September 13, 2007: Parents Blindsided By Daughter's Abortoin Death

• 
  It was 7pm, we had just finished dinner and settled down to watch the evening news. My husband's cell phone rang with Laura's name on the ID. We always loved hearing from her. Laura was so full of life, your spirits were lifted just by talking to her. Except this time it wasn't her voice. There was guttural screaming and sobbing on the other end by a voice I did not immediately recognize. I heard the words "Laura", "Hospital" and the worst one, "Not Breathing," and then "abortion". My brain tilted, my heart sank, and life as I knew it ceased. It was Laura's friend Karen on the phone. She told me what happened, that Laura was having an abortion and something went terribly wrong. Karen was at the ER and the Doctor needed to talk to me. What Karen didn't know was that Laura had arrived at the ER already deceased. The EMT's found her this way at the abortion mill. The hospital was looking for next of kin to give the news to first, and Karen wasn't kin. "Laura's gone" the doctor told me. I wanted to hear "50-50 chance"...I would even accept "90-10 chance." But the word "chance" was not in the doctor's statement. All hope was gone, along with my daughter.

That call came on September 13, 2007 to Eileen and Tom Smith. Laura had died on a Hyannis, Massachusetts abortion table. 

The bewildered couple hadn't even known that their daughter was pregnant. 

Karen and Laura had arrived at Women Health Center in the morning for preparatory steps to abort Laura's 13-week baby. The two young women were to return in the afternoon for the actual procedure. Laura wasn't supposed to drive, so Karen drove and the two ran errands. Because Laura wasn't supposed to eat, Karen fasted with her friend.

They returned to the facility at about 4 in the afternoon and waited. Laura was called in at about 5, back to where Dr. Rapin Osathanondh and his instruments waited for her. Karen stepped out briefly, expecting her friend to be out of surgery in about fifteen minutes. But Laura didn't emerge from the bowels of the clinic. A worried Karen grew increasingly distressed.

"And then all of a sudden [an assistant] comes out and says she's not breathing. And I was like, what do you mean she's not breathing," Karen told the Cape Cod Times.

Fire department rescuers were dispatched to the clinic at 5:49 p.m., and found an unresponsive patient. They initiated CPR and took her to the hospital. Karen followed, but was not permitted to see her friend. She asked about Laura's condition. "It doesn't look good," she was told. Because next of kin hadn't been notified yet, the doctor couldn't tell Karen the truth: Laura was already dead on arrival. It was 6:22 p.m.

• I met with the doctor who aborted my grandchild, and who saw my daughter take her last breath. He would only meet me in a public place, without my husband. We talked for an hour and a half. Based on that meeting I believe I know what happened to Laura. He denies doing anything that caused her death. When we were done talking about Laura, I prayed, and asked God if there was anything He would have me say to the doctor. This is what I said next.... "The blood of my daughter is on your hands; the blood of my grandchild is on your hands; the blood of every life you have ever taken is on your hands," and I went on from there. He was silent with his head hung low. When I was ready to leave, I asked him if he would think about my daughter, and consider not doing any more abortions”he said he would think about it. When I left there I was praying, and said to God, "Can You stop this man from doing abortions? Is this what You have in mind, that he might even stop doing them?" I was thinking too small. I thought if one girl changed her mind [about having an abortion], I could find some comfort. I then realized that the Lord had much bigger plans. I have never experienced in my life, such tragedy, nor such grace.

OR also reports that Eileen Smith said she was "appalled and sickened" by her daughter's death, but can not give more details due to a pending lawsuit against the abortionist. What has come out afterward is just what prolifers have come to expect from abortionists: an untrained "hand holder" was assisting with general anesthesia, nobody in the clinic knew CPR, and there was no emergency resuscitation equipment. Osathanondh had been playing Russian roulette with his patients' lives. Laura paid for his callous carelessness with her life.

"My daughter was 22, healthy, and alive when she walked into that clinic," OR quotes Eileen Smith. "She didn't even have a cold. There is no reason for her to be dead."

OR says, "Laura was born into abject poverty in Hondurus on May 25, 1985, and was abandoned at an orphanage. An American couple that adopted Laura abused her terribly and gave her up. Laura was then adopted by Tom and Eileen Smith, a Christian family that lovingly raised Laura in the Cape Cod community of Sandwich." She graduated from Upper Cape Tech in 2004, trained as a cosmetologist, but she left that field to work in retail management.

It's particularly sad to me that Laura resorted to abortion despite being a Christian active in her local church. Her mother also reported that Laura was strongly opposed to abortion. Which goes to show that anybody can panic, and our churches need to be teaching young women how to get past the panic that too often leads to the abortion table. Laura's mother has now devoted her life to that mission.

OR reports that over 600 people attended Laura's funeral, and at least one young woman decided to reject abortion after learning of Laura's needless death. National Catholic Register reports that the young woman was being pressured by her parents to abort, and was about to capitulate when she learned of Laura's fate.

• I know that God is going to bring good out of my daughter's death. What a horrible thing; for my daughter to be associated with abortion. But, if God's going to use it for good and for His glory, then so be it. We're going very public with a very shameful, private thing because I believe God wants to use it to save lives. I believe the truth will come out, and the light of God will shine on this. Laura's death has had tremendous impact around the country, and even into Canada, without the local news mentioning it. It just came out in the secular media this week, 5 weeks after Laura's death. I now believe it is my calling to keep telling Laura's story to the Church, and the world. I naively believed that abortion was not a choice for a Christian girl. A Pastor had even apologized to me and the Lord, for not speaking about this from his pulpit. We both had false assumptions. This is a problem in the Church, and one that needs to be spoken about from the pulpits. We have to take the "A" word out of the closet, put it out in the open, and discuss it. And maybe, possibly, hopefully, we'll even become active against it. Please keep our family in your prayers, and please tell someone Laura's story.

