killed-by-choice

[killed-by-choice]

Kelly Morse, 32 (USA 1996)

Kelly Morse was 32 years old when she found out she was 8 weeks pregnant. At 8 weeks and 5 days pregnant, she went with her husband Scott to Hillcrest Women’s Medical Center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Despite the name, Hillcrest was just an abortion facility and would provide no medical care to her.

Kelly had allergies and asthma. She made sure to notify the staff at the abortion facility that she was severely allergic to Lidocaine and other medications ending in “caine”. Her allergies were highly dangerous, but easily avoided by simply not using the medicine she was allergic to.

Despite Kelly’s warning, Delhi Elmore Thweatt, Jr. administered 12 cc’s of 1 percent Lidocaine to Kelly. The effect was immediate.

Kelly couldn’t breathe and started turning blue. A licensed practical nurse got Kelly’s inhaler out of her purse and helped her use it, but Kelly told her that it was not helping. She was very agitated and struggling to breathe.

Instead of immediately calling, the abortionist proceeded with the abortion, rushing through it in about four minutes. Then he spent some time trying to administer incorrect measures to a dying Kelly before finally bothering to call an ambulance. Kelly needed medical treatment, but the abortionist killed her baby and watched her turn blue instead of helping her.

While all this was happening, Scott was waiting outside for his beloved wife, wondering what was taking so long. Before anyone at Hillcrest even told him about Kelly’s condition, paramedics arrived. He went inside with the ambulance crew to see what was happening. To his horror, Kelly was naked and blue-black from lack of oxygen, lying on a table that was halfway out of the examination room into the hallway.

The paramedics intubated Kelly, properly administered medicine, and performed CPR as they brought her to the Polyclinic Medical Center, where she was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. The abortion was done on June 19, 1996. Kelly died on June 22 after a few days of barely clinging to life in the ICU.

Scott sued Hillcrest for killing Kelly. Here are some quotes from the lawsuit:

“As Mrs. Morse’s dyspnea and cyanosis continued to worsen, Defendant Thweatt improperly administered Epinephrine subcutaneously instead of intravenously….” (This measure would do nothing to assist a patient in Kelly’s extremely severe condition.)

“No one started an IV. No respiration rate was recorded, no pulse was checked and no blood pressure was measured. No EKG was applied. No cardiac monitoring was conducted. No pulse oximeter was applied. No intubation or emergency tracheotomy was performed. No oxygen was administered. Kelly continued to agitate in fear, desperately gasping for air, and remained blue in color. Defendant Thweatt just stood there with a stethoscope in hand and listened to Kelly’s breathing and wheezing progressively worsen.”

“As Plaintiff choked and gasped for air, none of the Defendants, took steps to immediately dispatch an ambulance. In fact, the ambulance was not summoned until 11:24 a.m., or 10 minutes after Plaintiff violently choked, gasped, wheezed, and discolored to a blue-black appearance from respiratory arrest and hypoxia.”

It was also discovered that even though Hillcrest advertised Thweatt as being a Board-certified OB/GYN, “Defendant Thweatt failed the OB/GYN Board certification examination not once, not twice, but on three consecutive attempts…Defendant Thweatt failed his Board certification exam even after a fourth attempt, following his deposition of July 27, 1997.”

On April 20, 1999, Thweatt and Hillcrest settled out of court with Scott. No amount of money could give his surviving son and daughter their mother and sibling back.

Even while Kelly was scared and dying because of the abortion facility’s lethal malpractice, the abortionist killed her baby instead of immediately calling for help. Kelly’s health and safety was clearly not important to Hillcrest.

The Hillcrest facility was also responsible for a forced abortion on a teenager who was literally dragged through the doors while crying and actively fighting to get away. The victim, Arlin Dela Cruz, was so traumatized that she committed suicide only weeks later.

Dauphin County (PA) Court of Common Pleas, Civil Action # 6070 S96 SCOTT B. MORSE v. DELHI THWEATT, MD.

[killed-by-choice]

Germaine Newman, 14 (USA 1984)

It was June 14 of 1984. A 14-year-old girl named Germaine Newman was pregnant in the second trimester. She had an abortion done by Wyman Garrett at 22 weeks pregnant.

Soon after, Germaine started vomiting. The young girl was in agonizing pain. Her mother took her temperature and discovered that Germaine had a 100-degree fever. Alarmed at the state of her daughter’s health, she called the abortionist, who told her that Germaine’s symptoms were normal and prescribed antibiotics without examining Germaine first.

