Eurice had found it with help from her friend, Ms. X.

Abram Zelikman  estimated the pregnancy as 11 to 12 weeks. He performed the abortion at about 1pm, then sent Eurice to the recovery room under the care of receptionist Yolanda Penalzer, who had administered the general anesthesia for Eurice's abortion. 

Ms. X sat by her. "She was turning and tossing," Eurice's friend told Newsday. "She couldn't really talk. Then the sheets came off her and I saw blood pouring out of her."

Over the next 2 1/2 hours, Eurice bled so heavily that Penalzer became alarmed and asked Zelikman to do something. Zelikman told her that the bleeding was normal and that she should put an ice bag on the patient. He then left the facility for his home a few miles away, leaving Penalzer to care for the patients in recovery.

Penalzer continued to be concerned about Eurice's bleeding, and tried repeatedly to reach Zelikman at his home, but couldn't contact him. Finally, at 4:02 pm, she called an ambulance, telling the 911 operator, "I have a woman who is bleeding and unconscious and in shock." 

While awaiting EMS, staff at the fake clinic scrambled to hide Eurice's file.

Her Final Days

Size difference between an 11-week fetus
and a 19-week fetus
The ambulance crew found Penalzer performing CPR on Eurice, who was in shock. They were able to restore her breathing and transport her to Long Island College Hospital, where an emergency hysterectomy was done. It was determined that Eurice had actually been at least 19 weeks pregnant. Eurice had a perforated uterus and severed abdominal artery. She had lost approximately 75% of her blood.

Eurice survived the surgery but remained comatose and was put on life support.

Word spread in the Ghanaian community, and Eddie Agboh went to the hospital to check on his friend about a week after the abortion. "She didn't resemble the person I knew before," he told Newsweek. "Her face was swollen, her eyes were protruding. It was very pathetic. I came home and called friends and told them she was in a complete mess, that she wouldn't last long."

In the early morning of January 15, Eddie Agboh got a call from the hospital. His friend was dead. Her cause of death was multiple organ failure.

Closing the Book on Eurice

While her body lay at the Ortiz Funeral Home in Brooklyn, Eddie Agboh and others raised money to send her body home for burial. They were able to gather more than $10,000 for Agboh to take Eurice's body back to Accra. The funeral there was a sideshow, with people pouring in to be part of the scenario. "Somebody's child having traveled overseas and the body having been brought back under serous circumstances. Everybody had an inquisitiveness in the whole affair. The mysteries surrounding the whole thing became a little bit inviting. The hall was jammed."

Ms. X was haunted by the experience, unable to sleep, brought back again and again to the moment that a nurse pulled Eurice's blood-drenched shirt off her body and handed it to her friend. Stunned and confused, Mrs. X dropped the bloody shirt in the trash. 

She had nothing good to say about staff at the fake clinic. "I felt if I hadn't been there, they would have wrapped her body and thrown it in the garbage."

Zelikman, a 54-year old Soviet immigrant who received his medical training in Leningrad, had been in the United States since 1979. He was faulted by the medical board for allowing non-medical staff to practice medicine, abandoning patients other than Eurice, failing to keep medical records, and failing to take adequate medical histories or perform appropriate blood tests for his abortion patients. His license was suspended. The medical board noted that he had allowed an unlicensed assistant to administer general anesthesia in his clinic on four occasions. The Brooklyn District Attorney investigated the death, but no charges were ever filed.

Watch Abandoned in a Fake Clinic on YouTube.
Watch Abandoned in a Fake Clinic on Rumble.

Additional sources: 
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January 15, 1915: Mourning Interrupted

On January 15, 1915, 22-year-old Margaret Jennickes died in Chicago. Somebody tipped off the coroner that there was something fishy about Margaret's death. 

"Mourners over the girl's body were surprised by a visit from Coroner's Physician Springer. He performed an autopsy and changed the death report from dilation of the heart" to peritonitis due to an illegal abortion.

The coroner's office concluded that the abortion had been perpetrated by Dr. C.A. Erickson of South Green Street. Erickson was charged with murder. A man named Joseph Martin of Bishop Street was also held for manslaughter. 

Though Dr. Erickson was indicted on February 1, the case never went to trial because the men were exonerated by a Grand Jury. No other suspect in Margaret's death is mentioned in my sources. I've been unable to determine why Erickson was a suspect. According to the Cook County Deaths Index, Margaret was a telephone operator born in Chicago to German immigrant parents.

Watch Mourning Interrupted on YouTube.