Watch Pro-Life Woman's Abortion Death on YouTube.

Sources:

• "Doctor indicted in Cape abortion death," Cape Cod Times, July 16, 2008
• "Doctor gets 6 months in abortion patient death," NBC News, September 14, 2010
• "Ten Years Later, the Abortion Death of Laura Hope Smith Still Hurts," Operation Rescue, September 14, 2017
• "Mother speaks for life after daughter’s death during abortion," Baptist Press, February 26, 2008
• Blog: The Laura Hope Smith Story

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Veteran pro-life investigator Kevin Sherlock asks people of good will to help him have Planned Parenthood prosecuted for profiteering from the rapes and incests of underage girls many thousands of times each year.

Sherlock has  pulled the police records of hundreds of cities and has pulled the child protective services records of multiple states to prove Planned Parenthood staffers are violating mandated reporting laws designed to protect girl victims.   But there is more to be done. Sherlock will make sure more and more evidence gets to federal and state prosecutors who care about protecting girls from abusers and profiteers.

If you would like to help, please click the following link:

https://www.givesendgo.com/stop-pp-from-profiteering-from-the-rapes

Sherlock has talked to many girls and young women who trust him. Their stories and the forensic evidence shows most of them undergo pill abortions or humiliating invasive surgical abortions due to fear or ignorance or pressure or coercion. He treats the girls or women carrying children or devastated from their abortions as friends and neighbors in his home town, not afterthoughts.

Thank you for doing what you can to help girls and fight sexual predators and rape profiteers.

September 12, 1917: Unknown Perpetrator in Chicago

On September 12, 1917, 20-year-old Genevieve Popjoy of Momence, Illinois, died at Chicago's Northwest Side Hospital. 

According to her death certificate, she died from ether anesthesia administered for treatment of an incomplete abortion. According to the Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database, a criminal abortion had been perpetrated by an unknown suspect on about August 30. 

Given the abundance of physicians and midwives practicing abortion in Chicago at the time, it's likely that she availed herself of one.

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.

In fact, due to improvements in addressing these problems, maternal mortality in general (and abortion mortality with it) fell dramatically in the 20th Century, decades before Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across America.

Sources:

• Death certificate
• Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database

September 12, 2001: Reassured Into an Early Grave

Brenda Vise, a 38-year-old pharmaceutical representative and former nurse, died on September 12, 2001, of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy after what she believed would be a perfectly safe, legal abortion at Volunteer Women's Clinic in Tennessee. 

Brenda as Senior Class Secretary in 1981

According to her high school yearbook, Brenda had been a very active student. She had served as senior class secretary, and had been active in the FHA, drama club, chorus, and color guard. She was elected homecoming queen and "most reserved" in her senior class. 

Brenda enrolled in the University of South Alabama, majoring in physical therapy, and became engaged to Robert Edward Rigsby, Jr., son of the mayor of Heflin, Alabama in 1981. I've been unable to determine that Robert and Brenda ever married.

Despite having been shut down by the state, VMC continued to do business and to advertise in the yellow pages for abortions, including chemical abortions. 

On Friday, September 7, VMC staff did a pregnancy test and did an ultrasound which showed no fetus in the uterus -- a clear sign of a likely ectopic pregnancy. Instead of performing further tests, the staff just told Brenda that the fetus was "too small to be seen" and gave her a dose of Mifeprex for a chemical abortion. Brenda was then sent home from the facility with a dose Cytotec that she was to self-administer to complete her abortion. No arrangements were made for a follow-up examination. 

Over the ensuing days, Brenda called VMC repeatedly to report problems upon returning home.  "Instead of advising Ms. Vise to immediately proceed to a doctor, the Clinic continually assured her that all of these were normal symptoms and that she was not to be concerned."

When she called on Monday, September 10, indicating her deteriorating condition, she was told that her symptoms were "to be expected," and was told to travel to VMC, in Knoxville, for a check-up at 3:30 p.m. "She was specifically directed not to go to a hospital in Chattanooga because, according to the Clinic, no hospital in Chattanooga would have knowledge about the drugs that had been administered." 

In total, Brenda called the clinic eight to ten times.

Brenda's boyfriend tried to take her to Knoxville, "but was unable to do so" and called an ambulance, which rushed Brenda to a Chattanooga hospital. "Ms. Vise was immediately admitted to the hospital in very critical condition. Exploratory surgery revealed that Ms. Vise had had an ectopic (tubal) pregnancy which had ruptured. Such rupture led to massive infection and a collapse of her vital systems." 

"On September 12, 2001, the attending physician certified that Ms. Vise was terminal with no reasonable medical prospect of recovery and was in a coma and totally unresponsive. Ms. Vise died later that day."

Other women who died in the US from complications of abortion pills include Holly Patterson, Chanelle Bryant, Oriane Shevin, Hoa Thuy “Vivian” Tran, Amber Thurmond, Alyona Dixon, “Wanda Roe,” “Sabrina Roe”, “Carmen Roe”, “Belle Roe”, “Kylie Roe”, “Ella Roe”, “Sadie Roe”, “Petra Roe”, “Dana Roe”, “Taylor Roe”, “Brandy Roe”, “Dove Roe”, “Clara Roe”, “Corrie Roe”,  “Chelsea Roe”, “Lucy Roe”, “Luna Roe”, “Talia Roe”, “Alina Roe”, “Jayden Roe”,  “Mandy Roe”, “Tina”, and “Toni Roe”. "Taylor Roe," "Fawn Roe," and “Sabrina Roe."