Germaine seemed to be feeling slightly better, but then quickly deteriorated to the point where she was even worse than before. Her mother planned to bring her back to the facility and have someone examine her.

But before Germaine’s mother even had a chance to bring her in, woke up to her worst nightmare. Her 14-year-old daughter was found dead on the bathroom floor.

Germaine’s autopsy revealed that the 14-year-old girl had been killed by her massive infection, which was identified as diffuse acute peritonitis. Her uterus had been punctured and her abdomen was full of pus and adhesions.

The New Jersey medical board investigated Garrett and discovered that he had illegally altered Germaine’s medical records. Garrett also had an extensive criminal record and multiple other cases of abortion malpractice, including a 16-year-old girl who had to be hospitalized after Garrett tore a 1-inch hole in her uterus and a mother who was discharged from the abortion facility with a severed head left inside of her.

He also had a history of related violent crime. In 1971, during a teacher strike, Garrett (who was a school board member at that point) told a school trustee "We know where you live. We're going to get you." He then turned to a reporter who was taking notes and said, "You'll have to give me your notebook or you won't get out of this building alive." Garrett then summoned two men to beat the reporter up and take his notebook and wallet. Two weeks into the trial, Garrett plea-bargained down to interfering with people at a public meeting and paid $2,000 in fines and costs.

In 1986 the board concluded that Garrett was guilty of gross negligence, abandonment of patients, and professional misconduct. He failed to recognize and treat complications in a timely manner, they found. Finally, Garrett was banned from performing abortions or other any surgery. In 1987 his license was fully revoked.

[killed-by-choice]

Rosario Bermeo, 30 (USA 1983)

Rosario was a 30-year-old immigrant from Ecuador. She was married to Eduardo Bermeo.

She became pregnant and was told that she lived in a country where abortion was “safe and legal”. In 1983, Rosario underwent an abortion at a New York hospital.

The abortionist was Joseph B. Shapse, who worked at Prospect Hospital. Under his “care”, Rosario went into cardio-respiratory arrest and was soon declared dead. Oddly enough, the hospital did not perform an autopsy on her.

Eduardo was furious about the death of his wife. He and Rosario had not been warned that abortion was dangerous for the mother and were not told about severe potential complications.

Eduardo took his wife’s killer to court. Shapse claimed that since no autopsy had been performed, Eduardo could not prove that Rosario had died for any reason "beyond respiratory and cardiac arrest." He said that the abortion proceeded without incident and that he had no responsibility for actions of the certified registered nurse anesthetist. The CRNA, Shapse noted, had been the one monitoring Rosario after the abortion, when her vital signs began to fail. Therefore, he said, he was not to blame for her death.

Eduardo's attorney countered with an affidavit by a physician that Shapse was indeed responsible for supervising the SRNA and that he had a duty to monitor and evaluate the condition of his own patient during and immediately after surgery. Shapse was indeed guilty of killing Rosario.

After his wife’s legal abortion, Eduardo was left a widower and the father of a dead child.

Prospect Hospital only remained open for two more years after Rosario’s death. It shut down in 1985 and was investigated for the inappropriate, rushed and risky transfer or discharge of over 100 patients.

https://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/18/nyregion/hospital-shuts-abruptly-and-state-plans-inquiry.html

[killed-by-choice]

Barbaralee Davis, 18 (USA 1977)

Barbaralee Davis was the first mother (that we know about) to be killed by the National Abortion Federation. An abortion facility that was a member of the newly-formed NAF killed the 18-year-old girl and her unborn baby on June 14, 1977.

The facility was ironically called Hope Clinic for Women. It was located in Granite City, Illinois. Barbaralee was estimated to be 11 weeks pregnant. Hector Zavallos was the abortionist.

After the abortion, the teenager was pale and in obvious pain. She was kept for two hours(allegedly for observation) but the last time anyone bothered to record her vital signs was 45 minutes after the abortion.

Barbaralee wanted to go home, so the facility sent her on her way without a post-op examination even though CDC investigators discovered that she was showing the warning signs of internal bleeding.

Her sister Rita drove her home and helped her out of the car. Barbaralee was pale and bleeding when she went to sleep. A few hours later, Rita found her sister unresponsive.

The dying teenager was taken to the hospital. Unfortunately, Barbaralee was too severely injured to be saved and she was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital just 12 hours after the abortion. Her 3-year-old son Shane was left an only child without a mother.

The autopsy revealed how mutilated Barbaralee had been. A hole was ripped in her uterus and 2 quarts of blood were in her abdominal cavity. Even more horrifying, her baby’s face and spine were embedded in a hole in her uterus.

It was also discovered that Barbaralee was not 11 weeks pregnant as she had been told. She was actually between 16 weeks and 16 1/2 weeks.

[killed-by-choice]

Angela “Angie” Hall, 29 (USA 1991)

Angela Hall was 29 years old and pregnant with her 6th child. She already trying to take care of so many kids and didn’t think she could feed another one. She was desperate and overwhelmed and she didn’t know where to turn to.

Angela needed real help and support. Instead, she was lured into a dangerous second-trimester abortion by an advertisement showing a happy couple arm-in-arm with each other. Ashamed to admit what she was about to do, Angela gave her mother an excuse about going somewhere else and had her friend Annette Wilson drive her to Birmingham for an abortion.

The abortion facility advertised in the picture was owned by abortionist Thomas Tucker, who regularly traveled between Alabama and Mississippi to perform abortions and claimed to be doing over 60% of the abortions in Mississippi. Joy Davis (one of his employees) screened Angela and found out that she was anemic and she had a fever. Because of Angela’s poor condition, Joy called Tucker and told him that Angela should be referred to a hospital.

Tucker didn’t care about Angela’s safety. He told Joy, “You know we need the money. Just do it. Just put the patient through.”

The first time Tucker so much as laid eyes on Angela, she was already under anesthesia. Tucker frequently had staff with no medical credentials administer anesthesia and laminaria dilators to his clients. Even Joy Davis, who had been tasked with examining Angela before the abortion, had no formal medical training. Yet even she could tell that Angela was unhealthy and at risk.

Just as the abortion was finished, Angela took a turn for the worse. She started gasping for air and an alarm on her blood pressure monitor was going off. Tucker told his staff to turn off the alarm because other clients would be able to hear it.

After screaming at his employees and temporarily stabilizing Angela’s blood pressure, Tucker sent Angela to a so-called recovery room. Packing was put in place in an attempt to stop her from bleeding, but Angela was so severely injured that she bled profusely through the packing material.

The bleeding was extremely dangerous. According to Joy, “Blood was running down the table. It was pooling in the floor and running down behind her back.” Joy wanted to call an ambulance, but Tucker didn’t want anyone to know about his second severely injured client that same day. (Before performing an abortion on Angela, he sent another client to the hospital.) He told his scared employee that he was the doctor and if anybody was going to make a decision to call the ambulance, it was going to be him. Angela was left in the sheets and hospital gown that were soaking in her own blood.

Unsurprisingly, Angela kept getting worse. Joy knew that Angela was still bleeding, so she went to Tucker and told him. His callous response was, “What do you want me to do?” Finally, Joy stood up to her boss and told him, “I don't know, but I want you to do something. She's going to lay here and die.” Tucker told her, “Fine. Call the fucking ambulance.” He then left the building and Joy (who had no formal medical training) was left trying to keep Angela alive until the ambulance could get there.

The ambulance took Angela to the hospital, where she was placed in the ICU. She suffered from respiratory failure, clotting, blood loss and sepsis. Hours later, Angela’s friend Annette finally called Angela’s mother (Mrs. Kidd) and told her that Angela was in the ICU. Mrs. Kids arrived to find her daughter covered in tubes and barely even breathing.

Angela died on June 14 just before midnight. Her autopsy found numerous tears and lesions in the pelvic area, which had leaked amniotic fluid into her bloodstream. She had congestive necrosis in her liver and spleen. The doctors concluded that the amniotic fluid embolism caused clotting problems that resulted in the necrosis, septic shock and cardiac arrest.

Alabama authorities subpoenaed Angela's records. To cover up what he had done, Tucker told the traumatized Joy to destroy some records and falsify others. On his orders, she tore up the records, which Tucker then tried to burn in an ashtray, setting off the facility’s smoke alarm. Tucker put out the fire, bagged up the damaged papers and ordered Joy to take the papers to the basement and burn them. Instead, she taped the pieces back together and eventually turned them over to the medical board.

The investigation found seemingly endless malpractice. Tucker had failed to report multiple malpractice lawsuits, most of which involved his abortion clients. He perforated the uteruses of at least 3 other clients, allowed untrained staff to administer anesthesia, insert laminaria and perform abortions, had been known to disregard the state’s waiting period for abortions, falsified records, destroyed incriminating evidence and wrote fake prescriptions in order to sell addictive drugs. He was also responsible for the death of 21-year-old Michelle Jordan, who came to one of Tucker’s facilities to have the birth control implant in her arm removed. (The implant could easily be removed with only local anesthetic, but Tucker unnecessarily had general anesthesia used instead. He may have also had one of his unqualified employees administer anesthesia to Michelle, who died from complications of anesthesia.)

In 1994, Tucker was stripped of his license to practice medicine in Alabama. The attorney general and the state medical board declared him an “immediate danger to his patients.”

Joy Davis was done working for Tucker. She became a very active Pro-Lifer and started working to help vulnerable women avoid sharing Angela’s fate.

As for Angela’s 5 surviving kids, they were adopted by their grandmother, who did the best she could to raise them all in a 2-bedroom house. The youngest can recognize a picture of his mother, but all he remembers of her is bringing flowers to her grave.

[killed-by-choice]

Arlene Hull, 24 (USA 1970)

On June 12, 1970, Arlene Hull was brought into the operating room at Jefferson Hospital for her scheduled abortion. She was about 15 weeks pregnant.

Even though she was young, many factors increased Arlene’s chances of dying from the abortion. She had a history of grand mal seizures and multiple sclerosis, which were both significant conditions that needed to be taken into account. Advanced gestational age made the abortion inherently more hazardous than an earlier one. The method used was a hysterotomy abortion, a highly invasive operation now known to be even more dangerous than the once-common saline method. On top of everything else, Black women like Arlene are approximately three times as likely as white women to die from second-trimester surgical abortions.

Despite all the danger, the abortionist at Jefferson Hospital decided to proceed anyway. Arlene was put under anesthesia using a mixture of drugs. Records show that she was given thiopental, an anticonvulsant sometimes used when an epileptic patient has a seizure during an operation. This may indicate that she began seizing on the table, which was fairly predictable given her history.

The drug cocktail also included an agent that is no longer as accepted in clinical use: curare. This derivative of “poison arrow plants” was used as a surgical paralytic (but unfortunately with no analgesic properties) in the 19th century and later as a muscle relaxant in combination with anesthetics. However, it interacted with some other drugs, depressed breathing and occasionally triggered fatal bronchiospasms. There was also an extremely narrow margin between fairly safe use and a toxic overdose. While important in a certain era, curare in the clinical setting has been replaced by safer drugs, some of which already existed in 1970.

With every additional factor compounding the risk to Arlene’s life, it’s sadly not surprising that the hospital was unable to save her. Dr. J. Miller pronounced her dead at 4:30 that afternoon. She was only 24 years old.

[killed-by-choice]

Angela Belinda Scott and Delores Jean Smith, 19 and 15 (USA 1979)

Normally I would do a separate profile for each of these girls, but the cases of 19-year-old Angela and 15-year-old Delores are tightly connected. The same abortion facility lethally injured two teenagers in less than an hour, leaving them both comatose until they died.

The date was June 2, 1979. Angela and Delores were taken to Atlanta Women's Pavillion, a member of the National Abortion Federation. The co-owners of the facility were Jacob Adams, Otis Hammonds and Olly C. Duckett.

The first to go under the knife was Angela. Adams carried out the abortion while Angela was under general anesthesia. She was sent to the recovery room and Delores was brought in for her abortion. Nurse Teresa Stearns administered anesthesia to 15-year-old Delores even though she was not certified or trained to do that.

While she was in the recovery room, Angela went into cardio-respiratory arrest. Stearns ran to check on Angela, leaving Delores unconscious and unsupervised with an IV anesthesia drip still running.

Angela had no heartbeat and was not breathing, but the facility didn’t report the problem as an emergency, leading to a 15-minute delay in the arrival of the ambulance.

Angela was resuscitated and loaded into the ambulance, but at this point Delores was also in cardio-respiratory arrest. She had been left alone the entire time with the anesthesia drip still going. Now she was dying from a lethal overdose while abortionist Jacob Adams rode in the ambulance to the hospital where Angela would spend her last few days of life in a coma.

