Anniversary I missed yesterday

Got bogged down with my homework and forgot to blog. But she deserves to be remembered, even if a day late:

According to Life Dynamics, "Roxanne" was 17 years old when she traveled to New York from Michigan to have a first-trimester abortion in a doctor's office. The doctor gave her sedatives and local anesthesia to begin the abortion on May 13, 1972. But before the abortion could be started, Roxanne started to have convulsions and went into cardiac arrest.

Roxanne was taken to an area hospital, but she was declared dead on arrival.

An investigation into the case revealed that the doctor had exceeded the recommended dose of the local anesthesetic.

Three More Safe & Lethal

All three of today's safe, legal abortion deaths involve the discovery of the woman's body after she'd been sent home with undiagnosed complications.

• "Anita" Roe was a 23-year-old mother of two when she chose safe and legal abortion in 1971. She traveled from Massachusetts to New York for her abortion. She was 22 weeks pregnant. On May 11, the doctor initiated a saline abortion, then sent Anita home to expel the fetus. The next day, Anita was found unresponsive at her home. She was rushed to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. She had bled to death.

• Gladyss Delanoche Estanislao, 28-year-old mother of one, underwent a safe, legal aspiration abortion by Alan J. Ross at The Wisconsin Avenue Women's Health Care Center on April 25, 1989. All that Ross managed to remove was clots, so Ross concluded that Gladyss had miscarried already. He sent Gladyss home with some medications. On May 12, Gladyss was found unresponsive on the floor of the rest room near her college classroom. A doctor who was in the vicinity performed CPR while awaiting an ambulance. Gladyss was taken to a hospital, where she was declared dead on arrival from cardiac arrest due to blood loss from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.

• The family of 34-year-old Colleen Chambers had become concerned about her after her safe, legal abortion in 1991. They called an employee of the place Colleen lived, and asked him to check on her. He found her dead in her room. Autopsy showed that she had died from blood clots in her lungs and legs, and gave her date of death as May 12, 1991.

Three Safe, Legal, and Fatal Abortions

Click on each woman's name to read the details of her story.

A lawsuit filed by the father of Barbara Dillon, a 22-year-old college student, alleged that Barbara underwent a safe and legal abortionperformed by Dr. Mark Silver at Long Island Gynecological Group April 18, 1981. Barbara's father said that the pathology report identified placental tissue, but no fetal parts. This meant that something had gone wrong, and that Barbara needed medical care, but nobody contacted her to tell her this. Barbara suffered so much continued pain and bleeding that her roommates got a neighbor to take her to the university health center. Barbara was unconscious upon arrival, with no respiration, blood pressure, or pulse, and was rushed to the emergency room. She went into irreversible shock and died on May 11.

"Melissa" Roe was 27 years old and five months pregnant when she checked into Lutheran Medical Center of Brooklyn on May 1, 1992. For some reason, her doctor chose the dangerous and antiquated saline abortion procedure. She died of complications on May 11.

Fifteen-year-old Sara Neibel went to Midtown Hospital in Atlanta for a safe and legal abortion at 17 weeks. She was given a clean bill of health and sent home. The next day, she reported a severe headache, sore neck, neck stiffness, and trouble seeing. Her parents began the drive to take her to the hospital. On the way there, Sara began screaming and behaving strangely. When they got to the hospital, she refused to get out of the car. She was disoriented and stuporous upon admission. Sara went into respiratory arrest, and was admitted to the ICU. She was pronounced dead May 11, 1994.

A False Teacher Condones Abortion with a Parable of Jesus

"Reverand" Matthew Westfox of the "Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice" (as long as your religion isn't Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism. Or Wicca, even) tries to twist one of the parables of Jesus (Luke 8:5-9a) into a convoluted argument for abortion. Here is the actual Biblical text:

A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds ate it up. ⁶ Some fell on rocky ground, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. ⁷ Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. ⁸ Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.

And here's where Westfox goes with it:

In the parable of the sower, Jesus reminds us that seed alone does not bring about new life — that all aspects of the conditions into which the seed are cast must be suitable to sustain life. If there is not enough light or too many weeds or other circumstances that make the ground unfit, the seed will not grow…. We do no service by trying to force life into places where the ground is not right.