Sources:

• "$15 Million Lawsuit Filed In Case Of Local Woman Who Died After Abortion," Chattanoogan.com, August 14, 2002
• "FDA will release stronger warning for abortion pill," Bradenton (FL) Herald, November 17, 2004

September 12, 1898: Massachusetts Doc Dumps Body

SUMMARY: Emma Gill, age 26, died in Bridgeport, Massachusetts on September 12, 1898 after a botched abortion perpetrated by Dr. Nancy Guilford.

A Gruesome Discovery

On September 12 1898, three young boys discovered rubber-wrapped parcels containing the dismembered body of a young woman near Seaview Avenue Bridge in Bridgeport, Massachusetts. The coroner determined that she had died within the previous 7 to 12 hours from a botched abortion.

Thousands of people went to the morgue in Boston to examine the head of the decapitated brown-haired blond (scroll down for picture), and although several false identifications were made, the woman was eventually identified as 26-year-old Emma Gill. The identity was confirmed through dental records

Finally Identified

Emma had been missing since the first week of September, when she had left her home in Lynn, Massachusetts, saying that she felt ill and was going to spend some time with her future mother-in-law to take in the healthful sea air. Emma, it turned out, had been pregnant to a man who was not her fiancé. This man, Harry Oxley of Southington, Massachusetts, had arranged the abortion and sent payments to Guildord.

Oxley was arrested for his complicity.

Investigation

Police investigated intensively, finding the quarry whence the stones weighting down the parcels had come and the stable from which the carriage used to dump the body parts had been rented. Of particular interest was a laundry mark, "G. 51," on some of the cloth used to wrap body parts. The laundry mark was eventually traced to the son of Dr. Nancy Guilford, a known abortionist. Because Guilford was a woman and practiced ob/gyn, she was typically referred to as a midwife. She was identified as the abortionist, and her son as an accomplice.

Flight

The day after Emma's dismembered body was found, Guilford fled the country, first to Canada, then to England where she was very nearly apprehended by Scotland Yard thanks to the dogged persistence of journalists who chased her when she got off the boat. She fled to France but returned to London where she was finally captured and brought back to the U.S. to stand trial.

While law enforcement abroad was tracking down the abortionist herself, Bridgeport police were busy. In addition to arresting Oxley, they arrested Guilford's daughter, Eudora, and son, Harry, along with washerwoman Rosa Drayton and her daughter, Clara, who worked as a maid. Police were also searching Guilford's home. There they found paperwork related to the money transfers for the abortion fee.

Guilford's murder trial came to an abrupt end when a juror became too ill to continue. Rather than go through another trial, Guilford pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to ten years in prison and, for some reason, a one-dollar fine. Due to legal wranglings, the charges against her accomplices were dismissed. Guilford was released from prison after eight years due to time off for good behavior. She moved to Hartford, Connecticut and practiced medicine under the assumed name Alice Gibbs. There, in 1920 and at the age of 66, she was arrested for another abortion death.

Source:

• Wicked Bridgeport

Geraldo Bookends Good Journalism With Dangerous Assumptions

One of today's anniversaries was the death of Diane Smith, one of the women mentioned in the Chicago Sun-Times expose, "The Abortion Profiteers." 

I wanted to highlight that from time to time, the media will take a hard look at the pathetic care the abortion-rights movement considers good enough for vulnerable women, but the lawsuits follow, abortionists gain a legal right to treat abortion-vulnerable women like sales targets, and the world moves on.

But I found something today -- a follow-up to "The Abortion Profiteers" from, of all people, Geraldo Rivera. It was aired in 1978, and is now available on YouTube: 1978. Abortion The New Back Alley. Profiteers in the newly legal battlefield.

Geraldo did a really good job going more in-dept into the story behind the expose, but he opened and closed his story with dangerously false assertions.

In the intro, Roger Grimsby says that, "all sides surely, pro or con, would want to close down the kind of abortion clinic Geraldo Rivera has been investigating for his special report tonight."

This is not at all true. In the wake of the Dadeland expose done by the Miami Herald, Florida legislators wanted to crack down on seedy abortion mills. They were stopped dead in their tracks by the newly-formed Florida Abortion Council. Their spokesperson, Janis Compton-Carr, spoke for her fellow activists: "In my gut, I am completely aghast at what goes on at that place. But I staunchly oppose anything that would correct this situation in law."

When 60 Minutes did their expose of the deplorable Hillview clinic where Debra Gray was killed and Susanne Logan fatally injured, they learned that Barbara Radford of the National Abortion Federation knew how bad the place was but took no action to protect patients. Radford defended this decision by saying, "We want to make sure that women have choices when it comes to abortion services, and if you regulate it too strictly, you then deny women access to the service." 

When a NAF inspector saw how deplorable Kermit Gosnell's "house of horrors" was, she took not steps to shut him down or to even have NAF clinics stop sending patients to him.

In closing, Geraldo recommended that women considering abortion protect themselves by reaching out to the National Abortion Federation -- where they would have been referred to the likes of:

• Hanan Rotem, who performed the fatal abortion on Gloria Aponte and was caught allowing a receptionist with no medical training administer general anesthesia
• Abu "The Butcher of Avenue A" Hayat, who performed the fatal abortion on Sophie McCoy and maimed Ana Rosa Rodriguez by attempting to abort her about 32 weeks into her mother's pregnancy
• Steve Lichtenberg, who was scolded by Michael Burnhill of Planned Parenthood for "playing Russian roulette with patients' lives" and was responsible for the deaths of Deanna Bell, Maria Leho, Nakia Jorden, and Maria Rodriguez at his Albany Medical Surgical Center.