Sources:
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January 15, 1907: A Repeat Offender in Chicago

On January 15, 1907, 24-year-old housekeeper Sarah M. Cushing died in Wesley Hospital in Chicago, from septicemia caused by a criminal abortion perpetrated on December 29 at the home of a midwife or "lady doctress" named Gertrude Plenz. From coverage of matters, it's pretty clear that Plenz was a doctor, identified as a "midwife" in some instances because at that time and place, female obstetricians were often identified as midwives.

Plenz was arrested on January 24, and held by the coroner's jury. Mrs. Plenz had already been implicated in the abortion death of Margaret McCarthy in 1904. Plenz and her sister, Sophie Mann, were both indicted in the 1937 abortion death of Mary Kissell. 

Not that any of this slowed Dr. Plenz down. The November 30, 1939 Bridgeport (IL) News notes that Plenz was thrown a high-society surprise birthday party on November 21. 

Watch Mourning Interrupted on YouTube.

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Tuesday, January 14, 2025

January 14, 1928: Five Vermont Children Left Motherless

On Christmas Day of 1927, 27-year-old Anna E. DeLong attempted a self-induced abortion. Shortly thereafter, she was taken to Porter Hospital in Middlebury, Vermont. She languished there before dying of septicemia on January 14, 1928.

Her husband, Basil, was left to raise their five small children, four sons and a daughter. The two had married on December 21 of 1916, when Anna was only 17 years old.

She was the daughter of Addie LaPorte Turrill and her late husband, Nathan.

Bizarrely, the notices of her death and funeral are noted amongst club notes and similar items in the paper.

Watch Self-Induced in Vermont on YouTube.

Sources: 

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January 14, 2004: Young Black Woman Dies from Chemical Abortion

Chanelle Bryant in 1998
Blair High School, Pasadena, CA 
Twenty-two-year-old Chanelle Bryant was about nine weeks pregnant when she want to Glendale Family Planning Associates Medical Group facility, owned by the notorious Edward "Fast Eddie" Allred. There she was given the drugs for a chemical abortion. 

Chanelle took the 200 mg of Mifeprex orally on January 8, 2004. She was provided with Cytotec prostaglandin, which she was instructed to use as a vaginal suppository, rather than between the cheek and gum, on January 9. This off-label use is being investigated by the CDC and FDA after Chanelle and four other US women died of chemical abortion complications. Those other women were Oriane Shevin, Holly Patterson, Vivian Tran, and Brenda Vise. Since then other women including Amber Thurmond and Alyona Dixon, also died of this sort of rapid-onset toxic shock syndrome.

Her follow-up appointment was scheduled for January 17. She would not live long enough to keep that appointment.

Chanelle suffered terrible pain four days after self-administering the medication. She sought emergency care at Huntington Memorial Hospital on January 13. Her condition deteriorated. She was pale, cold, and lethargic, and she was transferred to the intensive care unit at 1:20 PM on January 14. At 4:11 she went into cardiac arrest. She was taken into surgery at 5:27 to try to identify the source of her problems. Ten minutes into surgery she went into cardiac arrest again. She was pronounced dead at 5:51.

Chanelle had been perfectly healthy before her abortion, according to her mother, Lynn Bryant. She told reporters that it was vital for medical professionals to be educated about the dangers of chemical abortions to prevent further maternal deaths.

The coroner‘s report attributed her death, January 14, 2004, to "sepsis and pneumonia due to endomyometritis with abscess formation due to Termination of Pregnancy with mifepristone/misoprostol and other undetermined factors." Her manner of death was listed as undetermined.

Thus Chanelle joined the sad ranks of women known to have died after FPA abortions: Denise Holmes, Mary Pena, Patricia Chacon, Josefina Garcia, Laniece Dorsey, Tami Suematsu, Joyce Ortenzio, Susan Levy, Deanna Bell, Christine Mora, TaTanisha Wesson, Maria Leho, Kimberly Neil, Nakia Jorden, Maria Rodriguez, and "Kyla Ellis"

FPA is a member of the National Abortion Federation, an organization that ostensibly ensures that abortions are done safely.

Sources:
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January 14, 1986: Antiquated Abortion Method Kills Detroit Teen

Christella Marie Forte, age 16, was a student at Coley High School in Detroit in January of 1986. She was also about 23 weeks pregnant. She was admitted to New Centre Hospital, where Dr. Raul Rivera injected a concentrated sterile salt solution into her uterus to kill the baby. But Rivera messed up and the solution got into Christella's bloodstream. She screamed, convulsed, and went into cardiac arrest 27 hours after instillation of saline for an abortion. She died on January 14, 1986, without ever expelling her baby.