Similarly, living out a pro-life theology means ensuring that those who want to create new life or parent a child never feel they cannot because the ground they stand upon is not suitable. It also means that no one should ever be coerced into bringing new life into a situation they do not believe is ready to sustain it. A truly pro-life theology means… we never force life into a situation that lacks one of the most fundamental ingredients of healthy ground — parents who are ready to love and welcome the child.

Any Christian (or even literate member of any other religion or irreligion) can see how lame an argument this is.

1. Jesus specifically tells His disciples that the seed in the parable is the Word of God. : ¹¹ “This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. ¹² Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. ¹³ Those on the rocky ground are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. ¹⁴ The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. ¹⁵ But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop." (Luke 8:11-14)

2. The fact that anybody would use an argument that lame to justify doing evil is forseen in the Epistles. "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear." (2 Timothy 4:3)

3. Even if you held the Bible sideways and squinted your eyes just right so that you could argue that the seed is an unborn child, Jesus would be saying that if the womb (ground) was unsuitable, the baby (seed) won't grow. He doesn't in any way imply that it should be pulled up and discarded.

4. How in the world are we supposed to interpret, "Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown." Her womb would be absurdly full to the point of rupture if the one unborn child reproduced into a hundred babies.

I would admonish anybody who claims to be a brother or sister in Christ not to embrace this kind of distortion. The Bible warns against calling an evil good:

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. (Isiah 5:20).

Jesus Himself encountered Satan quoting Scripture as an attempt to tempt (Matthew 4:1-11) during his period of fasting in the desert. Do not let anybody use Scripture to entice you into doing wrong.

As for those who use Scripture to turn people away from trusting God:

But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves ( 2 Peter 2:1).

False teachers are going to be in a world of hurt when God runs out of patience. Repent now and turn toward Truth.

(HT: Jill Stanek)

Abortion Risk: Disseminated Intravascular Coagulopathy

Disseminated intravascular coagulopathy (DIC) is also known as consumptive coagulopathy or disseminated intravascular coagulation.

It's a double-whammy for the patient: excessive blood clots form, bringing a risk of tissue starvation and gangrene and/or sepsis; and the blood thins excessively, bringing a risk of exsanguinating hemorrhage.

The most common cause of abortion-related DIC is amniotic fluid embolism, which is when amniotic fluid gets into the mother's blood stream. This can be caused by lacerations of the uterus, or by compromised blood vessles when the placenta detaches. Infection, either localized in the uterus or generalized (septicemia), can also trigger DIC.

Usually when there is a bleeding injury, the body's reaction is localized; the blood only clots in the area of the tissue damage, preventing further bleeding. But in DIC, clotting factors are released throughout the entire body, causing abnormal clotting. The body then responds by sending out blood-thinning agents to clear out the abnormal clots. Normal clotting agents are tied up in the abnormal clots, and the thinned blood will leak out through minor lacerations, punctures (such as IV and injection sites), and the uterus.

Abortion lacerations can be caused in many ways:

• Tearing the cervix by attempting to dilate it too quickly
  
• Tearing the cervix by pushing the dilators in too hard, causing the cervix to tear loose from the tenaculum (a sharp pincers-like instrument used to hold the cervix steady)
  
• Poking a hole in the uterus or cervix with a dilator
  
• Poking a hole in the uterus with abortion instruments while reaching in to extract fetal parts
  
• Pushing pieces of the fetus through the uterus
  
• Scraping the uterus or cervix with bony parts of the fetus, especially the sharp-edged pieces of the crushed fetal skull

An open wound can be left in the uterus when the placenta is detached in several ways:

• Pulling the placenta away from the wall of the uterus too soon, before the uterus is ready to contract after being emptied
  
• Aggressively scraping the placenta away from the wall of the uterus with excess curretage
  
• Pulling away an abnormally attached placenta

Abnormally attached placenta is more likely to be a problem earlier in the pregnancy than at term, because as the uterus expands the placement of the placenta becomes higher and less likely to partially or completely cover the cervix.