I'm sure that Geraldo meant no harm, but I wish he had done a bit of independent journalism. 

September 11, 1973: Cardiac Arrest During Elective Hospital Abortion

Elaine Greer was 17 years old when she married 22-year-old Richard Terrell in December of 1969, just 9 days after the death of her mother. She and her husband settled in Akron and had two children together.

Akron City Hospital

Elaine 22 years old when she went to Akron City Hospital for an elective abortion in September of 1973.

Dr. Richard Bennett performed the combination abortion and sterilization surgery, assisted by anesthetist Dr. John L. Zintsmaster.

Elaine's was one of 336 other safe and legal abortions performed at the hospital after their decision to perform elective abortions in the wake of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision allowing abortion-on-demand through the entire pregnancy, with limits only permitted in the third trimester.

Elaine had been a perfectly health woman. During the abortion, she suffered cardiac arrest. She was resuscitated but suffered a second, fatal cardiac arrest five or six days later, on September 11. 

An autopsy was performed and Elaine's death was ruled accidental.

Elaine’s husband sued the hospital, Bennett ,and Zintsmaster for $925,000 on behalf of the couple's children. He alleged negligence in his wife’s abortion, causing her needless death.

HT: killed-by-choice

Sources:

• "Woman, 22, Dies After Abortion," Akron Beacon Journal, September 13, 1973
• "Coroner probes abortion death," Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 15, 1973
• "Abortion death ruled accident," Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 15, 1973
• "Hospital, Doctors Sued," Akron Beacon Journal, April 22, 1975

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Veteran pro-life investigator Kevin Sherlock asks people of good will to help him have Planned Parenthood prosecuted for profiteering from the rapes and incests of underage girls many thousands of times each year.

Sherlock has  pulled the police records of hundreds of cities and has pulled the child protective services records of multiple states to prove Planned Parenthood staffers are violating mandated reporting laws designed to protect girl victims.   But there is more to be done. Sherlock will make sure more and more evidence gets to federal and state prosecutors who care about protecting girls from abusers and profiteers.

If you would like to help, please click the following link:

https://www.givesendgo.com/stop-pp-from-profiteering-from-the-rapes

Sherlock has talked to many girls and young women who trust him. Their stories and the forensic evidence shows most of them undergo pill abortions or humiliating invasive surgical abortions due to fear or ignorance or pressure or coercion. He treats the girls or women carrying children or devastated from their abortions as friends and neighbors in his home town, not afterthoughts.

Thank you for doing what you can to help girls and fight sexual predators and rape profiteers.

September 11, 1976: Journalists Uncover Abortion Death

Diane Smith, a 23-year-old student, was one of the women mentioned in the Chicago Sun-Times expose, "The Abortion Profiteers." 

According to the report and her death certificate, Diane was admitted to Englewood Hospital in Chicago due to hemorrhaging. She told staff that she'd had a legal abortion in a Chicago-area clinic. 

Diane was treated for a perforated uterus and sepsis, to no avail. She died on September 11, 1976.

Diane, as a black woman, was both at higher risk of being sold an abortion and at higher risk of dying once she walked into the abortion clinic than a white woman would have been.

Watch Investigation Uncovers Abortion Death on YouTube.

Sources: 

• Death certificate
• "12 die after abortions at walk-in clinics," Chicago Sun-Times, November 19, 1978

-------------------------------

Veteran pro-life investigator Kevin Sherlock asks people of good will to help him have Planned Parenthood prosecuted for profiteering from the rapes and incests of underage girls many thousands of times each year.

Sherlock has  pulled the police records of hundreds of cities and has pulled the child protective services records of multiple states to prove Planned Parenthood staffers are violating mandated reporting laws designed to protect girl victims.   But there is more to be done. Sherlock will make sure more and more evidence gets to federal and state prosecutors who care about protecting girls from abusers and profiteers.

If you would like to help, please click the following link:

https://www.givesendgo.com/stop-pp-from-profiteering-from-the-rapes

Sherlock has talked to many girls and young women who trust him. Their stories and the forensic evidence shows most of them undergo pill abortions or humiliating invasive surgical abortions due to fear or ignorance or pressure or coercion. He treats the girls or women carrying children or devastated from their abortions as friends and neighbors in his home town, not afterthoughts.

Thank you for doing what you can to help girls and fight sexual predators and rape profiteers.

September 11, 1918: Obstetrician Arrested After Chicago Death

On the evening of September 11, 1918, 35-year-old homemaker Gertrude Mathieson Harrington died in Chicago's Wesley Hospital. She had been admitted by Dr. John J. Gill, who noted evidence of an abortion when treating her. 

According to public records, Gertrude had been born in Kansas to Charles and Sarah Jane Snowden Mathieson in 1883. She was a homemaker, and there is no record that she and her husband had children.

Dr. Helen Dugdale, an obstetrician, was arrested. 

Dugdale, an obstetrician who advertised as a midwife (which was common for female obstetricians at that time), was born Helen Wolschlager on June 24, 1873 in Germany. Irony of ironies, this reputed abortionist's husband was a butcher, according to the 1920 census. 

She went on trial in June of 1920 but I haven't been able to determine if this was for Gertrude's death or for the death of another woman.  

Helen Dugdale eventually divorced George Dugdale, owner of Chicago's infamous "Bucket of Blood" saloon -- allegedly a combination brothel and drug den. She died January 10, 1938 in Chicago at the age of 64. 

Dugdale had been implicated the previous year in the abortion death of Marie Benzing.

Sources:

• "Suspect Illegal Operation Caused Death of Woman," Chicago Tribune, September 12, 1918
• "Sixteen More Face Trial as Slayers Today," Chicago Tribune, June 1, 1920

-------------------------------

Veteran pro-life investigator Kevin Sherlock asks people of good will to help him have Planned Parenthood prosecuted for profiteering from the rapes and incests of underage girls many thousands of times each year.

Sherlock has  pulled the police records of hundreds of cities and has pulled the child protective services records of multiple states to prove Planned Parenthood staffers are violating mandated reporting laws designed to protect girl victims.   But there is more to be done. Sherlock will make sure more and more evidence gets to federal and state prosecutors who care about protecting girls from abusers and profiteers.

If you would like to help, please click the following link:

https://www.givesendgo.com/stop-pp-from-profiteering-from-the-rapes

Sherlock has talked to many girls and young women who trust him. Their stories and the forensic evidence shows most of them undergo pill abortions or humiliating invasive surgical abortions due to fear or ignorance or pressure or coercion. He treats the girls or women carrying children or devastated from their abortions as friends and neighbors in his home town, not afterthoughts.

Thank you for doing what you can to help girls and fight sexual predators and rape profiteers.

September 11, 1962: The Death of a Socialite

Barbara Covington

Gynecologist Mandel M. Friedman, age 53, was out on bail for the January 21, 1961 abortion death of Vivian Greczka aka Vivian Grant when he was charged with homicide in the September 11, 1962 death of Barbara Clarke Covington.

Barbara, age 35, was a Florida socialite and Chi Omega Sorority sister. 

A 31-year-old Madison Avenue advertising executive, Franklin Charles Beck, was offered immunity. He gave a 10-page statement in which he admitted to securing the $1,000 abortion fee (over $8,500 in 2020 dollars) and driving Barbara to Friedman's office at 3:00 pm. on September 10 for a consultation. They returned the next day for the abortion. He told police, "I loved her. I wanted to marry her. I did not want her to go through with this thing." He waited for about an hour while Friedman operated, only to have the doctor come out and announce, "She's gone."

Beck said that he told Friedman that he was going to call the police, but Friedman said, "Don't. You'll get us both in trouble. You'll ruin us. Think it over." He told Beck to say that Barbara had gone into convulsions and died of a heart attack.  

Friedman contacted Abbey Funeral Home to arrange for the removal of Barbara's body. The undertaker requested the necessary permission from the Board of Health and was told to contact the medical examiner's office. The medical examiner reported the case to authorities, who immediately recognized Friedman's name due to Vivian Grant's death. Their suspicions aroused, they had Barbara's body taken to the morgue at Queens General Hospital for autopsy. She had suffocated when her larynx had swollen shut during anesthesia. Her brother, State Senator D. D. Covington Jr., claimed her body and took it home to Dade City, Florida, for burial.

Friedman was questioned by authorities and released on $10,000 bail shortly after midnight, pending completion of the autopsy. He was scheduled to surrender to the Queens District Attorney's Office. Instead he fled, leading to a 13-state manhunt that ended quickly. Friedman surrendered, accompanied by his attorney and refusing to give any statement other than his name, age, address, and occupation. His original bail bondsman dropped him as a client, leaving Friedman behind bars.

After legal wrangling, Friedman entered a plea bargain, getting a manslaughter charge dropped and being sentenced to only two to four years at Sing-Sing on abortion charges.

As an aside, Friedman had two charges on his record for indecent exposure in 1939 and 1940.

Sources: 

• "13-State Alarm Is Out For MD in Abort Death," New York Daily News, September 13, 1962
• "Frazzled Doc Surrenders In Divorcee Abort Death," New York Daily News, September 14, 1962
• "Term in Abortions," Kansas City Times, December 12, 1963

-------------------------------

Veteran pro-life investigator Kevin Sherlock asks people of good will to help him have Planned Parenthood prosecuted for profiteering from the rapes and incests of underage girls many thousands of times each year.

Sherlock has  pulled the police records of hundreds of cities and has pulled the child protective services records of multiple states to prove Planned Parenthood staffers are violating mandated reporting laws designed to protect girl victims.   But there is more to be done. Sherlock will make sure more and more evidence gets to federal and state prosecutors who care about protecting girls from abusers and profiteers.

If you would like to help, please click the following link:

https://www.givesendgo.com/stop-pp-from-profiteering-from-the-rapes

Sherlock has talked to many girls and young women who trust him. Their stories and the forensic evidence shows most of them undergo pill abortions or humiliating invasive surgical abortions due to fear or ignorance or pressure or coercion. He treats the girls or women carrying children or devastated from their abortions as friends and neighbors in his home town, not afterthoughts.

Thank you for doing what you can to help girls and fight sexual predators and rape profiteers.

September 11, 1970: Choosing The Riskier Alternative

William R. Day, a 21-year-old microbiology student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, was given a five-year suspended sentence at Walpole State Prison, to serve five years of probation instead, after pleading guilty to charges relating to the death of his girlfriend, 21-year-old Nancy Kierzek a senior at Westfield State College. 

Nancy, the daughter of Stanley and Jennie Skwira Kierzek, had been born on September 2, 1948. She was a graduate of Holyoke High School and was also survived by three siblings, Thomas, Elaine, and Catherine. 

Day, who intended to become a doctor, had studied the information he could find about abortion methods, then perpetrated the abortion in his apartment using a catheter at around 3 pm on September 10, 1970 even though New York, where abortions were legal, was a fairly short drive away. 

Nancy bled heavily so Day rushed her in his car to Holyoke Hospital, arriving at around 6 pm. At that point Nancy was unconscious. She was rushed into intensive care.

Hospital staff notified the police, who arrested Day at around 7:30 that evening at the hospital. A search of his car revealed what authorities characterized as abortion instruments. He was initially held without bail.

Nancy, who had been about three months into her pregnancy, died just after midnight on September 11, 1970, around six hours after her admission. Her death was tentatively attributed to an embolism but an autopsy indicated that she had quickly gone septic.

William's attorney had argued for a suspended sentence, characterizing the decision to commit a home abortion as a "tragic mistake." He asserted that William had meant Nancy no harm; they had been dating for two years and planned to marry eventually. District Attorney Matthew J. Ryan Jr. had no objection, saying, "This boy is not a criminal type; sending him to jail to meet the types of people there would be a second tragedy."

Abortion-rights advocates such as D. P. Kline made the claim that "pregnant women in Western Massachusetts faced two choices: to continue the pregnancy to term (and either keep the child or put it up for adoption) or to seek an illegal abortion." However, abortion had been legalized in New York, and hospitals in Boston were loosening their guidelines for "therapeutic" abortions. Why Nancy would submit to an illegal abortion when she was within less than 2 hours driving distance of a legal abortion remains a mystery.

Sources: 

• "UMass Student Charged With Abortion," (Pittsfield MA) Berkshire Eagle, September 11, 1970
• "Abortion-Try Charges Filed Against Man," Holyoke (MA) Transcript-Telegram, September 11, 1970
• "Abortion Blood Poisoning Ruled As Cause Of Death," Holyoke (MA) Daily Transcript, September 12, 1970
• "Youth, 21, Faces Abortion Charge," Springfield (MA) Union, September 12, 1970
• "UM Student's Abortion Case Delayed," Greenfield (MA) Recorder, October 27, 1970
• "Bound Over In Abortion Death Case," Holyoke (MA) Daily Transcript, November 19, 1970
• "Youth in Abortion Death Admits Guilt, Gets Probation," Springfield MA Daily News, January 30, 1971
• "Do-It-Yourself Abortionist Sentenced," (Pittsfield MA) Berkshire Eagle, February 2, 1971
• D. P. Kline, Creating Choice, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2006

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Veteran pro-life investigator Kevin Sherlock asks people of good will to help him have Planned Parenthood prosecuted for profiteering from the rapes and incests of underage girls many thousands of times each year.

Sherlock has  pulled the police records of hundreds of cities and has pulled the child protective services records of multiple states to prove Planned Parenthood staffers are violating mandated reporting laws designed to protect girl victims.   But there is more to be done. Sherlock will make sure more and more evidence gets to federal and state prosecutors who care about protecting girls from abusers and profiteers.

If you would like to help, please click the following link:

https://www.givesendgo.com/stop-pp-from-profiteering-from-the-rapes

Sherlock has talked to many girls and young women who trust him. Their stories and the forensic evidence shows most of them undergo pill abortions or humiliating invasive surgical abortions due to fear or ignorance or pressure or coercion. He treats the girls or women carrying children or devastated from their abortions as friends and neighbors in his home town, not afterthoughts.

Thank you for doing what you can to help girls and fight sexual predators and rape profiteers.

September 10, 1975: LA Hospital Abortion Proves Deadly

Pacoima Lutheran Hospital

Thirty-one-year-old Japanese homemaker Mitsue Mohar was admitted to Pacoima Lutheran Hospital in Los Angeles County for a safe and legal abortion on August 4, 1975.

Mitsue was a small woman, only 5 feet tall and underweight at 88 pounds. 

Dr. Baca performed the D&C abortion under general anesthesia the following morning. Mitsue was taken to the recovery room at 7:40 am. 

After the abortion, Mitsue went into convulsions. Her blood pressure fell to 90/50 and her pulse to 28. Dr. Masor gave her medications and her blood pressure and pulse returned to normal but she was responsive only to pain.

On August 21, she was transferred to LA County/USC Medical Center.

She remained responsive only to pain, and her temperature fluctuated. She was diagnosed with anoxia brain damage. She died on September 10 without ever regaining consciousness. 

The autopsy found the lower portions of her lungs to be "much darker and bloodier than usual." that she had suffered hypoxic encephalopathy due to cardiac arrest during the abortion, and had developed pneumonia which eventually killed her.

Watch Fatal Abortion at California Hospital on YouTube.

Source: LA County Coroner Report 75-10935

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Veteran pro-life investigator Kevin Sherlock asks people of good will to help him have Planned Parenthood prosecuted for profiteering from the rapes and incests of underage girls many thousands of times each year.

Sherlock has  pulled the police records of hundreds of cities and has pulled the child protective services records of multiple states to prove Planned Parenthood staffers are violating mandated reporting laws designed to protect girl victims.   But there is more to be done. Sherlock will make sure more and more evidence gets to federal and state prosecutors who care about protecting girls from abusers and profiteers.

If you would like to help, please click the following link:

https://www.givesendgo.com/stop-pp-from-profiteering-from-the-rapes

Sherlock has talked to many girls and young women who trust him. Their stories and the forensic evidence shows most of them undergo pill abortions or humiliating invasive surgical abortions due to fear or ignorance or pressure or coercion. He treats the girls or women carrying children or devastated from their abortions as friends and neighbors in his home town, not afterthoughts.

Thank you for doing what you can to help girls and fight sexual predators and rape profiteers.

September 10, 1915: Fatal Abortion on Non-Pregnant Teen

Emma Alby, age 15, was an immigrant from Hungary who lived in Chicago with her mother, who was also named Emma, and her father, Frank.

According to Mrs. Alby, Emma "complained of nervousness on July 7," 1915. Her parents suspected that "the child had been misbehaving" and took her to see Dr. Charles R. W. Windmueller on Belmont Avenue. 

Windmueller told Mr. and Mrs. Alby that Emma was pregnant over Emma's protests that she was "innocent." He recommended an abortion. In When Abortion Was a Crime, Leslie Reagan cites documentation of the inquest into Emma's death and says that Emma's father expressed reservations after having read many accounts in newspapers of midwives perpetrating abortions that proved fatal to the patients. Windmueller reported assured Mr. Alby, "Don't you be afraid. It is no danger at all."

The parents' fears were assuaged, and Windmueller attempted an abortion. According to Reagan's book, Windmueller perforated Emma's uterus and pulled out some of her intestines -- an injury that continues to end women's lives in safe and legal abortions. 

Emma's family evidently sought care from a different doctor, because Emma was admitted to Norwegian Lutheran Deaconess Hospital the following day by Dr. J. V. Fowler rather than by Windmueller. 

Emma died on September 10. An autopsy found that Emma had been telling the truth: She had not been pregnant.

According to census records, Windmueller was about 35 years old, a naturalized citizen from Germany. According to Regan, he was also a graduate of the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago and a member of the American Medical Association.

Windmueller was indicted for felony murder in Emma's death. However, I can find no evidence that the case was actually prosecuted, and the fact that he was still living and practicing in Chicago at the time of the 1920 census would indicate that he suffered no long-term repercussions from Emma's death. Reagan merely notes that the response to the botched abortion failed to include a public crusade against physician-abortionists on a par with the contemporary crusade against midwife-abortionists.

Watch She Wasn't Pregnant After All on YouTube.

Sources:

• "Investigate Girl's Death," Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 12, 1915
• "Coroner's Jury Holds Doctor in Girl's Death," Chicago Daily Tribune, October 14, 1915
• Cook County Death Index
• Census records
• Reagan, Leslie J. When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  c1997 1997
• Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database

-------------------------------

Veteran pro-life investigator Kevin Sherlock asks people of good will to help him have Planned Parenthood prosecuted for profiteering from the rapes and incests of underage girls many thousands of times each year.

Sherlock has  pulled the police records of hundreds of cities and has pulled the child protective services records of multiple states to prove Planned Parenthood staffers are violating mandated reporting laws designed to protect girl victims.   But there is more to be done. Sherlock will make sure more and more evidence gets to federal and state prosecutors who care about protecting girls from abusers and profiteers.

If you would like to help, please click the following link:

https://www.givesendgo.com/stop-pp-from-profiteering-from-the-rapes

Sherlock has talked to many girls and young women who trust him. Their stories and the forensic evidence shows most of them undergo pill abortions or humiliating invasive surgical abortions due to fear or ignorance or pressure or coercion. He treats the girls or women carrying children or devastated from their abortions as friends and neighbors in his home town, not afterthoughts.

Thank you for doing what you can to help girls and fight sexual predators and rape profiteers.

September 9, 1970: Safe and Legal in Portland

Patricia Joan Vance had married James Curtis in July of 1957, as noted in a lavish wedding announcement published in the Zaneville, Ohio Times Recorder on July 9. 

Patricia had graduated from New Concord High School and had attended Ohio State University. She worked as a secretary to the production manager of Champion Spark Plugs. 

The bridegroom was a graduate of Cambridge High School and attended Columbus Business University and worked as a teller at the High-Tower office of Ohio National Bank in Columbus. 

The marriage lasted over 12 years until their divorce on January 12, 1970 in Portland, Oregon. At that time James was working as a factory representative at a factory and Patricia was working as an inspector at Jantzen Knitting Mills.

Barely 9 months after the divorce, when Patricia was 33, she was pregnant and decided that she wanted to abort that baby. She never left the hospital alive.

According to killed-by-choice, abortion had legalized abortion if two different doctors decided it met legal exceptions, which included "mental health." Since Patricia's death certificate doesn't indicate anything other "other significant conditions," it's clear that there was no medical justification that those two doctors could have used. Likely the then-stigmatized outside-of-wedlock pregnancy was justification.

This "therapeutic" abortion was performed at 2:30 pm on September 9, 1970. During this abortion, the doctor poked a hole in the back of her uterus. Patricia began to hemorrhage. 

It's unclear when the injury was noted, but it was clearly catastrophic because Patricia died shortly before 5 pm, just two and a half hours after she was brought into the operating room.

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Veteran pro-life investigator Kevin Sherlock asks people of good will to help him have Planned Parenthood prosecuted for profiteering from the rapes and incests of underage girls many thousands of times each year.

Sherlock has  pulled the police records of hundreds of cities and has pulled the child protective services records of multiple states to prove Planned Parenthood staffers are violating mandated reporting laws designed to protect girl victims.   But there is more to be done. Sherlock will make sure more and more evidence gets to federal and state prosecutors who care about protecting girls from abusers and profiteers.

If you would like to help, please click the following link:

https://www.givesendgo.com/stop-pp-from-profiteering-from-the-rapes

Sherlock has talked to many girls and young women who trust him. Their stories and the forensic evidence shows most of them undergo pill abortions or humiliating invasive surgical abortions due to fear or ignorance or pressure or coercion. He treats the girls or women carrying children or devastated from their abortions as friends and neighbors in his home town, not afterthoughts.

Thank you for doing what you can to help girls and fight sexual predators and rape profiteers.

September 9, 1921: The Mystery Abortion That Ruined an Innocent Man

In 1921, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle (pictured, left) was one of the highest paid men in Hollywood. But on September 5 of that year, Arbuckle's life took a horrible turn nobody could have predicted. An aspiring actress, 25-year-old Virginia Rappe (pronounced ra-pay), took ill under strange circumstances at a weekend party Arbuckle was holding at a San Francisco hotel. Four days later, she was dead.

