Another historic abortion death

Herman Webster Mudgett, aka H.H. Holmes (pictured, right), was the first famous American serial killer, a contemporary of Jack the Ripper. He was also an abortionist. He admitted on the gallows to being guilty of two women's abortion deaths. He disposed of their remains the same way he disposed of his other victims' remains -- by destroying their flesh and selling their skeletons to medical schools.

We only know the identity of one of the victims of Holmes' abortion practice.

Holmes, a physician, was running a pharmacy out of the first floor of his elaborate, custom designed building, dubbed "The Castle" by others in his suburban Chicago neighborhood. Inside the pharmacy was a jewelry counter, run by a man named Ned Conner, who rented rooms on the second floor of The Castle, where he lived with his wife Julia and their 8-year-old daughter, Pearl.

Julia (pictured, left) worked in a clerical capacity in Holmes' mail-order medicine business. She and Holmes became lovers. In addition to cuckolding Ned, Holmes swindled him, selling him the debt-saddled pharmacy. Ned, disgusted, divorced Julia and left town.

Once divorced, Julia started pestering Holmes to marry her. He kept stalling. Finally, Julia announced that she was pregnant. Holmes used the promise of marriage to convince Julia to submit to an abortion. It took a lot of persuasion to convince the young mother to abort her child. He had performed many abortions as a medical student, he assured her. She would be perfectly safe in his hands. When she finally consented, she was too upset to even be able to put Pearl to bed. Holmes took the child upstairs and settled her for the night.

He took Julia to his basement abortion room -- he had a room in The Castle dedicated to this use -- on Christma Eve of 1891. Julia died from the dose of chloroform, though sources differ as to whether her death was accidental or deliberate. Holmes at one point claimed that he'd tired of Julia, wished to upgrade to another woman, and thus would have likely gotten rid of her anyway.

With Julia dead, Holmes went to Pearl's room and killed her with chloroform as well. The remains of a child later found at The Castle are believed to be those of Pearl Connor.

When the other boarders asked about the whereabouts of Julia and Pearl, Holmes said that they'd gone to live with Julia's sister in Iowa. As for what became of Julia's body, Charles M. Chappell, who did odd jobs for Holmes, later said that about two months after Julia and Pearl had vanished, Holmes offered him the chance to make some money by articulating a skeleton to sell to a medical school. The body Chappell was presented with had already been skinned and largely denuded of flesh; Chappell assumed at the time that it was simply one of Holmes' patients that had been autopsied. For $35, Chappell cleaned and articulated the skeleton, which Holmes then sold for $200 to Dr. Pauling, a surgeon, who often pondered the six-foot-tall female skeleton and wondered how the woman had died.

Only after Holmes murdered his business associate as part of an insurance scam, then murdered three of the associate's five children, did the reality of The Castle (pictured, right) become known. It was a custom built house of horrors where Holmes had murdered and dissected at least nine people, possibly as many as fifty. In one of his many memoirs and confessions, which he churned out in prison, Holmes admitted to his crimes -- though on the scaffold, he protested that he was guilty only of the abortion deaths of Julia Connor and the unnamed woman.

Sources:

H.H. Holmes

The Murder Castle of H.H. Holmes

Malice, Madness, and Mayhem: an Eclectic Collection of American Infamy

Into the Abyss: H.H. Holmes

1928: Another fatal Chicago abortion

On May 8, 1928, 27-year-old Margaret Barnts died from a criminal abortion performed by Pauline Zickerman or Nickelman. (The name is given two different ways in the source, perhaps due to illegible handwriting on their original source documents.) The defendant was indicted for felony murder on May 15, 1928. Her profession is not mentioned.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see Abortion in the 1920s.



For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

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1981: One of four deaths at Miami mill

Twenty-four-year-old Maura Morales was eight weeks pregnant when she went to Woman's Care Center for a safe and legal abortion on May 8, 1981.

When she was in the recovery room, her heart went into spontaneous ventricular fibrillation -- irregular heartbeats not capable of effectively pumping blood. Maura was taken to a hospital, but died that day.

Maura was the one of four women to die at the same facility. The others were Shirley Payne, Myrta Baptiste, and Ruth Montero.

For more abortion deaths, visit the Cemetery of Choice:



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1986: Abortionist's mistake leaves woman dead

Claudia Caventou, age 33, underwent a safe, legal first-trimester abortion at Mercy Medical Clinic in Los Angeles on May 8, 1986, performed by H. N. Fahmy.

Claudia's boyfriend was in the waiting room during the procedure. Staff told him that everything was okay, and suggested that he leave and get something to eat. Since he'd heard Claudia screaming earlier, he decided to stay.

Several hours later, he heard the doctor come out and tell his staff to call 911. Claudia was taken to a hospital where she underwent emergency surgery for what doctors thought was a perforated uterus. It turned out that Claudia's pregnancy had been in her fallopian tube, which had ruptured during the abortion. Efforts to save Claudia were futile, and she died later that day.

Even though, in theory, women who choose abortion should be less likely to die of ectopic pregnancy complications, experiences shows that they're actually more likely to die, due to sloppy practices by abortion practitioners.

For more abortion deaths, visit the Cemetery of Choice:



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"Incompatible With Life?"

HT: Moral Outcry

Incompatible With Life? Some Children Die in Abortions, But Bella is Now Two

Pro-life Senator Rick Santorum and his family have put their money where their mouths are on more than one occasion. First, they did everything possible to save their son Gabriel, who was delivered prematurely but died. Now, they are seeing their daughter Bella, who has Trisomy 18 (also called Edwards Syndrome) past her second birthday.