Infection is usually caused either by contaminated instruments entering the uterus, or tissue being left in the uterus, where it rots.

Retained tissue is doubly dangerous because not only can it cause infection, it can prevent proper contraction of the uterus, leaving it more open to contaminants getting into the mother's bloodstream.

The fetal tissue most likely to cause DIC when it gets into the maternal bloodstream is fetal brain. There is much debate among the more conscientious abortionists about the best method of dealing with the fetal head. Some abortionists, such as Mildred Hanson, believe that it is best to suction the fetal brain out of the head before crushing it. This eliminates fetal brain matter from the area when the sharp pieces of fetal skull are being removes. These sharp bony fragments are the fetal parts most likely to scratch the cervix and allow fetal tissue to get into the mother's bloodstream.

Other abortionists, such as Warren Hern, argue that it is sometimes difficult to be sure that the structure you are grasping really is the fetal head and not some part of the mother's body. Hern recommends squeezing the structure and watching the mother's cervix to see if grey material (fetal brain) oozes out ("calvarium show"). The sight of "calvarium show" means that the grasped structure is indeed the head of the fetus and it is safe to extract it.

Since DIC can quickly become fatal, it is important that the abortionist, or the medical professionals treating the womam for her abortion complications, diagnose it quickly. Failure to anticipate and diagnose DIC led to the death of Vanessa Preston after an abortion by Curtis Boyd in Dallas on January 22, 1980.

Since second-trimester evacuation abortions were still new (read "experimental") at the time, Boyd and his staff didn't realize that there was a risk of DIC. When Vanessa went into cardiorespiratory arrest, they instituted emergency measures and resuscitated her, promptly transporting her to a hospital. There, emergency surgery was performed to address the uterine damage. Despite the best efforts of the trauma team, Vanessa died. An autopsy revealed that she had developed AFE and DIC during the abortion. This is what caused her cardiac arrest. When Boyd's staff resuscitated Vanessa, they caused a small laceration of her liver. This is typical in even properly performed CPR, and does not usually cause the patient much harm. However, because of the DIC, Vanessa's blood couldn't clot, and she bled to death from the liver laceration.

Boyd, to his credit, reported Vanessa's death to the Centers for Disease Control. He also wrote a medical journal article about her death, warning other abortionists that DIC could occur during second-trimester evacuation abortions.

Three anniversaries

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.

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 fourth woman to die at the same facility. The others were Shirley Payne, Myrta Baptiste, and Ruth Montero.

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.

The Wonderful World of Abortion

Summed up with great flippancy. I love this guy.

HT: Dakota voice.

Four anniversaries

Annie Horvatich, age 26, made arrangements to stay at the home of infamous Chicago abortionist Dr. Lucy Hagenow on May 2, 1907. A couple of days later, Hagenow summoned Mike, who found Annie deathly ill, attended by Hagenow and another doctor. Mike stayed by his wife's side all night, leaving in the early morning of May 6 to get a translator, since he spoke only German and was having difficulty communicating with the doctors. When he returned, Annie was dead. The second doctor who had been attending Annie completed a death certificate saying that Annie had died from pneumonia.

Mike arranged for his own undertaker, rather than the one Hagenow recommended. The funeral was held, Annie was 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 and discovered the real cause of her death.

Hagenow's claim that she hadn't performed an abortion on Annie wasn't very credible, since she was a known abortionist who advertised openly. During her trial for Annie's death, evidence was entered about previous abortion deaths at Hagenow's hands. Hagenow, nearly 60 years old at the time of her trial, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for Annie's death. For the full story of Annie's death, and more information about Lucy Hagenow's other victims, go here.

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.

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

According to the National Organization for Women web site, Vivian Campbell was a recently-separated 24-year-old mother of two when she discovered she was pregnant. NOW indicates that Vivian sent her children to stay with her parents while she obtained some sort of illegal abortion. NOW provides no details of the abortion. NOW does say that Vivian asked for her estranged husband, who came to the hospital only after she had died of peritonitis on May 6, 1950.