Strangely, her death certificate lists her manner of death as "natural," rather than "accidental."

A medical journal article that appears to be about Cristella's death says that she was an obese Black girl experiencing her first pregnancy. The article gives the gestational age as 21.5 weeks. Nothing seemed to have gone wrong with the injection, until 26 hours afterward when she "complained of severe abdominal cramps with projectile expulsion of amniotic fluid. Generalized convulsions and shaking followed and the patient went into shock. Death occurred within 2 hours."

"At autopsy, microscopic examination of lungs revealed pulmonary edema with marked vascular congestion..... Positive test results ... confirmed a diagnosis of amniotic fluid embolism. There was marked congestion of the blood vessels of the kidneys, liver, brain, and spleen."

What is particularly disgusting about Christella's death is how utterly needless it was: saline abortions had been discredited as far too dangerous for over a decade. The documents surrounding her death do not explain why her abortionist chose an outdated, high-risk procedure for his young patient.



Source: Wayne County Circuit Court Case No. 86 – 621838
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Monday, January 13, 2025

January 13, 2005: "Medically Necessary" Abortion Kills Disabled Teen

Christin Alysabeth Gilbert, a 19-year-old woman with Down syndrome, was brought from Texas to George Tiller's Wichita abortion facility for a 28-week abortion. Christin was legally incompetent, unable to give her consent. Information about how this beautiful young woman met her tragic end was gathered by Operation Rescue.

Christin had been raised by her family in a small Texas town, according to Operation Rescue West. She was mainstreamed into her local high school, where she served as a bat girl for the softball team. She graduated in 2004.

An abortion at 28 weeks is a multi-stage procedure. Patients would come to the facility for various steps but spend the bulk of their time at a nearby motel with whatever companions they had brought along with them. Christin was accompanied by her parents, Paula and Jack, who brought her back and forth to Tiller's facility in the family minivan.

On January 10, 2005, Christin's family brought her to Tiller's clinic. Step one was a meeting with Dr. Ann Kristin Neuhaus.

Kansas law stated that no abortion past 22 weeks could be performed unless there was "a documented referral from another physician not legally or financially affiliated with the physician performing or inducing the abortion and both physicians determine that: (1) The abortion is necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant woman; or (2) a continuation of the pregnancy will cause a substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman." 

Christin's family was referred to Tiller's clinic by a Texas Planned Parenthood, not by Neuhaus, who had an arrangement with Tiller to meet with his patients and "refer" them. These meetings took place on Tiller's premises as part of patient processing. As was customary, Christin's parents paid Neuhaus by a separate check to "refer" their healthy daughter, 28 weeks into an uncomplicated pregnancy, for a supposedly medically indicated abortion.

Kansas law had a 24-hour waiting period between pre-abortion "counseling" and the initiation of the abortion. However, the same day Kristin was pro-forma referred, Dr. Leroy Carhart injected digoxin into Christin's uterus to cause fetal death. This drug is usually administered into the fetal heart, but sometimes is injected into the brain or just into the amniotic fluid in hopes that the fetus would swallow enough of the drug to cause death. Since this was a 28-week abortion, the normal procedure would also have been to insert laminaria, sterile dehydrated seaweed sticks that absorb fluid and expand, dilating the cervix. Christin's family then took her to the nearby La Quinta Hotel, which served as an overnight annex to Tiller's late-term abortion facility.

Christin's parents brought her back to the facility the following day. Typically, on the second day of a late abortion, an ultrasound is preformed to determine if the fetus is dead, and if necessary to perform a second digoxin injection. The laminaria are then swapped out to provide further dilation. However, Christin expelled her dead baby in the family minivan on the way to the clinic. Somebody performed a D&C to complete the abortion, and a "tear in the uterus" was sutured, though it's unclear if the tear was caused by intense contractions or instruments used to do the D&C. Christin and her family were sent back to the La Quinta.

Christin's family brought her back to Tiller's facility on January 12, where she was given IV fluids because she appeared to be dehydrated. The family went to a restaurant for dinner, but Christin had no appetite and was unable to eat.