The ambulance could have taken both teenagers to the hospital immediately, but the facility refused to release 15-year-old Delores until Adams came back from the hospital, which meant it took an extra half an hour before the dying girl was taken by an ambulance.

Both teenagers spent the rest of their lives in comas. 19-year-old Angela died on June 9 at the hospital. Her mother sued the facility, the three owners and the nurse for $12.3 million, calling Atlanta's 10 or so outpatient abortion clinics "unregulated assembly-line abortion mills." (She or her lawyer may have been the one to coin the term “abortion mill”, but this is not confirmed.) At the time, the only regulation for Georgia abortion facilities was a requirement that they had to be overseen by a licensed physician. They really were almost entirely unregulated.

As for Delores, she was comatose in the ICU until she was transferred to a nursing home where she died that October. Her mother also sued the facility for $12.3 million when she found out that the pregnancy test done by the facility was actually negative. Not only was Delores dead, but she had been scheduled and charged for an abortion even though she was not pregnant to begin with.

[killed-by-choice]

Joyce Ortenzio, 32 (USA 1988)

Joyce Ortenzio 32-year-old Joyce Ortenzio was pregnant for the fourth time. She ended up going to the San Vicente Hospital, which despite the deceptive name was actually an FPA abortion facility. The San Vicente facility had already killed 22-year-old Sara Franki Lint and 16-year-old Natalie Meyers.

Joyce went to San Vicente for dilation by laminaria insertion and then underwent the second-trimester abortion on June 7, 1988. The next day she was found dead in her home.

Her autopsy revealed that fetal body parts had been left inside of her, causing a severe infection. She had gone into septic shock. Ruben Marmet, the abortionist who killed Joyce and her unborn baby, had also overdosed her on a dangerously high amount of amitriptyline.

Her surviving family members sued Edward Allred, his Family Planning Associates (FPA) corporation, the San Vicente FPA facility and abortionist Ruben Marmet. Marmet had already been sued for malpractice after selling an “abortion” to a client who was not even pregnant in 1982 (LA County Superior Court Case No. NCC238673).

Allred’s abortion facilities were also responsible for the deaths of 13-year-old Deanna Bell, Susan Levy, Ta Tanisha Wesson, 16-year-old Nakia “Kia” Jorden, 18-year-old Christine Mora, Kenniah Epps, Kimberly K. Neil, Emmeko Reed, Denise Holmes, 16-year-old Patricia “Patty” Chacon, Mary Pena, Maria Leho, Chanelle Bryant, Maria E. Rodriguez, Josefina Garcia, 19-year-old Tami Suematsu and 17-year-old Laniece Dorsey. Allred and his corporation had been accused of systemic racism in his substandard treatment of clients who were POC, which was brought up in multiple lawsuits over client’s deaths.

Marmet continued his career of malpractice. In 2012 he was sued by Luz Escalante for 6.2 million dollars after two botched abortions. Luz’s child (little Alexis Escalante) survived both abortion attempts but was left disabled. When Marmet was found guilty of malpractice and ordered to pay, he then attempted to sue his law firm (and lost). He was also sued for malpractice in 1995, 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2015.

Joyce’s three surviving children were left without their mother and sibling, who they had lost one day apart.

Los Angeles County CA Superior Court Case No. WEC139590

California Death Certificate No. 88-127625

[killed-by-choice]

Sheila Hebert, 27 (USA 1984)

Sheila Elizabeth Marks Hebert was 27 years old and had a 10-year-old son. She had a well-documented history of asthma. In early June of 1984, she underwent a legal abortion at Delta Women’s Clinic in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Richardson Glidden was the abortionist. Glidden and the other Delta staff failed to monitor Sheila in recovery. Even though she hadn’t been struggling to breathe before she came to the abortion facility, she suffered from chest pain and told staff members that she couldn’t breathe. The staff failed to react properly when her condition was discovered and did nothing to help until after Sheila lost consciousness. Delta did not have adequate emergency equipment and did not call 911 for some time.

The 911 call was so delayed that by the time the ambulance got there, Sheila’s body was cold, blue and showed no signs of life even after being injected with adrenaline. Sheila was taken to a hospital and placed in the ICU at Our Lady Of The Lake Medical Center, but it was already too late. She was officially declared dead on June 6, 1984.

The coroner who performed the autopsy said that Sheila’s abortion triggered a reaction known as “acute asthmatic bronchitis”, which eventually sent her into cardiorespiratory arrest when Delta failed to act. An investigation was launched into the abortion facility.

The Delta abortion facility had a disturbing record. Despite a seemingly endless list of health and safety violations found during inspections and many malpractice cases, Delta was allowed to remain open. Had it been shut down after killing Sheila, the needless deaths of Ingar Weber and her baby could have been avoided. Instead, Delta continued to kill and mutilate.

“DA to investigate abortion death,” Baton Rough Advocate, July 11, 1984

Louisiana Daily World, June 8, 1984

(grave records)

(Deficiency reports, malpractice cases, client death/injuries, criminal records for DWC)

East Baton Rouge Parish District Court Case No. 289518

[killed-by-choice]

Manuela del Rosario-Navarro Torres, 36 (USA 1988)

Manuela del Rosario-Navarro Torres immigrated from Mexico and lived in Spreckels, California for the last 10 years of her life. She lived with her husband Armando and they were raising their three children, named Elsa, Julio and Griselda. Although she had come to America in hopes of a better life, the “safe and legal” abortion industry would take that life away.

In 1988, Manuela found out she was pregnant with her fourth baby. On or about May 26, she underwent a legal abortion. She lived for less than two weeks after that.

Manuela suffered a pulmonary embolism, cerebral hypoxia and finally cardiac arrest. She died at the Stanford Medical Center on June 6, 1988. The doctor who examined her verified that the abortion “contributed significantly” to her death.

Armando was now a widower and was left to raise his surviving children as a single father. Two more unnecessary deaths at the hands of the abortion industry led to grief and suffering for an entire family.

"California Death Index, 1940-1997," database, Manuela Delrosariona Torres, 06 Jun 1988; Department of Public Health Services, Sacramento.

The Californian, June 8 1988

California Death Certificate 88-087890

[killed-by-choice]

Samreen Nevrekar, 25 (India 2024)

In June of 2024, the parents of a 25-year-old woman registered a Missing Persons Report at the Talegaon MIDC police station. What would be uncovered during the investigation was the horrific case of Samreen Nissar Nevrekar.

Samreen, already a mother of two, was married but estranged from her husband and having an affair with Gajendra Dagadkhair. When he found out she had become pregnant, he had Ravikant Gaikwad (who would soon become an accomplice to his crimes) take her to Amar Hospital for an abortion. They brought Samreen in a car along with her two small children, 2-year-old Ijan and 5-year-old Ishan.

Samreen suffered complications during the abortion and died a few days later. According to news reports, the two men then drove her body out to the Indrayani River and threw her in, trying to hide what had been done.

Ishan and Ijan, who had been transported with their mother’s corpse, witnessed her body being thrown into the river and began screaming and crying. Dagadkhair and Gaikwad then threw both of them in, still alive, after their mother’s body. Police had not found the children as of the last news updates, but given the swollen state of the river, authorities are operating under the assumption that they were drowned.

When the Missing Persons investigation revealed the horrific acts perpetrated over the course of three days, the police arrested Dagadkhair and his accomplice for the murders and for dumping Samreen’s corpse. The murderers are currently being held in police custody.

In addition to dumping a body and drowning two young children, police also probed whether every legal requirement for the abortion itself was met. News sources mentioned that it was “allegedly performed without taking into account the risks to the woman’s life,” but as of publishing time there were no reports that any aspect of the abortion itself were found to be illegal.

Samreen’s devastated parents are demanding justice for her and her children. “Punish all those who lured our daughter and played with her life," they said in a plea for the strongest possible legal punishment for the perpetrators.

[killed-by-choice]

Sandra Lynn Chmiel, 35 (USA 1975)

The abortion facility Biogenetics was running legally. That didn’t mean it wasn’t full of rampant malpractice. It was sued for malpractice at least 30 times and killed multiple clients before finally being shut down.

Sandra Lynn Chmiel was 35 when she went to Biogenetics for an abortion. She was more than 12 weeks pregnant. Illinois laws at the time specified that abortion was still legal past 12 weeks, but required that it had to happen in a hospital. Sandra probably wasn’t told about this requirement because Biogenetics took the $600 from her and went ahead with the abortion anyway. She paid her killer $600 for the act that would kill her painfully.

Only hours later, Sandra was dead. The Biogenetics abortionist severely punctured her uterus. She died of massive internal bleeding on June 3, 1975.

When they were later confronted over their mistreatment of Sandra, Biogenetics literally added insult to injury. They claimed that Sandra was a criminal who tried to induce her own abortion and that they were “repairing” the damage she had done to herself. There was no evidence of this claim and plenty of evidence to the contrary. In the end, Biogenetics had to pay Sandra’s family $75,000 for what they’d done to her.

Biogenetics killed Brenda Benton and Synthia Dennard before they were finally shut down in the 1990s. If the deadly facility was shut down for killing Sandra and trying to frame her for her own death, Brenda and Sylvia might still be alive.

"12 dead after abortions in state's walk-in clinics," Chicago Sun-Times, November 19, 1978

[killed-by-choice]

Kimberly Ihde, 37 (USA 2003)

Two weeks after a surgical abortion, Kimberly Ihde died in her home. Her autopsy found that the abortion caused endometritis, which then caused fulminant sepsis. She would have been in a lot of pain before dying.

A study later published in a medical journal contained a case report later identified as Kimberly’s. It provided more information on what happened in her last two weeks of life.

Kimberly had asthma and had a history of using meth, which put her more at risk from the abortion. The abortionist used laminaria dilators in advance, which have been linked to infection. The use of laminaria also indicates that Kimberly was later in her pregnancy, making the abortion inherently more hazardous.

Within days, Kimberly suffered complication after complication. She developed pleural effusions, severe hemorrhage, edema, inflammation and necrosis. After two weeks of suffering, she died of her complications. Molecular analysis found that she had contracted an infection of Clostridium perfringens, the pathogen that causes gas gangrene.

The abortion wasn’t a safe elective procedure like Kimberly was told. It had a terrible effect on her child and herself as well as for the people around her. Her grave marker is inscribed with the words “WE LOVE YOU” and she was described as a sweet friend by those who knew her. She should have been able to enjoy so much more time with them.

LA County Coroner Case Number 2003-04170

https://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378(09)00531-6/fulltext

[killed-by-choice]

Maureen Lynn Tyke, 21 (USA 1983)

Maureen Tyke lived in Pennsylvania, but she had an abortion done in Florida. The abortion facility was called Aware Woman Clinic. The ironically named facility did not examine Maureen well enough to be aware of a lethal problem.

John Bayard Britton was the abortionist. Maureen had her legal abortion on Friday, May 27, 1983. The facility did not note anything unusual or alarming.

About 24 hours after her abortion, Maureen developed nausea, vomiting and chills. By the next Sunday, she was in the hospital. Holmes Regional Medical Center noticed she had fever and chills and was extremely weak. Her blood pressure was dangerously low and her skin turned an unhealthy blue-gray from lack of oxygen to her tissues.

Even after an emergency hysterectomy, Maureen died. She was only 21 years old.

Her autopsy results showed that she had florid myocarditis, probably of viral etiology (a severe viral infection of the heart). The medical examiner added, "The intensity of this myocarditis should indicate that the young woman was very ill and there should have been some signs or symptoms of serious illness at the time she was being prepared for the abortion." However, as the autopsy had noted, nobody at the abortion facility had noticed that Maureen was horribly sick and in no condition for any elective surgery.

It can't be said for certain that an adequate physical examination and a referral for medical care could have saved Maureen. However, any client (no matter how healthy) should have had the basic examination that the facility failed to give.

[killed-by-choice]

Denise Montoya, 15 (USA 1988)

15-year-old Denise’s parents brought her to Women’s Pavillion in Houston for an abortion on May 13, 1988 when she was 25 weeks pregnant. The abortion was done by Douglas Karpen, who was actually an osteopath and not an OB/GYN.

In what a lawsuit later called “extremely foreseeable complications”, Denise lost dangerous amounts of blood and had to be taken to Ben Taub hospital. Her condition deteriorated and she died on May 29, 1988.

Her parents filed suit against Karpen and Women’s Pavillion, saying that they had failed to adequately explain the risks of the procedure and had not had the parents sign any informed consent document before the abortion that killed Denise and her baby. No consent forms were even provided. Denise’s parents said that had they known how dangerous abortion is at 25 weeks, they never would have subjected their young daughter to the hazardous procedure.

Karpen was later caught killing babies born alive after attempted abortions. His own former employees testified that he killed the babies with his bare hands by twisting their necks “execution style.”

(court documents)

[killed-by-choice]

“Kylie Roe” 21 (USA 2002)

“Kylie” was 21 when she underwent the chemical abortion that took her life.

Somewhere in Washington state, Kylie underwent an abortion with the drug RU-486. It had not been long since the drug had been approved in America, and she likely didn’t know it was not as safe as advertised. An experimental trial in Canada the year before had been shut down by the government after a healthy young participant developed a fatal infection and died within days and another had a heart attack and barely survived. Brenda Vise had bled to death in Tennessee after negligently being given the abortion pill when her pregnancy was actually ectopic. A decade before that, Nadine Walkowiak in France was killed by a massive coronary thrombosis, which led to a warning being placed that RU-486 should not be given to those with risk factors for heart problems.

After the chemical abortion, Kylie didn’t have long to live. She suffered a heart attack three days later. This may have been a result of mifepristone’s direct effects on the cardiovascular system, an embolism that lodged in or near her heart, severe blood loss or an overwhelming infection, but the small report in a single newspaper did not specify further.

While some stated that they could not say for certain the extent of the role of RU-486 in Kylie’s heart attack, the cardiac risks of the drug were already well-documented. Similar cases were later seen in areas that legalized the use of RU-486 for abortions. A case report published in 2004 documented a Canadian woman in her 20s (“Crystal Roe”) who was killed by overwhelming infection and heart failure after a mifepristone abortion. In 2012, 19-year-old Jessie-Maye Barlow died of an extreme infection that destroyed a valve in her aorta. Anna Maria M. of Italy went into atrial fibrillation and died after a chemical abortion despite being perfectly healthy beforehand.

Kylie was not the first to die in the United States after a chemical abortion, and sadly, she was far from the last.

[killed-by-choice]

Pilar Carranco, 18 (USA 1975)

On New Year’s Eve in 1975, 18-year-old Pilar Carranco underwent a suction abortion at the hands of abortionist Richard Scotti. Despite being right next to a hospital, she wouldn’t survive to see the new year.

A nurse who witnessed the fatal abortion later testified that Scotti heard the suction machine making a strange noise. Pilar then went into convulsions and the nurse heard Scotti say that her uterus had been “blown out” (a comment that Scotti later downplayed in court but could not deny entirely).

Pilar was taken to Community Hospital, but was declared dead while still in the emergency room. Scotti went back to the machine and disconnected the tubing so that nobody could prove it had been set up improperly, destroying evidence. However, when Pilar’s autopsy results came back, his fatal negligence still came to light.

Pilar had died of a massive air embolism. Scotti had been careless in the maintenance and setup of his suction unit and had misconnected the tubing. Apparently he had not checked to make sure the equipment was working properly before inserting the suction tube through Pilar’s cervix. Instead of vacuuming out her unborn child, he had been pumping pressurized air into her uterus.

Pilar’s parents, Juan and Carmelita Carranco, sued Scotti for their daughter’s death. Local newspaper coverage noted that the abortion had been legal in every aspect, from the licensing status of the facility to gestational age limits. Scotti’s lawyer tried to argue that the massive air embolism might have come from some other hypothetical source and that maybe it was not at all related to the pressurized air pumped into her uterus. Scotti denied failing to check the machine, but it was discovered to have no functional on-off switch and an exposed belt drive.

Despite witness testimony from a nurse involved, proof that the machine was being improperly maintained, Pilar’s autopsy report (in which the coroner called her cause of death obvious and even found the vein that had carried the air to her heart) and the destruction of evidence following her death, the jury could not agree on a decision. Superior Court Judge Harry Bouer dismissed the manslaughter and negligence charges. A retrial was fully allowed, but Bouer stated that it was not likely to have a different result. This was an odd conclusion considering that even the defense attorney who called for dismissal voiced his conviction that “based on the entire circumstances of the case,” Scotti was guilty. The Carranco family was denied the final chance at justice that they should have been allowed.

Pilar is probably “Callie Roe” in a previous post covering a case from a medical journal. If so, she was 9 weeks pregnant and the CDC counted her death in its annual statistics.

Santa Cruz Sentinel, Volume 120, Number 180, 3 August 1976

Santa Cruz Sentinel, Volume 120, Number 165, 16 July 1976