NOW cites no sources, but the story matches one told by "Gloria" In Patricia Miller's The Worst of Times. Gloria indicated that she learned "the truth" of how her mother died when she needed a copy of the death certificate years later. The death certificate said "spontaneous abortion" -- which is a miscarriage. NOW's researchers certainly should have known that a "spontaneous abortion" is a miscarriage, and would have nothing to do with any sort of "back alley abortion". Ditto for Patricia Miller. I only include Vivian's death in the Cemetery of Choice, despite the fact that nobody ever verified that she'd actually submitted to an induced abortion, because she is so widely used as a poster child for advocates of legalized abortion. You can read more here.

Two anniversaries

Rosa Device was taken to Chambers Street Hospital in New York on Friday night, May 3, 1878. She was "in a hopeless condition" when she arrived. "She told the physicians in the hospital that she had been leading an evil life for three months, and had procured and taken drugs to produce an abortion. She died just after midnight on Saturday night, which would have been the early morning hours of Sunday, May 5.

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. He arranged an abortion for her at the office of a chiropractor -- whose trainee brother, it appears, actually performed the fatal crime. Martha took ill and began to hemorrhage. The licensed chiropractor brother tried to save her, but to no avail. She died between 5:00 and 5:30 the evening of May 5. The men were able to slip Martha's body to her home state of Texas for burial, but eventually the story started to slip out. Martha's body was exhumed and the truth came to light. Both brothers were convicted of murder and abortion and were sentenced to five years to life at San Quentin. Read the whole sordid story here.


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, The Bad Old Days of Abortion.

Today's anniversaries

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, Emma Wolfer. Investigation revealed that she had died of peritonitis from a criminal abortion. Read more

here.

"Robin" is one of the women Life Dynamics identifies on their "Blackmun Wall" as having been killed by a safe and legal abortion. In February of 1972, 21-year-old Robin traveled from Massachusetts to New York for a first trimester abortion. She underwent the procedure and returned home. Three months after her abortion, on May 4, 1972, Robin died, leaving two children motherless.

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.

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. 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. Read more here.

The Creepy Family Abortion

Here's one for the Creepy Family Files.

Florence, Maud, and Walter Tabor were the children of a wealthy attorney and his wife, Sarah.

In May of 1916, Maud vanished.

Her sister found her three years later -- dismembered and stuffed into her own hope chest in the cellar of their mother's home. (Florence later committed suicide by poison.)

Both Walter and their mother were arrested, but only Sarah was tried, but not convicted. An examination reportedly showed that Maud had died from a botched abortion. Sarah said that the abortion had been either performed or arranged by Joseph Virgo, who, she said, had married Maud then taken her away to a deserted farmhouse for three days, then brought her home. Maud then died.

Sarah said she'd kept Maud's body in the cellar because, "Maud did not want to be separated from me, even in death."

Sources: "Hope Chest", Time, April 13, 1931; "Tabor Sister Kills Herself", The Detroit News, March 7, 1931; "Mrs. Tabor Accuses Virgo", The New York Times, December 24, 1919

1985: Quack sends patient home to slowly bleed to death

The survivors of 29-year-old Kathleen Gilbert sued David Turow and Women's Aid Clinic when she bled to death after her safe and legal abortion.
The family accused Turow of performing an incomplete abortion, lacerating Kathleen's uterus, and failing to detect her injuries. She was sent home and continued to bleed and pass clots for a month before her death on May 2, 1985.
Kathleen's death certificate attributes the death to hemorrhage from a perforated uterus.

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Source: Cook County Circuit Court Case No. 85L 10455

1928: Did doc perform fatal abortion, or did Bessie injure herself?

On Saturday, April 14, 1928, Dr. T. D. Goodman was called to see a young woman named Bessie Kouns. He found her in a great deal of pain, with considerable swelling and tenderness of the lower abdomen.

Goodman went to see her again on the 15th, 16th, and 17th, but her condition was not improving in spite of treatment, so on the 17th he had her admitted to Stephenson Hospital in Ashland, Kentucky.