Arbuckle stood trial three times for Virginia's death. Two of the trials ended with hung juries. The third brought an unprecedented apology from the jury:

"Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle. We feel that a great injustice has been done him ... there was not the slightest proof adduced to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime. He was manly throughout the case and told a straightforward story which we all believe. We wish him success and hope that the American people will take the judgement of fourteen men and women that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free from all blame."

Arbuckle had done nothing to harm the girl. He was accused of murder by one Maude Delmont, aka "Madame Black." Delmont ran a blackmail scam, in which she'd provide young women to entertain men at Hollywood parties. A girl would claim that she was raped by some prominent man, who would then pay off Delmont to keep quiet. Delmont's story was so outrageous -- as was her character -- the prosecutors never called her as a witness.

But Arbuckle's name had already been dragged through the mud. The stories of bootleg liquor and wild women had done their damage. Arbuckle was banned from the screen. Although the ban was lifted in December of 1922, Arbuckle's career never recovered. He died of a heart attack in 1933, just as he was starting to recover financially and personally from his ordeal.

The allegations varied: that Arbuckle had raped Virginia, rupturing her insides with his 266-pound weight; that he was drunk and impotent and therefore angrily violated the girl with a wine bottle, or a Coke bottle, or a jagged piece of ice.

The booze-addled party-goers were not very consistent sources of information about exactly what happened. What is agreed upon is that Virginia (pictured, right) stumbled into a bathroom at some point on Monday. Arbuckle followed her. He later said that he found her hunched over the toilet, vomiting and in pain. He moved her to his bed, where he hoped she would sleep it off. He then rejoined the party.

Virginia's condition deteriorated. At some point, she became hysterical, screaming that she was dying and tearing her clothes off. Arbuckle and Delmont argued over what to do next.

The drunken party guests eventually decided to put the nude Virginia into a bathtub of ice water. Some reports have Arbuckle placing a piece of ice near or in Virginia's vagina, which may have contributed to the claim that he'd injured her insides with a sharp piece of ice.

Of course, this did nothing to help Virginia, who continued to scream. Arbuckle carried her to another room and summoned doctors. The guests, thinking Virginia was just hung over, continued to party.

Virginia was not taken to a hospital until Thursday. She taken not to a regular hospital, but to Wakefield Sanitorium, a maternity hospital known for performing quasi-legal abortions. Virginia died the next day, Friday, September 9. The cause of death was listed as peritonitis due to a ruptured bladder due to "external force."

The next day, Arbuckle was charged.

Arbuckle's defense attorney brought forth Josephine Roth, who testified that Virginia had five times availed her self of services at Roth's clinic: four times for abortions, and once to give birth to a baby. This information might seem to be unnecessarily slamming the victim, but turns out to be very relevant.

Although Virginia's ruptured bladder was produced as evidence in the trial, her reproductive organs had vanished after the autopsy. The autopsy was performed illegally on site at Wakefield Sanitorium, without consulting the coroner's office. One of the doctors overseeing the autopsy, Dr. Melville Rumswell, was reputed to be an abortionist.

Without the uterus and vagina, there was no way of knowing if Virginia had indeed suffered blunt vaginal trauma inflicted by Arbuckle.

Blunt-force trauma would have made a strong case against Arbuckle. But sharp instrument trauma would have cleared Arbuckle and pointed the finger at whoever performed a final, eventually fatal, abortion on Virginia Rappe.

There is also the mystery of why Delmont directed suspicion toward Arbuckle. She was a blackmailer. Why didn't she milk Arbuckle for money? Why didn't she simply allow the police to investigate the death of the young women? To these questions, we can add two others: Why had Virginia's uterus, ovaries, and vagina been removed and disposed of? And why was Virginia brought to a marginal facility like Wakefield Sanitarium?

One theory that answers the mysteries is this: Perhaps Delmont had a hand in arranging an illegal abortion that ruptured Virginia's bladder. When Virginia took ill, perhaps Delmont directed her to the Sanitarium, where the abortion may well have been performed -- where there would be accomplices who would also have a motive to keep the real reason for Virginia's death secret. And after the girl died, perhaps Delmont concocted the rape story to create a scandal that would divert attention away from herself.

This is, of course, speculation. But since an abortionist could face murder charges if a patient died -- and since an accomplice likewise would face a prison sentence -- it's the only scenario that explains the otherwise inexplicable behavior of Delmont and whoever got rid of Virginia's uterus and vagina.

Watch Who Really Killed Virginia Rappe? on YouTube. 

Sources: 

• Profile of an American Scandal   
• The Trial of Fatty Arbuckle  
•  An Underground Education, by Richard Zacks

-------------------------------

Veteran pro-life investigator Kevin Sherlock asks people of good will to help him have Planned Parenthood prosecuted for profiteering from the rapes and incests of underage girls many thousands of times each year.

Sherlock has  pulled the police records of hundreds of cities and has pulled the child protective services records of multiple states to prove Planned Parenthood staffers are violating mandated reporting laws designed to protect girl victims.   But there is more to be done. Sherlock will make sure more and more evidence gets to federal and state prosecutors who care about protecting girls from abusers and profiteers.

If you would like to help, please click the following link:

https://www.givesendgo.com/stop-pp-from-profiteering-from-the-rapes

Sherlock has talked to many girls and young women who trust him. Their stories and the forensic evidence shows most of them undergo pill abortions or humiliating invasive surgical abortions due to fear or ignorance or pressure or coercion. He treats the girls or women carrying children or devastated from their abortions as friends and neighbors in his home town, not afterthoughts.

Thank you for doing what you can to help girls and fight sexual predators and rape profiteers.