When Bella was 3 months old, she needed some minor but vital surgery. Some doctors told us that a child like Bella wouldn't survive surgery or, even worse, that surgery was "not recommended" because of her genetic condition - in other words, that her life wasn't worth saving. So we again turned to the Children's Hospital and found compassion, concern, and hope in Dr. Thane Blinman. He told us he had several trisomy 18 patients who did well - and so did Bella.

Next week, we will mark Bella's second birthday. Over these two years, we have endured two close brushes with death, lots of sleepless nights, more than a month in CHOP's intensive care unit, and the constant anxiety that the next day could be our little girl's last.

And yet we have also been inspired - by her fighting spirit, and by the miracle of seeing our little flower blossom into a loving, joyful child who is at the center of our family life.

To reach out and help families of special-needs kids, check out ninety-nine balloons, founded by the parents of Eliot, who lived 99 days with Trisomy 18:

"Hello Baby!" thanx to iPad and Pampers

iTunes Preview:

You’ve heard a lot about the ways your baby will develop during your pregnancy—now Pampers enables you to experience baby development like never before: at simulated life-size, right on your iPad. Enter your due date to track week-by-week typical progress and learn about the important changes happening. Hold the iPad in front of your tummy and see a typical representation of the baby, with richly detailed images illustrating his or her growth. Hello Baby is a whole new way to get your family excited to welcome its newest member.

We need to get an iPad and this app for every sidewalk counsellor in America.

HT: Jill Stanek -- who suggested an iAbortion app that will show how your baby will be disposed of.

1905: Patient's mom clears docs in fatal abortion

On May 7, 1905, Mrs. Hannah Calhoun died in Peoria, Illinois, from fever and blood poisoning attributed to an abortion.

At first, Dr. J. W. Parker and his assistant, Dr. John Peattie, were held in the death. Then the Grand Jury heard from Sophia Spellman, Hannah's mother. Her testimony, to the effect that Parker had only been called in to attend to Hannah after she had taken ill, was enough to lead the Jury to exonerate the men, though they were reputed abortionists. Parker had been charged in another abortion, evidently not fatal, several years earlier.

Hannah's mother would not concede that Hannah had aborted the pregnancy, but said that if there had been an abortion performed, Hannah must have done it herself.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. For more about abortion and abortion deaths in the first years of the 20th century, see Abortion Deaths 1900-1909.



For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

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1938: Practical nurse performs fatal abortion

On May 5, 1938, Mrs. Genevieve Horton, a practical nurse, pleaded guilty in an abortion case in Westchester County, New York. She was released on $1,500 bail. According to an indictment, after being released, Horton performed an abortion on 29-year-old Mrs. Asunta La Rosa, a mother of three. Asunta died in her home later that evening.



For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

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1924: Another victim of Dr. Achtenberg

On May 6, 1924, 24-year-old Madelyn Anderson died at Chicago's Washington Park Hospital from a criminal abortion performed that day. The coroner recommended the arrest of a woman identified as "Dr. Ogdenberg". On May 13, Dr. Louise Achtenberg was arrested for Madelyn's death. Achtenberg was indicted for felony murder on May 15.

Madelyn's abortion was typical of criminal abortions in that it was performed by a physician.

Achtenberg, identified only as "Mrs." Louise Achtenberg, was also implicated in the 1907 abortion death of Dora Swan.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see Abortion in the 1920s.



For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

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1907: Another victim of Dr. Hagenow

Thursday, May 2, 1907, started out as an ordinary day for 26-year-old Annie Horvatich of Justine Street in Chicago. She did the family washing in the morning, then in the afternoon took the streetcar to the bank to withdraw $25.

At 6:30 that evening, she asked her new husband, Michael, to accompany her to the home of Dr. Louise Hagenow. It was late by the time they arrived. Though she didn't bring a change of clothes or any type of overnight bag, she asked Mike to look after her children (She had three from a previous marriage.) and to come and see her on Saturday.

Mike, who told his story through a translator, said that he didn't know Hagenow and didn't know what his wife's purpose was in the visit -- a claim that isn't held up by the letter he says he got from her the next day:

Beloved Mike -- I let you know everything is well. Slept very well. Take care of the children. Tell Fanny not to go outside unless she puts a cap and coat on her. If she won't, don't leave her out. You see how she is. You didn't have any coffee at home and you were mad this morning. I will take care you won't be angry. Don't be afraid. There won't be any serious happenings. Will be in the house that day until I go home. Come over Saturday afternoon as you said, and tell the children where you are going, so that they won't go away from the house. Tell them I will come back with you. Nothing else. With love and regards to the children. A.H.

So evidently Mike knew enough about Annie's purpose that she would have to assuage his fears that there might be "serious happenings".

Mike went to Hagenow's home on Saturday afternoon and found his wife sitting up in bed, apparently in her underclothes. She told him she was unwell and sent him home, saying she would not be returning home until Monday.

On Sunday, Mike got a phone call to go to Hagenow's place. He arrived at 10 p.m. to find his wife very sick, abed in a different room than the one he'd first seen her in. A Dr. Rasmussen was also present. Annie indicated that she wanted to send for a doctor from South Chicago, but Hagenow insisted that it was too late to bother the other doctor.

Mike remained at Annie's side during the night, noting that by morning she appeared to be much worse. He went to the home of Mary Galavitch, who could speak English and thus serve as a translator. When Mike and Mary arrived, Hagenow met them and told them that Annie had died at 5 a.m.

Hagenow gave Mike a business card for a neighborhood undertaker. Mike indicated that he'd prefer an undertaker that he knew. Hagenow then sent Mike to Rasmussen's office to get a death certificate, which indicated that Annie had died from pneumonia and bronchitis.

Mike sought out an undertaker named W.J. Freckleton, who went to Hagenow's home to pick up Annie's body at around 5 p.m. He said that Hagenow told him that she ran a private hospital, and that he should return after dark to take Annie's body out the back way. He returned at about 9 p.m. with an assistant, and found it very difficult to get Annie's body down the narrow staircase. He said that Hagenow told him that her regular undertaker never reported any trouble getting bodies out down that staircase.

The funeral was held, Annie buried, and it seemed as if Mike and the children would be getting on with their lives as best they could. But that changed on May 13. The Cook County coroner, attended by Annie's brother, John Sneller, exhumed Annie's body. Dr. E.R. LeCount, teacher at Rush Medical College, Dr. Warren J. Hunter, coroner's physician, and Dr. Rudolph W. Holmes, specialist in obstetrics and gynecology, performed a post mortem examination. What they found was shocking.

Annie's lungs had been quite healthy and normal -- as were most of her internal organs. She clearly had not died of pneumonia.

It was in her pelvis that the true cause of death was found. Her uterus was lacerated, with the top of the uterus torn nearly off, causing fatal peritonitis. From the condition of her uterus, the doctors gauged that she had been about four months pregnant, but there was no sign of the fetus, which evidently had been successfully killed, removed, and disposed of.

Everyone participating in the post-mortem agreed that Annie had been healthy prior to the assault on her reproductive organs. She had no signs whatsoever of any reason to think an abortion would have been necessary to preserve her life.

Hagenow admitted that Annie had come to her place on the 2nd and died on the 6th, but insisted that Annie had been bleeding vaginally upon her arrival. She insisted that Annie told her she had seen a doctor on the South Side who had "brought her around" (i.e. done an abortion). Hagenow insisted that her examination of Annie had found no signs of injury, just vaginal bleeding which she diagnosed as pneumonia. She said she had charged Annie $15 to treat her for the pneumonia, then summoned Dr. Raumussen, who she (Hagenow) knew had been charged in the past as an abortionist.

Hagenow's claim that she hadn't performed an abortion on Annie wasn't very credible, given her history. She advertised consistently in Chicago daily papers, ads reading, "Dr. Louise Hagenow; licensed physician; expert; twenty seven years; female diseases; a new scientific, painless method; no operation; good results...." and "Ida Von Schultz, 480 North Clark street; regular graduate; expert in obstetrics, female complaints, etc., and all difficult cases; twenty-five years experience; ladies call or write...." In short, she was an open and known abortionist.

Also entered into evidence in the trial was the dying declaration of Marie Hecht, who died from one of Hagenow's "scientific, painless" abortions in 1899, as testified to by the police officer who had taken the statement.

Likewise entered into evidence was the testimony of a doctor who Hagenow had brought in to help try to save the life of a young woman Hagenow had disemboweled in the process of an abortion sometime ten or fifteen years prior to the trial over Annie's death -- which would mean this girl had died between about 1892 and 1897. I have no idea who she could be, since the earlier death I have attributed to Hagenow is of Marie Hecht.

A police officer also testified about taking the dying declaration of Lola Madison.

A private investigator for the United States postal authorities testified that she had priced abortions with Dr. "Ida Von Schultz" on January 22, 1907. Hagenow quoted a price of $50 for a married woman two months pregnant, and estimated that the woman would need to remain in her care for about eight days. Hagenow, as Von Schultz, later quoted to the same investigator a price of $35 for an abortion for an unmarried woman who would board elsewhere during the procedure.

To top it off, during cross-examination, Hagenow admitted involvement in the abortion death of Hannah Carlson. I am utterly unable at this point to learn anything else about this victim.

The appeals court noted, "had the evidence shown that Annie Horavitch was the only pregnant woman whom [Hagenow] had caused to miscarry or abort, it might not have been unreasonable to presume that she did so in good faith and for the purpose of saving the woman's life. .... [but for] 27 years [Hagenow] had been constantly engaged in producing miscarriages and causing abortions... [and] she kept a place for the treatment and care of women upon whom miscarriages and abortions had been caused and performed; ... she was surrounded at her house by men and women engaged in the business of causing and producing criminal miscarriages and abortions, and ... she had caused the death of several women upon whom she had caused miscarriages and produced abortions within a few years prior to her indictment for causing the death of Annie Horvatich ...."

Hagenow, nearly 60 years old at the time of her trial, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for Annie's death.

There were a number of deaths in Chicago attributed to Dr. Lucy Hagenow, aka Louise Hagenow aka Ida Von Scultz. These deaths include:

1899: Marie Hecht
1905: May Putnam
1906: Lola Madison
1925: Lottie Lowy, Nina H. Pierce, Jean Cohen, and Elizabeth Welter
1926: Mary Moorehead

These abortions were typical of pre-legalization abortions in that they were performed by a physician.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. For more about abortion and abortion deaths in the first years of the 20th century, see Abortion Deaths 1900-1909.



For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

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This moment brought to you by the War on Drugs

Warning: Strong language.

As the Fark headline said, "Smoking pot is child endangerment. Storming a home with guns, then firing bullets into the family pets as a child looks on is a safety procedure."

This video is horrifying. But every US citizen needs to watch it. If it doesn't leave you shaking, angry, and ready to cry and smash something, then maybe we should see if you want a bunch of cops dressed and armed like soldiers storming YOUR house, spraying gunfire around YOUR kid, terrorizing YOUR family, and killing YOUR dog in order to arrest you for a freaking misdemeanor.



HT: Reason.com: Video of SWAT Raid on Missouri Family

ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT!

Yeah, drug dealers dregs of society yada yada yada.... Rum runners etc. Sound familiar? Sound like, maybe Prohibition? The war on drugs is worse than the drugs. There is NO amount of dope that kid could smoke in a lifetime that would do 1% of the damage those cops did "protecting" him, from something that's frankly less inherently risky to him than if his parents had been chugging perfectly legal booze. It was a freaking MISDEMEANOR, people! On a par with having an overdue library book or shoplifting a pack of gum.

Read the CATO Institute report on these appalling paramilitary raids, carried out against citizens whose only crime is often a MISDEMEANOR, if they've even committed a crime at all:

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

Check out the CATO Institute's interactive map of botched drug raids. A few examples:

On August 2, 1996, police storm the home of 62-year-old Salvator Hernandez on a drug raid. The raid is part of a broader raid that morning involving 47 police officers and federal agents.

Hernandez, who is nearly deaf, is making breakfast for himself and his friend, 54-year old Bortolo Pineda.

According to police, as they entered the home, Hernandez took the knife he was using to make breakfast and "lunged" at them with a "menacing" look on his face. According to Pineda, Hernandez didn't hear the police shouts, and had turned to get some sausage from the refrigerator. Police opened fire, and hit Hernandez in the chest five times, killing him.

Hernandez was a farmworker described by friends and his employer as a "good man," and a "good worker." He had no criminal record, and in fact had been a police officer in Mexico before coming to America. He was a grandfather of 21 and a great-grandfather of one. There were no drugs on his person or in his system.

Just days later, a grand jury would clear the raiding officers of all charges, ruling that they had reason to believe their lives were in danger.

Salem police pointedly refused to apologize for Hernandez's death.

New York:

Buffalo police raided the apartment of the family of Terrell and Schavon Pennyamon looking for heroin. During the raid, one officer struck Terrell-an epileptic U.S. Air Force veteran-in the head with the butt of a shotgun and other officers pointed their weapons at the couple's eight children. Terrell suffered a dislocated arm after he was yanked up by police during the raid and also had glass lodged in his foot from broken window glass. Schavon was at work as a certified nursing assistant before being called home after the raid.

The police realized their mistake and raided the apartment upstairs from the Pennyamons and have since apologized for raiding the wrong apartment.

New York again:

On May 16, 2003, a dozen New York City police officers storm an apartment building in Harlem on a no-knock warrant. They're acting on a tip from a confidential informant, who told them a convicted felon was dealing drugs and guns from the sixth floor.

There is no felon. The only resident in the building is Alberta Spruill, described by friends as a "devout churchgoer." Before entering the apartment, police deploy a flashbang grenade. The blinding, deafening explosion stuns the 57 year-old city worker, who then slips into cardiac arrest. She dies two hours later.

A police investigation would later find that the drug dealer the raid team was looking for had been arrested days earlier. He couldn't possibly have been at Spruill's apartment because he was in custody. The officers who conducted the raid did no investigation to corroborate the informant's tip. A police source told the New York Daily News that the informant in the Spruill case had offered police tips on several occasions, none of which had led to an arrest. His record was so poor, in fact, that he was due to be dropped from the city's informant list.

Maryland:

Policemen posing as delivery drivers delivered a package containing nearly four pounds of marijuana to the home of Berwyn Heights mayor Cheye Calvo and his wife Trinity Tomsic. After Mr. Calvo brought the package addressed to his wife into the home, the Prince George's County SWAT team initiated a raid into the home using no-knock entry.

Upon entering the home, the officers shot and killed Calvo's two black Labrador retrievers. Calvo, dressed only in his underwear and socks, and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and interrogated for hours-a short distance from the dogs' corpses.

The SWAT team had been issued a standard warrant-not a "no-knock" or "dynamic" warrant that allows for the initial tactics used in the raid.

Subsequently, on August 6, 2008, the Prince George's County police announced that they arrested two men in connection with a delivery scheme to deliver drugs to homes of unsuspecting recipients. The package addressed to Tomsic was among those tied to the men.

Let's move on to Texas:

19-year-old Tony Martinez, nephew of the man named in the warrant, is asleep on the couch at the time of the raid. Martinez was never suspected of any crime. When Martinez rises from the couch as police break into the home, deputy Derek Hill shoots Martinez in the chest, killing him. Martinez is unarmed.

A grand jury later declined to indict Hill in the shooting. The shooting occurred less than a mile from the spot of a botched drug raid that cost Deputy Keith Ruiz his life. Hill was also on that raid. The same Travis County paramilitary unit would later erroneously raid a woman's home after mistaking ragweed for marijuana plants.

California:

Early in the morning on September 13, 2000, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, and the Stanislaus County, California drug enforcement agency conduct raids on 14 homes in and around Modesto, California after a 19-month investigation.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the DEA and FBI asked that local SWAT teams enter each home unannounced to secure the area ahead of federal agents, who would then come to serve the warrants and search for evidence. Federal agents warn the SWAT teams that the targets of the warrants, including Alberto Sepulveda's father Moises, should be considered armed and dangerous.

After police forcibly enter the Sepulveda home, Alberto, his father, his mother, his sister, and his brother are ordered to lie face down on the floor with arms outstretched. Half a minute after the raid begins, the shotgun officer David Hawn has trained on Alberto's head discharges, instantly killing the eleven-year-old boy.

No drugs or weapons are found in the home.

Tennessee:

Police in Lexington, Tennessee force entry into the home of Stacie Renae Walker on a drug raid in August 1999. The raid is based on a tip from a "concerned citizen," who claims to have seen methamphetamine and marijuana inside.

Once inside, Deputy Tim Crowe, who has been on the police force for only a week, shoots Renae in the back of the head, killing her. Police would later say Crowe's gun fired when he "tripped."

Police found no drugs or weapons in the home, and later conceded that the entire raid was "a terrible mistake."

North Carolina:

On September 4, 1998, police in Charlotte, North Carolina deploy a flashbang grenade and carry out a no-knock warrant for cocaine distribution on a tip from an informant. By the end of the raid, police have put four bullets in 56-year-old Charles Irwin Potts, killing him.

Potts was not the target of the raid. He had visited the house to play cards. Police say Potts drew his gun (which he carried legally) and pointed it at them as they entered. The three men in the house who saw the raid disagree, and say the gun never left Potts' holster. Police found no cocaine, and made no arrests as a result of the raid.

The men inside the house at the time of the raid thought they were being invaded by criminals. "Only thing I heard was a big boom," said Robert Junior Hardin, the original target of the raid. "The lights went off and then they came back on . . . everybody reacted. We thought the house was being robbed."

Back to Texas:

Six police from Houston's anti-gang task raid the home of Pedro Oregon Navarro. Officers storm his bedroom, where Navarro awakes, startled and frightened, and reaches for his gun. Police open fire and shoot Navarro twelve times, killing him. His gun was never fired. Police found no drugs or evidence of drug use or sale in Navarro's home.

Police obtained Navarro's address after pulling over a car of three men, one of whom they arrested for public intoxication. Already on probation, the suspect offered a "tip" on a nearby drug dealer in exchange for his release. Police agreed to the bargain, and obtained Navarro's address from the suspect.

Florida:

After a tip from an informant stating that he was selling drugs from his home, a Miami SWAT team bursts into the home of 73-year-old retired salesman Richard Brown, and immediately begins firing.

By the end of the raid, they'd pumped 123 rounds into Brown and his apartment, killing him at the scene. Brown's 14-year-old great-granddaughter was also home at the time of the raid, and cowered in the bathroom during the gunfire.

Police found no drugs in Brown's home.

Boston:

Accelyne Williams, a 75-year-old retired minister, dies of a heart attack after 13 members of a heavily-armed Boston SWAT team storm his apartment in body armor and black masks.

One police source tells the Boston Herald of the raid, "Everything was done right, except it was the wrong apartment." Police later discover that an informant had given them incorrect information that a "Jamaican drug posse operated out of the building," and failed to specify which apartment to target.

Washington:

In March 1992, police in Everett, Washington storm the home of Robin Pratt on a no-knock warrant. They are looking for her husband, who would later be released when the allegations in the warrant turned out to be false.

Though police had a key to the apartment, they instead choose to throw a 50-pound battering ram through the apartment's sliding-glass door. Glass shards land inches away from the couple's six-year-old daughter and five-year-old niece. One officer encounters Robin Pratt on the way to her bedroom. Hearing other SWAT team members yell "Get down!" Pratt falls to her knees. She then raises her head briefly to say, "Please don't hurt my children." At that point, Deputy Anthony Aston fires his weapon, putting a bullet in her neck, killing her.

Officers next entered the bedroom, where Dep. Aston then put the tip of his MP-5 assault submachine gun against Larry Pratt's head. When Pratt asked if he could move, another officer said that if he did, he'd have his head blown off.

Texas again:

84-year-old Annie Rae Dixon, a bedridden paraplegic, is shot and killed after police officers from the nearby town of Kilgore break into her Tyler, Texas home.

They have the wrong address.

Minnesota:

In 1989, police in Minneapolis, Minnesota conduct a drug raid at the home of elderly African-American couple Lloyd Smalley and Lillian Weiss after a bad tip from an informant.

The flashbang grenades police use in the raid set the home on fire. Police are certain no one is inside, and so at first make no attempt at rescue. Smalley and Weiss die of smoke inhalation. Police had raided the wrong house.

Ten years later, the same police department would make a similar mistake. The deployment of a flashbang during a drug raid on a triplex would cause the entire building to catch fire, ruining the two homes surrounding the target of the raid.

Back to Washington:

In February 1988, police in Seattle, Washington conduct a late-night drug raid on the home of 41-year old Erdman Bascomb after an informant tells them there's cocaine inside.

Police knock on Bascomb's door, wait just a few seconds, then force the door open with a battering ram. Officer Bob Lisoski confronts Bascomb in the darkened apartment, mistakenly believes Bascomb to be holding a gun, and shoots him dead. Bascomb was holding only the remote control for his television.

Police found no drugs or weapons in Bascomb's home. In 1995, a federal jury found no wrongdoing on the part of Seattle police, and awarded Bascomb's family no damages.

Why are we waging such a draconian war on our own citizens? Because we're so scared of what they might do if they ingest drugs that we're going to prosecute them in advance for crimes they might commit. The key word there being MIGHT. And those things (robbery, burglar, etc) are already illegal. You prosecute people for crimes they DO commit, not for crimes you think they MIGHT commit later.

Think of some of the people we'd be throwing in the pokey if we made drug laws retroactive:

Elizabeth Barrett Browning did opium, people, as did Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Benjamin Franklin, John Keats, Florence Nightengale, Pablo Picasso, Sir Walter Scott. Salvidor Dali, and Alexander Dumas. Victor Hugo did hashish. Sigmund Freud, Robert Lewis Stephenson, and William Wilberforce used cocaine. Bill Gates and Aldous Huxley dropped acid. And in addition to all the actors, artists, and musicians who toked down, so did Carl Sagan. While I'd not hold up ingesting strange substances as a good idea, in the vast majority of cases, the drugs themselves do less damage than the penalties society imposes. And even less damage than the War on Drugs does.

"The View" on pre-abortion ultrasound

Whoopi Goldberg Frets Fewer Abortions Would Mean More Parents Kill Kids Later

Yeah. We've heard that song before. Carl Tyler of the Centers for Disease Control testified before Congress around 1970, trying to get them to legalize abortion on demand. He admitted that this would increase maternal deaths, but felt it would be totally worth it because "it will totally eliminate child abuse in a single generation."

Fifty million aborted babies later and we still have child abuse, more than ever. What went wrong? Did we kill the wrong fifty million? Or was fifty million not enough?

Goldberg argued that it's pointless to show the woman the ultrasound -- far better to keep her in the dark. "There's not a woman that goes, there's not a woman out there who makes a decision to have an abortion lightly. It is a tough, a tough, but to have someone compound what you are already carrying, you are already going in there with that pain because maybe you didn't want to have an abortion, maybe you can't have a baby. .... What difference does it make if you're going to bring a baby in and you can't feed it and you can't take care of it and then people end up killing their kids? I hate it!"

First of all, the reason that ultrasounds tend to dissuade women from abortions isn't purely an informational sort of thing. It's awakening the maternal bonding. Once she sees the baby, she bonds with it. And bonded mothers, by and large, are not the ones that kill their babies. But Goldberg prefers to cling to the same disproved theory Carl Tyler espoused. Just keep doing more and more and more and more abortions, and sooner or later you'll preemptively kill the babies whose mothers would have just killed them later anyway, right?

Second of all, how patronizing is it to withhold information on the grounds that it might be distressing? This "Don't worry her pretty little head" approach is embraced by the abortion lobby and by many legal abortion supporters, but it's hardly respectful of women. If she's not going to cope well with the knowledge that the abortion she's considering will destroy a baby, how will she cope with learning later that the abortion she already consented to killed a baby? If the news will be so distressing, it's far better to get the information in advance, before an irreversible decision is made. But again, the abortion lobby and many abortion supporters like to pretend that all will be well, of only we can destroy this troubling fetus before Mom gets attached to it.

Goldberg even dismissed her co-host Sherri Shepherd (who has admitted to multiple abortions). Shepherd said that had she seen an ultrasound before undergoing an abortion, "the guilt probably would have made me say I don't want to kill my baby."

"I don't believe that. I don't believe you, Sherri. I don't believe that," Goldberg responded. Yup, dismiss all evidence contrary to your pet theory, even when it comes from somebody one your own side. I guess "Trust Women" excludes not only prolife women, but prochoice women who don't toe the line.

Joy Behar leaped on the "back alley" bandwagon -- which is so throughly broken down that I hate to dignify it by mentioning it. I'll just refer interested readers to:

The unmistakable, undeniable, clear impact of legalized abortion on maternal mortality

The Bad Old Days of Abortion

Lysol douche ads -- These are for real!

Coathanger abortions

Of course, there is also the standard banter about how anything that stands between a woman and an immediate, no-questions-asked abortion is "telling a woman what to do with her body."

First of all, an ultrasound is a standard part of abortion. If she's going in for an abortion, she has already made the choice to undergo an ultrasound, just as somebody going in for a root canal is also making the choice to undergo the dental x-rays that are part of that. All the law does is give her the chance to see the ultrasound. Only in the twisted logic of abortion advocacy is offering to show somebody their pre-procedure diagnostic imaging "controlling" what they do with their bodies.

Second of all, abortion is something that a woman is choosing to do to somebody else's body. Just as the law dictates that you can't use your body to rape or strangle somebody, or to torch a building, or chug beer behind the wheel of a car, the law can very well dictate that you can't use your body to have somebody else's body pulled into bloody chunks at your behest. Be a grown-up, for crying out loud!

And clearly these women are clueless about ultrasounds, since Behar characterizes is as "put a camera up your vagina". The law allows the abortionist to choose whatever ultrasound TRANSDUCER he prefers. It in no way involves CAMERAS. And again, any competent abortionist is going to do the ultrasound anyway. The law just means he has to offer to show it to the woman and to describe what it shows, since it can be difficult for a layman to make out exactly what an ultrasound is showing.

Hasselbeck does note that offering to let the woman see the ultrasound is akin to a computer program responding to a file deletion command with "This file may contain important data. Are you sure you want to delete it?"

I'd go further than Hasselbeck. We're not talking about computer files here. We're talking about human beings. If you want to have one destroyed at your request, but you'd better be willing to look at that person and sign a form saying, "Yes. I want that person to die." Anything less is evading your own role in that person's death.

1985: Tea and sympathy can't fix sepsis

Thirty-eight-year-old Ellen Williams went to Dadeland Family Planning in Miami for a safe and legal abortion on March 2, 1985. Ellen returned to Dadeland on May 4 reporting severe pain and high fever. The clinic owner, Betty Eason, gave Ellen some tea and summoned Chartoor Singh, who had done Ellen's abortion.

Four hours later Singh arrived and had Nabil Ghali help him perform a second D&C on Ellen. They then gave her a prescription for antibiotics and sent her home.

Ellen's pain and fever were so bad the next day that she was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. She quickly died of sepsis from a perforated uterus and bowel, leaving two children motherless.

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1980: Dead on the abortion table

Gwendolyn Cliett, age 29, was about to undergo a safe, legal abortion and tubal ligation at Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia on March 5, 1980. She was 8 to 10 weeks pregnant. Before the proecdure could be done, Gwendolen reacted to the anesthesia and died

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1939: Teen bride dead after abortion

It was spring of 1939. Martha Wilma Rhodes Anderson was only sixteen years old, but already she was married. And already she was unhappy in her marriage. She was sexually involved with a 26-year-old sailor named William P. Bouldin. She became pregnant with Bouldin's baby.

On May 3, Bouldin, Mrs. J.R. Scott, and a man named C.D. Radcliff drove Martha to the San Diego chiropractic office of George Parchen. Martha and Mrs. Scott went inside, while Bouldin and Radcliff waited in the car. Martha asked for George's brother Frank, who was six months into his chiropractic training. Martha consulted with Frank about an abortion and paid him $50. George was not present for this transaction.

Mrs. Scott left Martha in a room with Frank and waited in the reception area. When Martha and Frank emerged, Frank gave Mrs. Scott a bottle of medicine, telling her to give Martha some of it every two hours and to expect the girl to be in pain. He gave her one of the chiropractic clinic cards and said to call if Martha "got very sick." The medicine in question was supposed to bring about the abortion.

Martha spent the night at Mrs. Scott's home, suffering pain throughout the night. Frank came to see her the next evening. On the morning of May 5, Mrs. Scott too Martha back to the chiropractic clinic, and Frank took the girl down the hall while Mrs. Scott waited in the reception area.

At 2 p.m., Martha came out to the waiting area, very pale, bloody, and so sick she could barely speak. Mrs. Scott demanded to see Frank. He took both women to a small back room where he tried to stop Martha's hemorrhage with packing. At this point George, dressed in a business suit, came in, looked at Martha, and scolded Frank for "taking a case like that."

George questioned Frank about what he'd already done to the girl, then set to work helping Frank try to save Martha, including administering artificial respiration. It was to no avail. She died some time between 5 and 5:30.

George removed the packing, and the trio brought Bouldin and Radcliff in to discuss what to do with Martha's body. Bouldin's family was in Texas, so George suggested sending Martha's body there. He himself would sign the death certificate. Frank offered $100 toward expenses. George volunteered to run interference with an undertaker.

George told Mrs. Scott to say that Martha had fallen down the stairs and had a miscarriage, and that the visits to the chiropractic office were for back pain. She was to say that she had started to hemorrhage while at Mrs. Scott's house, and had gone back to the chiropractic office to address the bleeding.

Mrs. Scott, Bouldin, and George then drove to a funeral parlor. During the drive, George pointed out that they'd all be in big trouble if the truth got out. He reminded Mrs. Scott to stick to the story he'd concocted. He and Frank would take care of the expenses of getting Martha's body buried in Luling, Texas, in Bouldin's family's private plot.

Evidently George's anxiety about the situation loosened his tongue and set him to babbling. He told Mrs. Scott and Bouldin that what had happened to Martha was "once in a million", that he hadn't been "doing any operating" for about six months because Navy doctors had been "hot behind" him, so Frank had taken over for him. He said, "If this gets out, we will go over and I will have to take the rap."

At the funeral parlor, George spoke to the undertaker about sending Martha's body to Texas. He told the undertaker that Martha had been suffering from pneumonia and the flu, "and all of a sudden her heart had just went back on her." The undertaker asked if Martha had died suddenly or if George had been attending her for a while. George said he'd been treating her for five days. The undertaker was skeptical when he saw Martha's body; she didn't look like she'd died of pneumonia.

Nevertheless, he arranged for the transport of the body and allowed George to fill out the death certificate, which listed the cause of death as cardiac failure and contributing causes as flu and lobar pneumonia dating from May 1. George also -- either deliberately or because he'd been deceived himself -- put the wrong name on the death certificate: Martha Bouldin.

George fled the San Diego area to Oregon on May 16 with his wife and family.

Somehow the authorities got wise to what had happened and had Martha's body exhumed. Dr. Toomey, who examined Martha's body after exhumation, noted severed cervical arteries and veins, and identified this as the real cause of the girl's death.

When the case went to court, each brother blamed the other. Bouldin faulted both, Frank for initiating the abortion and George for attempting to finish it. Bouldin said that Frank "shouldn't ever have taken the case, she was too far along."

Both brothers were convicted of murder and abortion -- Frank for performing it, and George for providing everything Frank needed for his practice and for assisting afterward. They were sentenced to five years to life in San Quentin.



Lest you think that chiropractors and the like hanging out their shingles as abortionists ended with Roe, ponder some of the characters caught hawking their abortions in the post-Roe era.

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

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1865: The back alley was populated with doctors

Another frightful incident has taken place in New York city, which stamps the prevalent immorality of the day darkly and blurringly upon the local records of the time. The tragedy to which we refer was enacted during the past week, in a small bed-room on the second floor of a tenament house, in the rear of Columbia street. The victim was Emma Wolfer, a German girl, aged eighteen years, of respectable parentage, whose death was the result of an abortion, alleged to have been produced by Dr. Charles Cobel, whose name has become a household word in the annals of New York for crimes of a similar nature.

The evening of Sunday, May 4, 1865, Mrs. Mary Cressin went to the Eleventh Precinct station hous and reported a suspicious death an hour earlier, in the neighboring apartment of Mrs. Harriet Ellars. The victim was a young girl.

Captain Ulman investigated. Emma Wolfer had been working as a child's nurse in Dr. Cobel's family home. For some reason she went to Ellers' on Sunday to arrange board, and Monday to move in. She was very sick, with Dr. Cobel coming two or three times a day to attend to her -- always alone in the room with her.

By Wednesday afternoon, her condition was deteriorating. Mrs. Ellars, alarmed, sent for Emma's family. Two brothers and a sister arrived. At first she told them she had a fever, but on Sunday evening she asked to speak with her sister alone. She said that she was dying, and said that she had been seduced by Dr. Hoffman, who had left her pregnant. Hoffman had given her powerful abortifacient drugs, and Dr. Cobel had shifted her to the Ellars home.

The abortion had caused peritonitis, which killed the girl.

Everyone involved was arrested. Cobel was charged with having performed the abortion, and Hoffman and Ellers as accessories before the fact.



For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

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1976: A huge gash and a severed head

Shortly after noon on May 4, 1976, 29-year-old Maria Gomez underwent a safe and legal vacuum abortion at Altantic Family Medical Clinic in Los Angeles County. Within an hour and a half she had bled to death.

The coroner report indicates that Dr. John Blodgett claimed that Maria must have bled to death from an "old" cervical cut. The autopsy found otherwise. Maria's lacerated and gashed uterus still contaned the severed head of her unborn baby, and more than a quart of blood was pooled in her abdomen. Maria's lacerations had not been sutured, but her vagina had been packed with gauze.

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1987: "Like a haunted house"

Twenty-four-year-old Patricia King went to Dean H. Diment in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for a safe and legal abortion on May 4, 1987.

Patricia went into cardiac arrest after being injected with anesthetic. Paramedics arrived at Diment's Statewide Clinic and found the place so unclean that they could have written their names in the dust. Diment told them that he had injected Neo-Synephrine and sodium bicarbonate into Patricia's heart but no one had performed CPR or made any other attempt to revive her. She had been in arrest for 20 minutes. Paramedics could not revive her.

Diment's associates at Statewide Clinic had a history of legal troubles. The medical director, Jimmie C. Tooney, had pleaded guilty in 1973 of writing narcotics prescriptions for a convicted drug dealer. Administrator William R. Cloud had been charged with conspiracy to commit illegal abortion in the early 1970's but had the charge dropped after abortion was legalized by Roe v. Wade.

Statewide Clinic advertised that it was "licensed by the state," but at the time of Patricia's death, abortion clinics were not regulated by the state of Oklahoma. Statewide had not been inspected since the attorney general had declared state oversight unconstitutional in 1984. Patricia's sister described the facility as "like a haunted house."

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1972: Journey to death

In February of 1972, 21-year-old "Robin" traveled from Massachusetts to New York for a safe and legal first trimester abortion. She underwent the procedure and returned home.

About two weeks later, she started suffering abdominal pain. A month later, she was diagnosed with aplastic anemia and hepatitis.

Three months after her abortion, on May 4, 1972, Robin died, leaving two children motherless.

For more abortion deaths, visit the Cemetery of Choice:



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No choice for Philly teen

Did DHS pressure teen to get abortion?

A DHS social worker, and the girl's foster mother, report that the teen was strong-armed into a 24-week abortion (past viability -- her baby could have been delivered alive) by another social worker who threatened to take the teen's toddler away if she didn't consent to the abortion.

The pregnant teen was excited about having the baby, her foster mother said. She learned that she was carrying a boy and told her 1-year-old daughter that she was going to have a little brother. She even talked about a name for the baby.

The teen's birth mother, who wanted to be identified only as Deborah M., also said that her daughter was excited to have a baby.

"Someone who went to go get an ultrasound, [found] out it's a boy, they give the boy a name, that's somebody who wants to have that baby," Deborah M. said. "But the next thing I know, she's going for the abortion."

The foster mother reported that she heard the social worker talking to the girl, then the girl started weeping. She rushed into the room to find out what was wrong:

She asked Brown, "Is there a problem?"

"Of course, there is a problem," the foster mother said Brown told her. "This girl is 16 years old, she's in school, she already has a baby. Yes, there is a problem."

By the next day, the teen was determined to get an abortion, the foster mother said.

Rivera, the girl's social worker, said, "Ever since DHS went there [to the foster home], the only alternative that she saw was abortion."

DHS social worker Marisol Rivera reports that she was fired for refusing to take the girl for the abortion.

"They hired me to work in child protection, not to kill children," Rivera told the Daily News.

But evidently a certain number of child protective workers are busy in the child destruction business in Philadelphia:

Between September 2006 and March 31, Schwarz said, 335 minors under DHS care became pregnant. Of those, 119 resulted in abortions. Of those abortions, 54 were done by judge's order.

So much for "choice". Unless you mean that social workers and judges are the ones that get to choose.

HT: JJ via Jill Stanek