There, her condition continued to deteriorate. On April 24, the peritonitis had caused bowel obstruction, requiring surgery. Prior to the surgery, which Bessie did not expect to survive, she made a deathbed statement to Dr. Stephenson.

She told Stephenson that at 7:00 on a Saturday evening, she had gone to Dr. H.C. Dorroh's office to keep an appointment for an abortion. Dorroh had been drinking and didn't at first recognize her. She reminded him of the appointment. He cussed and told her to get on the table. He approached her with an instrument that he dropped on the floor, then picked up and used on her. He "nearly killed her", Stephenson testified that Bessie said. Stephenson's testimony was supported by Mr. Watt Prichard, who was present at the time Bessie made her declaration.

A stenographer was sent for to take the statement, and, despite the surgery, Bessie died on May 1.

When the case went to trial, Dorroh insisted that he had treated Bessie in February, but only for gonorrhea, and that the treatment might had caused an abortion had Bessie indeed been pregnant. The expert testimony was that the described treatment would indeed be appropriate for gonorrhea, but testimony was divided on whether it would cause an abortion.

Two women were subpoenaed, but failed to appear, who both the defense and the prosecution said would have testified that they had encountered Bessie several days prior to her hospitalization, and had been told by her that she had used a lead pencil to attempt an abortion and that she was suffering greatly from it. The court agreed with the prosecution that these were not credible witnesses, and the defense objected to this ruling.

The defense argued that the venue was in the wrong county, as well as that Bessie hadn't really believed herself to be dying when she made her statement that he had done the abortion. But Dr. Goodman, the family doctor, testified that when he would enter Bessie's room "she would grab my hand and say, Doctor, I know I am going to die." The defense argued that since she was going to have surgery after the statement, she must have had some hope of recovery.

The conviction was set aside and a new trial ordered.

Bessie's abortion was typical of pre-legalization abortions in that it was evidently performed by a physician.



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

Source: 32 S.W. 2d 550. 236 Ky. 68, 32 S.W. 550 Court of Appeals of Kentucky, Dorroh v. Commonwealth)

1925: Midwife's fatal efforts

On May 1, 1925, 26-year-old Mary Sayers died at a Chicago residence from a criminal abortion performed on her that day.
Midwife Edna Marie Dietrich was arrested the following day.
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
Source: Homicide in Chicago Interactive

Three Chicago Anniversaries

Because the University of Chicago Law School, through the Chicago Historical Homicide Project, transferred handwritten records into an online database, I have far more criminal abortion cases from Chicago than from anywhere else. Today, all three anniversaries were uncovered in that database.

On April 30, 1909, Kelly Stella, age 28, died in Chicago from an abortion performed on April 13. A midwife named Louise Actenberg was held by the coroner's jury but the source document doesn't indicate that there was a trial.

On April 30, 1917, Mrs. Ruth Lemaire, age 24, died at West Side Hospital in Chicago from complications of a criminal abortion. In her deathbed statement she implicated Dr. Lillian Hobbs. However, the coroner's jury did not place blame on Hobbs, and the case came to naught. Hobbs was also convicted of murder in the abortion deaths of Alda Christopherson and Ellen Matson. These fatal abortions were typical of pre-legalization abortions in that they were performed by a physician.

On April 30, 1923, 29-year-old Emma Herod died in her home from an abortion performed there that day. Dr. Emma J. Warren was arrested for the death. On July 15, Warren was indicted for felony murder in Emma Herod's death. Emma's abortion was typical of criminal abortions in that it was performed by a physician.

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 Deaths 1900-1909, Abortion Deaths 1910-1919, Abortion in the 1920s.


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

1880: Death in Brooklyn

Mrs. Sophia Berghusen of Brooklyn died on April 28, 1880, under the care of the mother-and-daughter midwife team of Mrs. Mary Kaufmann and Miss Margaret Kaufmann. The coroner concluded that Sophia had died of abortion complications. Both the Kaufmann women were arrested and tried but acquitted, though the sources do not say what was lacking in the case against them.