Some time between midnight and 4 am on January 13, Christin was cramping, bleeding, vomiting, and suffering fainting spells. The family called Tiller employee Cathy Reavis, the "head nurse" who is not actually a nurse. She was the on-call person staying at the La Quinta to provide patient care. Under this "nursing" care, Christin was given a warm bath and put back to bed. Reavis tried to call Carhart, who was also supposed to be at the hotel, but she was unable to reach him. She did not seek further medical consultation for Christin but instead returned to her own room and went back to sleep.

The next morning, January 13, Christin's family tried to wake her and get her ready to return to the clinic, but she was unresponsive. Instead of calling 911, they used a luggage rack to get their bleeding, unconscious daughter from the hotel room to the minivan to take her to the clinic. 

Christin reportedly regained enough consciousness to walk "with assistance" into the clinic, but once there she went into cardio-respiratory arrest. There are no clinic notes describing what care she was provided with during the 45 minutes between when Christin's heart stopped beating and when Tiller employee Marguerite Reed called 911. (You can listen to the call here.)

From the ambulance dispatch sheet, obtained by Operation Rescue West:
  • CP VERY EVASIVE; PUT ON HOLD
  • CP REFUSED TO GIVE ANY INFORMATION, JUST SAYING NEED EMS
  • The caller is with the patient. She does not have chest pain. She is completely awake (alert). She has not fainted. She has pain above the belly button (navel).
Remember, these quotes are from the dispatch sheet. It was the caller, Marguerite Reed, who reported that Christin had no chest pain, abdominal pain above the navel, that Christin was alert and had not fainted. The investigation revealed that Christin was in fact in cardiac arrest when the call was made. LeRoy Carhart was performing CPR on a clinically dead patient, and the EMS services are being misled, told that she's alert.

Giving false information about a patient's condition to 911 can jeopardize the patient's life, because it can lead to inadequate help being sent. In a life-threatening situation, the patient needs the care of a medic. If the caller leads 911 staff to believe that the call is a routine transfer, only EMTs may be sent, meaning that there will be nobody on the ambulance crew qualified to perform intubations or to use a defibrillator.

Where was George Tiller while all this was happening? He was performing an abortion on another patient. He did look into the room to see what was happening, and told Christin's parents, who were in a separate room, so say that their daughter was being provided with care. 

When paramedics arrived at the clinic, they found Christin lying in "huge amounts" of "coffee grounds" blood and fluid, "Way more than you would normally see." A man was on top of Christin, trying to physically force fluids from her stomach. Assuming that the man was a nurse who didn't know what he was doing, they ordered the man to get away from the patient. The man, who turned out to be Leroy Carhart, at first refused but was sternly directed away from Christin so that people who knew what they were doing could attend to the young woman.

Medics transported Christin to Wesley Medical Center. They had been briefly able to get her heart to resume beating, but she was not maintaining a functional pulse. She arrived bleeding from the mouth, vagina, eyes, and nose. When told of her condition, her parents asked about organ donation. They opted for comfort care rather than aggressive resuscitation, and she was pronounced dead at 4:14 pm. Because of the damage done to her organs during her ordeal, only Christin's eyes were suitable for donation.

The medical examiner concluded that Christin "died as a result of complications of a therapeutic abortion. The most likely mechanism of death is sepsis...."

The Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, launched an investigation into the circumstances in Texas leading to the fatal trip to Wichita, and subpoenaed Tiller as a "material witness". No Texas criminal charges were pending against Tiller. Wesley Medical Center was also subpoenaed. Christin's medical records were being requested for a Grand Jury investigation into possible felony sexual assault.

The court order, signed by Elizabeth Berry, Presiding Judge of the Criminal District Court #3 of Tarrant County, Texas, requested the following records from Wesley Medical Center:
Any and all records and/or documents pertaining to [Christin], W/F, DOB 5/30/85, who was pronounced dead at Wesley Medical Center on January 13, 2005, including but not limited to medical and patient billing records, and the name of the physician who treated [Christin] and/or pronounced her dead.
Tiller's attorney, Daniel Monat, issued a statement that Tiller "received a routine subpoena from the state of Texas for the examination of medical records and items related to an investigation in Texas which is not directed at [Tiller]."

On February 2, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius sent a memo to Larry Buening, Executive Director of the Kansas Board of Healing Arts (BOHA) asking the board to investigate Christin's death.

Tiller is a member of the National Abortion Federation. Tiller allegedly justified performing an abortion on Christin on the grounds that it was necessary to preserve her health or life. I find this claim to be highly dubious. Had the pregnancy posed a threat to Christin's life or health, it could have been terminated within an hour by performing an emergency c-section in any properly-equipped obstetric ward. How it was supposed to preserve Christin's life or health to instead drive her past any number of hospitals into another state, and to perform a three-day procedure with the patient spending the bulk of her time in a motel room under the supervision of only her parents is a mystery.



Operation Rescue West has confirmed that Tiller has an arrangement with erstwhile abortionist Kristin Neuhaus, who is no longer permitted to perpetrate abortion in Kansas due to gross irregularities in her practice. Tiller provides a space in his facility for Neuhaus to meet with the patients, who pay her with a separate check. Neuhaus then rubber-stamps their "need" for an abortion.

A Grand Jury convened in Texas to investigate the sexual assault that had resulted in Christin's pregnancy, but no charges were ever filed.

Christin's was not the only tragic death caused by doctors who recommended (or excused) abortion as a life-saving or health-preserving option for the mother:
  • Allegra Roseberry was pushed into an abortion in order to obtain experimental cancer treatment.
  • Anjelica Duarte sought an abortion on the advice of her physician, and ended up dying under the care of a quack.
  • Barbara Hoppert died after an abortion recommended due to a congenital heart problem.
  • Erika Peterson died in 1961 when her doctors obtained her husband's permission to perform a "therapeutic" abortion.
  • "Molly" Roe died in 1975 when her doctors made the dubious decision to perform a saline abortion to improve her chances of surviving a lupus crisis.
Watch No Justice For Christin on YouTube.
Watch A Hotel is Not a Hospital on Rumble.

Sources:
at 7:47 PM 1 Speak to me!

January 13, 1927: Husband Prosecuted for Cruel Death

 A recent newspaper search led me to additional information on the abortion death of homemaker Fern Loretta Howe. She died at Brownsville Hospital, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, at 3:00 a.m. on January 13, 1927, just 18 days after her 27th birthday. Her death certificate notes that she died from "acute dilation of the heart" and septicemia due to an abortion.

That her husband, 30-year-old railroad worker Joseph C. Howe, was cruel to her was obvious to anybody who observed the goings-on. They had been married only about six months when Fern discovered that she was pregnant. Fern's family members all spoke up against him. The witnesses to his callousness included Fern's brother H.H. Walker and his wife, Fern's sister Mary McCoy, and Fern's mother, Barbara Walker. 

According to her family members, Joe  bought "a red liquid" and forced Fern to drink two doses of it, they said. After the abortifacient had done its work Fern developed sepsis, which triggered heart problems. When Fern took to her bed, Joe called her "too lazy" and harangued her to get up and cook his meals. Fern's sister testified that after Joe had dismissed Fern as "lazy" and refused to let her rest, the family had removed her first to her brother's home and then to the hospital at the urging of the doctor they'd brought in, LeRoy Waggoner.

There, on January 11, Fern gave a deathbed statement to a railroad detective. She told him that Joe had insisted, "We don't want children until we pay for our new house." He had forced her to drink "a red liquid" to cause an abortion. As she lay in bed at home, Fern said, Joe had refused to even turn her onto her side so that she wouldn't choke on the blood that was flowing from her nose. The deathbed statement was taken in longhand then typed up and read back to Fern for confirmation. The deathbed statement was witnessed by a state trooper and a nurse among others.

After Fern was taken to the hospital, where she lay clearly dying, Joe took out an ad in the local papers announcing that he would not be responsible for any of Fern's debts after her death. 

Joe admitted to a detective that he hadn't wanted children but denied giving Fern the abortifacient. He was charged with manslaughter and abortion due not only to the allegation that he had made her drink the abortifacient but that he had denied her access to the timely medical care that might have saved her life.
Joe's trial, however, went in his favor. 

The jury found that there was no proof that he had supplied the abortifacient, and found that he had provided adequate care in the form of his mother and Fern's family members and he did eventually obtain professional medical care for his wife.

Fern, divorced from her first husband, William Hasson, left her three-year-old son motherless. Prior to her death, Fern had entrusted little Harry to the care of her sister, Margaret McCoy, and their mother. 

Watch The Cruel Husband on YouTube.

Sources:

at 5:21 PM 0 Speak to me!

Sunday, January 12, 2025

January 12, 1980: Erstwhile Criminal Abortionist's Fatal Work

Middle-aged man of Eastern European descent sitting with open shirt collar in a wood-paneled office
Milan Vuitch

On January 12, 1980, 32-year-old Georgianna "Jeannie" English went to the clinic of former criminal abortionist Milan Vuitch (pictured), who had been operating his clinic without a license for two years. 

Vuitch administered general anesthesia for Jeannie, and she never woke up. She was transported to a nearby hospital where she died. 

Vuitch settled with Jeannie's family for $150,000. 

When Vuitch was investigated, it was discovered that he kept patients overnight in his home (an unlicensed facility) which he designated "The Annexe." Inspectors also noted repeated violations of medical standards regarding sanitation and anesthesia. 

Vuitch also admitted during another case that he had lacked hospital admitting privileges since 1963.

Vuitch was also responsible for the 1974 abortion death of 17-year-old Wilma Harris. 

Vuitch is one of three abortionists I know of who started out as criminal abortionists with clean records -- no patient deaths attributed to them -- who went on to kill two patient by performing the supposedly safer legal abortions. They are Jesse Ketchum (Margaret Smith and Carole Schaner) and Benjamin Munson (Linda Padfield and Yvonne Mesteth).

Watch Hero Abortion Doc Kills Second Patient on YouTube.

Sources: Washington Times 4/19/84; Washington Post 4/29/86; Washington DC Court of Appeals Case No. 82-1077

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January 12, 1980: Fatal Hemorrhage from Safe, Legal Abortion

Shirley Williams was 30 years old when she underwent a safe and legal abortion in January of 1980. She suffered from infection and hemorrhage after her abortion. On January 12, 1980, she was pronounced dead from hemorrhage.

According to death records, Shirley was black, which means she was more likely than a white woman to be sold and abortion, and then at least twice as likely to die once she got on the abortion table.  Genealogy records show that she was born and lived in Georgia, was married, and had a child.

Watch Scant Info on 1980 Abortion Death on YouTube.

Source: Louisiana Certificate of Death # 82 26 177

at 12:00 AM 0 Speak to me!

January 12, 1902: Family Doc's Fatal Work

 

Ellen "Ella" S. Stehman, only 19 years old, died on January 12, 1902 in her family home near Manheim in Penn Township, Pennsylvania. Her family published a death announcement attributing her demise to typhoid fever.

But all was not as the death notice said. Dr. Jacob H. Sieling, age 50, of York, Pennsylvania, was put on trial for her death. Until two years earlier, Sieling had lived in Manheim and had been the Stehman family physician.

York County District Attorney Wiest summarized the state's case: 
On December 31, 1901, Ella Stehman left her home in Manheim, and went to Lancaster and thence to York. Arriving there she proceeded to the office of Dr. Sieling, which she was seen to enter, where the operation was performed. She returned to her home the same day. 

The next day she worked about the house, but complained of not feeling well, and the day following she was confined to her bed. Dr. J. D. Hershey called and while no diagnosis nor examination was made, he ascertained that the abdominal cavity was agitated to such an extent that peritonitis had set in. The girl gradually grew worse, and sank lower and lower day by day. From the onset, her physician told her that her condition was dangerous, and on Saturday, January 11, she knew she was going to die.

This she told Monroe Todd, who was paying attention to her, and asked for a minister to receive spiritual consolation. Lower she sank and on Sunday morning about 5:30 o'clock she died. She was between nineteen and twenty years of age.

An autopsy was held. This revealed the delicate organs of the abdominal cavity to be in a highly inflamed state and enlarged. Peritonitis was advanced and the womb contained two punctures, one of which was gangrenous, and which could only be caused by the introduction of some instrument.

Shortly before she died, and with the fear of death upon her, she made a statement in writing before a notary public, in which she said that Dr. Jacob H. Sieling had performed an operation upon her for abortion.
     Dr. Jacob H. Seiling     
In her deathbed statement, Ella recounted her journey to York. She described the instruments Dr. Seiling had used. She quoted Dr. Seiling's description to her of how the abortion would be performed. She recounted returning home at 7:00 that evening.

Ella's devastated mother testified that her daughter had left home in the morning of December 31 and returned that evening. She described Ella's decline and how Dr. Hershey had called in Dr. J. F. Dunlap to assist in Ella's care. She told about how the day before Ella's death, in the young woman's presence, Dr. Dunlap had told her that Ella was going to die.

Dr. Hershey testified about attending to Ella in her final illness. He described the findings at autopsy.

Monroe Todd testified that he had been keeping company with Ella for about six months. He'd driven her the mile or so from Manheim to her home on December 31. He recounted that Ella had told him not to drive so fast because she felt so ill.

Monroe Todd testified that the day before Ella died, he'd spent some time alone with her. The two had conversed in both German and English. She told him that she knew she was dying and that she had performed the abortion herself.

Todd's testimony carried more weight with the jury than Ella's dying declaration, signed and notarized and made in the presence of Dr. Hershey and members of Ella's family. The jury voted for acquittal.

Watch The Boyfriend's Testimony on YouTube.

Sources:
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Saturday, January 11, 2025

January 11, 1912: The First Victim of Alma Dittman?

Blanche Grace Ainslie, age 25, died January 11, 1912, after undergoing a criminal abortion attributed to midwife Alma Dittman in Denver, Colorado. According to her obituary, she died in a Denver hospital.

According to genealogy information, Blanche was the second of nine children born to Burton and Idella Prentice. Idella died in 1908, when Blanche was 21, leaving her to help care for her siblings, the youngest of whom was 8 years old. 

Blanche married Allen Ainslie in 1909. There are no children mentioned in the genealogy sources. According to the 1910 census, Blanche was a dressmaker and Allen was a salesman in a general store. Allen's brother, a salesman in a novelty store, lived with the couple.

Blanche's obituary described her as "highly respected for her many virtues and excellent traits of character." 

Dittman's 1911 Denver directory listing
I've been unable to find any information about why Blanche decided to abort her baby or how she selected Dittman as her abortionist. Dittman was listed as a midwife in the Denver city directory, but I haven't found any evidence that she advertised in the Denver newspapers as either a midwife or an purveyor of solutions for "ladies' troubles."

The case against Alma Dittman was later dropped for reasons I've been unable to determine. Later it would become abundantly clear that Dittman was a practicing abortionist. She would go on to be implicated in the abortion deaths of  Mabelle Cannon in 1917, Carrie McDonald in 1922, Mabel Duncan in 1923, and Rose Savoren in 1927. When she was arrested for Rose's death, the District Attorney's office said that Dittman had perpetrated more than 1,000 abortions over a ten-year period. Her arrest was the fifth time she'd been charged with abortion. In all previous cases, they said, she'd been released on technicalities. 

On December 15, 1927, the day the defense was to start presenting its case, Dittman committed suicide in her home by turning on all the gas jets on her stove. Her body was discovered by a friend who had come by to drive her to the trial. Dittman had left a note on the table proclaiming her innocence but expressing fear that the jury would find her guilty. She left $500 of her $20,000 estate to her dogs. The remaining money went to her son and two grandsons.

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Saturday, January 04, 2025

January 4, 1971: Mystery Abortion in Virginia, Death in North Carolina

To preserve the woman's privacy, I have redacted her death certificate and will refer to the woman whose death we are commemorating today as "Florence Dorland."

Florence was a 21-year-old Black woman, never married. Her occupation was listed as "babysitter." She lived in Granville County, North Carolina

She came into the care of Dr. Robert E. Zipf, Jr. on December 19, of 1970. At some point he admitted her to Duke Hospital in Durham, where she died on January 4, 1971. Her cause of death is listed as cerebral anoxia due to hepato-renal failure due to abortifacient. The manner of death was identified as homicide, and how injury occurred is induced abortion, with the injury occurring on December 9, 1970 in Richmond, Virginia. 

So, what happened to Florence? Let's look at the circumstances. 

Legal status of abortion: Both North Carolina and Virginia followed the American Law Institute Model Abortion Law in 1970: "A licensed physician is justified in terminating a pregnancy if he believes that there is substantial risk that continuance of the pregnancy would gravely impair the physical or mental health of the mother or that the child would be born with grave physical or mental defect, or that the pregnancy resulted from rape, incest or other felonious intercourse." Thus whatever law was on the books would have had no impact on Florence's decision to travel out-of-state. 

Laxity in approving abortions: North Carolina had an abortion ratio of 7 hospital abortions per 1,000 live births, while Virginia had nearly double the abortion ration, with 13 per 1,000 live births. North Carolina did not provide a breakdown of the justification for abortions, but Virginia did, with 357 of 508 hospital abortions (70%) of abortions being done for "maternal mental health." For comparison, 97% of California abortions, 87% of Colorado abortions, 77% of Georgia abortions, 92% of Oregon abortions, and 78% of South Carolina abortions were done for "mental health." Geographically it seems unlikely that there was a significant difference in how likely Florence was to be able to arrange an abortion in a hospital in her home state or in Virginia.

Distance: It's about 122 miles, or about a 2-hour drive, from the area where Florence lived to Richmond, Virginia. Florence had several much closer metropolitan areas to choose from: Durham, Raleigh, and Greensboro. 

Cause of death: The "cause of death" indicates an abortifacient rather than a surgical abortion. It seems unlikely that Florence would have driven nearly two hours to purchase and consume an abortifacient and then travel home again, and more likely that she might have driven nearly two hours to obtain it and then consume it at home. But the location of the injury was an unidentified building in Richmond, not in Florence's home. Whatever the abortifacient was, it was administered in Richmond.

Manner of death: The "manner of death" was homicide, meaning that either the abortion itself was patently illegal, or it was technically legal but performed in such a reckless way that Florence's death would be predictable.

Location of injury: The location was given merely as "building," with nothing more specific such as doctor's office, clinic, hospital, or residence. If Florence had undergone a legal abortion performed recklessly, the physician would likely have listed the location of injury more specifically.

Most likely perpetrator:  Planned Parenthood's medical director, Mary Calderone, concluded in "Illegal Abortion as a Public Health Problem" (American Journal of Public Health, July 1960), that roughly 90% of pre-legalization abortions were performed by doctors, about 8% by the woman herself, and about 2% by non-physicians. Nancy Howell Lee  (The Search for an Abortionist, University of Chicago Press, 1969) concluded that 89% of pre-legalization abortions were done by physicians, 5% by nurses or others with some medical training, and 6% by non-medical persons or the woman herself. Since both sources agree on the approximate 90% perpetrated by physicians, this number is probably fairly accurate. Thus it's most likely that whomever perpetrated the fatal abortion, it was a doctor.

Had Florence undergone the abortion in New York rather than Virginia, I would have suspected that she had travelled to a freestanding, well-advertised, and openly operating clinic, had some sort of abortifacient administered by a doctor (saline injection, prostaglandin, or something like Leunbach's paste), and had been sent home. This is what happened with "Anita" and "April," who died from outpatient saline abortions initiated legally in New York.

The outpatient scenario would account for the cause of death being "abortifacient" rather than "surgical abortion" or "therapeutic abortion."  

My conclusion: It it seems most likely that Florence learned through the grapevine of a doctor willing to administer an abortifacient paste or hypertonic saline on an outpatient basis. The former seems much more likely, since all but the most reckless of abortionists did saline abortions outside a hospital. If Dr. Zipf expressed disapproval (as he likely would have, given that he found the manner of death to be homicide), Florence might have kept the doctor's name to herself to protect him.


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Saturday, December 21, 2024

Abortion Pills: NOT Safer than Tylenol

Abortion advocates have started asserting that the abortion pill regimen is safer than Tylenol. The claim is based on the fact that there's a documented abortion-pill death for every million women prescribed the drugs versus about 500 deaths per year in the US from acetaminophen. They're wanting you to assume that since fewer people die from taking abortion pills (not counting the babies, of course) than from Tylenol, an RU-486 abortion is safer than treating a headache.

First of all, the claim is absurd on its face. Women are routinely told to take Tylenol and similar drugs to address the pain related with the abortion pills. It's nonsensical to say that the entire start-to-finish process of a chemical abortion is safer than any given dose of Tylenol taken during the process.

But let's set that aside. Let's say that abortion pills are miraculously painless and nobody ever takes a Tylenol to cope because a chemical abortion is no more painful than a foot massage.

How deadly is that Tylenol?

The National Library of Medicine article, "Acetaminophen Toxicity," does state that 500 deaths per year are connected to acetaminophen. But it also notes that half of those are unintentional overdoses -- meaning that 250 of those 500 deaths are people deliberately overdosing on acetaminophen. Nobody attempts suicide by abortion pill.

What about the other 250 deaths? The people who didn't take too much Tylenol in an effort to end it all?

Well, it took a bit of research to even be able to estimate how many doses of Tylenol are taken per year. After digging around I found that according to the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, an estimated 23% of adults -- 52 million people -- in the US use acetaminophen each week in the US. That's nearly 2.7 BILLION weeks of people taking Tylenol or other medications containing acetaminophen annually resulting in 250 accidental deaths. 

Let's look at the math again. Five deaths (reported) per million doses of abortion pills. That would be one death for every 200,000 RU-486 abortions. There is one death per every 10.8 million weeks that somebody takes Tylenol. That means that RU-486 is at least 54 times riskier than Tylenol -- assuming, again, that on any given week a person takes only ONE dose of Tylenol and not several doses per day over the course of a cold. 

So ask yourself -- Why are they lying by a factor of at least 54 to convince you that if you have a headache you're safer having a chemical abortion than taking a Tylenol?

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