I have no information on overall maternal mortality, or abortion mortality, in the 19th century. I imagine it can't be too much different from maternal and abortion mortality at the very beginning of the 20th Century.

external image Illegals.png

Note, please, that with 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 on this era, see Abortion Deaths in the 19th Century.
For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion.
Sources: "City and Suburban News", The New York Times, April 29, 1880; "Brooklyn", The New York Times, July 17, 1880;

1990: Death after home abortion

In Chapter 4 of Lime 5, Mona ghost-wrote of the death of a 32-year-old California woman I'll call "Daisy."
We learned of Daisy's death by ordering a database run of all deaths in California that met the ICD codes for abortion. We then ordered death certificates and, where possible, autopsy reports. Daisy's death certificate is No. 90-079380. Her autopsy report from the San Bernadino County Coroner's office is number 90-2384.
Daisy was not a poor, ignorant woman. To the contrary, she was a systems analyst for a defense contractor. Daisy knew that abortion was legal and readily available. She had an appointment to abort her second-trimester pregnancy scheduled for April 30, 1990, at a local abortion clinic.
But for some reason, Daisy didn't wait for her appointment. On April 28, she allowed her boyfriend to insert a plastic tube into her uterus in a home-abortion attempt. Daisy died of complications of that abortion.

1973: Chicago quackery kills young woman

Survivors of Julia L. Rogers, age 20, alleged that she underwent a safe and legal abortion by Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard at Friendship Medical Center in Chicago on April 21, 1973. Julia's death certificate states that her death April 28 at Tabernacle Hospital was due to "bronchopneumonia and generalized peritonitis complicating extensive necrotizing endometritis and myometritis with sealed perforation." In other words, she developed pnuemonia on top of peritonitis. A hole had been poked in her uterus, causing an infection that made the muscle tissue of her uterus start to rot inside her. Evelyn Dudley and Dorothy Brown also died after abortions at Friendship Medical Center. Sources: Chicago Sun-Times 11-19-78, The Abortion Profiteers; Chicago Tribune 4-30-73, 5-3-73, 7-17-73; Death Certificate No. C612195

Anniversary: Mother bleeds to death in front of her children

On April 27, 1990, 23-year-old Sandra Milton underwent an abortion, performed by Dr. Carl Armstrong at Toledo Medical Services in Ohio. (Armstrong is John Roe 67 in Lime 5.)

Sandra's abortion was performed at 10 a.m., and she was discharged shortly thereafter for the 90-minute drive home.

The babysitter stayed with Sandra and her three children for three hours as the young mother slipped in and out of consciousness and suffered pain and abdominal swelling. Twice the alarmed babysitter called the clinic, but was told that the symptoms were normal. The third time the babysitter called the clinic, she got no response at all, and summoned an ambulance.

Sandra was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

Two anniversaries from the 19th Century

Miss Emily LeBinney, "whose family is said to be wealthy and to move in fashionable circles," died the evening of April 7, 1896, in the New York practice of midwife Mary Schott. Emily's cousin, George May, consulted with Miss Minnie Meyer, who served as a go-between. May arranged for Mrs. Schott to perform an abortion. He also paid for the procedure. Emily's baby was born alive during the abortion, and Arthur Robbins, whose relationship to the other parties is not given, threw the living child into the river. May, Robbins, Schott, and Meyer were all arrested. Mr. Fox of Dover N.J. was identified as the father of Emily's baby.

Dr. Charles P. Wood admitted that Elvira Woodward had come to his house in Manchester, New Hampshire, on April 1 and remained there until her death on April 27, 1871. He said that she'd expelled a dead fetus on April 3, and that she suffered from puerperal fever. Elvira took ill, languishing and finally dying on April 27, at about 2:30 PM, at Wood's house. (Read the rest here.)

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I have no information on overall maternal mortality, or abortion mortality, in the 19th century. I imagine it can't be too much different from maternal and abortion mortality at the very beginning of the 20th Century.

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 on this era, see Abortion Deaths in the 19th Century.
For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion