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Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 40 general entries. We are selecting 30 for display.
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Abortion
| In 1988, 17-year-old Becky Bell died of pneumonia shortly after miscarrying. Pro-choice activists have blamed her death on an illegal abortion. Becky supposedly sought to avoid Indiana's parental involvement laws. According the the Centers for Disease Control, how many confirmed illegal abortion deaths were there the year Becky died? | Influential Abortion Events
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0. The CDC noted no confirmed illegal abortion deaths in 1988; there were three confirmed legal abortion deaths among teens under the age of 18.
She checked one of her patients into a hospital and performed an abortion there.. Hodgson's patient was a young married mother who had been exposed to German measles. Hodgson thought that it was unfair that if her patient had been in another state, she could have gotten an abortion legally. Hodgson was arrested and convicted. When Roe vs. Wade was handed down, she was able to get her conviction overturned. Her patient, by the way, was discharged from the hospital with no complications.
| Two abortion events came together in 1992, launching the National Right to Life Committee's fight against what they termed "Partial-Birth Abortion." One event involved information about an abortion technique being taught by Martin Haskel. The other event involved the maiming of a 32-week fetus during an abortion attempt by Abu Hayat. What did Haskel and Hayat have in common? | Influential Abortion Events
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They were both members of the National Abortion Federation.. Haskell had called the procedure "D&X," for "Dilation and Extraction," and had presented it at the National Abortion Federation (NAF) Risk Management Seminar in Dallas in 1992. Late in 1991, Hayat had made headlines for the abortion attempt of Ana Rosa Rodriguez, which removed her arm before she was born alive. Hayat was listed on the National Abortion Federation member list in their Annual Report. Although Hayat had not been using Haskell's D&X technique, National Right to Life used the publicity surrounding Hayat to frame the debate over D&X as a choice between protecting babies like Ana Rosa Rodriguez or defending abortionists like Abu Hayat.
| On December 13, 1996, 27-year-old Sharon Hamplton bled to death in the back seat of her mother's car. Her death was first ruled accidental. But shortly afterward, a political firestorm errupted. What was the issue? | Influential Abortion Events
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She'd died of complications of a legal abortion, and her doctor was charged with murder.. Pro-choice activists hold that Sharon's doctor, Bruce Steir (rhymes with "peer") was being unfairly persectued. They say that Sharon's injury was an accident and that Steir was a good doctor who was the victim of a vendetta because he performed abortions. Pro-life activists hold that Steir's record shows that he was incompetent, and quote his assistant who testified that Steir was aware of the severity of Sharon's injury and sent her home anyway. Steir plea-bargained to a lesser charge, and the political battle continues.
| Ming Kow Hah was dubbed "Physician of Pain" by the "Chicago Sun-Times" in their expose of problems at abortion facilities. Ironically, one woman seriously injured in an abortion by Hah was Rosa Naperstek-Taft, an attorney who had fought for the right to legal abortion. She suffered complications that led to eight months of hospitalization and numerous surgeries. What public stand did she take after her experience? | Influential Abortion Events
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She advocated restructuring of abortion practice to put the doctors on salary.. Naperstek-Taft blamed the economics of abortion for her injuries. She advocated government-sponsored abortion facilities, with all of the physicians on salary, to be paid well regardless of the number of abortions performed. This, she asserted, would eliminate the rush to complete abortions on a piecework basis that led to many abortion complications.
| Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was the site of a dramatic confrontation between two disagreeing groups of advocates for legal abortion on Mothers' Day of 1972. What was the confrontation about? | Influential Abortion Events
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One group had arranged illegal abortions for a group of minority women; the other group thought that the abortions were unsafe and wanted them to be stopped.. The "Jane" illegal abortion ring in Chicago had been raided, and its leaders jailed. The remaining "Jane" members had arranged for their clients to have abortions performed by Harvey Karman, who was pushing his new "super coil" technique as safe and simple. A local group in Pennsylvania thought that the patients were being used to test an unproven and probably unsafe abortion method.
| Rosie Jiminez, age 27, was a single mother of one when she mentioned to her doctor that she thought she might be pregnant again. Rosie had undergone two previous abortions funded by Medicaid. Rosie's doctor told her that because of the Hyde Amendment, Medicaid would not pay for another abortion for her. Rosie sought an abortion from a midwife who performed illegal abortions on many Hispanic women in her area. She developed in infection and died on Ocober 3, 1977. Rosie's case is often cited as evidence of the need to restore Medicaid funded abortions to prevent poor women from dying from illegal abortions. What happened to illegal abortion mortality trends in the five years before and after the Federal cut off of Medicaid funds for elective abortions? | Influential Abortion Events
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There was a slight rise, then a sudden drop.. Confirmed illegal abortion deaths fell from 39 in 1972 to 2 in 1976. They then went up to 4 in 1977, 7 in 1978, and then dropped off to 0 in 1979, and 1 each in 1980, 1981, and 1982. Overall abortion mortality (legal and illegal combined) fell from 63 in 1972 to 13 in 1976, jumped slightly to 12 in 1977, 16 in 1978, and 22 in 1979, then fell to an average of 10 a year in 1980, 1981, and 1982.
| Dr. Milan Vuitch openly performed elective abortions in Washington, DC, although the law at the time only allowed for abortions to preserve the life or health of the mother. He was arrested and convicted, and challenged his case all the way to the Supreme Court. Did the Court's 1971 ruling overturn the law, as requested by Vuitch? | Influential Abortion Events
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No. The court did, however, expand the definition of "health" to include the mother's psychological well-being. The court also placed the burden on the prosecution to prove that the abortion was not in fact necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.
Performing an abortion on a 14-year-old girl who had been raped by soldiers. Bourne performed the abortion, then turned himself in. He was tried and found not guilty. Bourne was the first to use the approach of deliberately breaking abortion laws in order to pave the way for other physicians to perform abortions they believed were in their patients' best interests.
| A picture of this woman, found dead in a motel room, galvanized activists in favor of decriminalizing abortion. For the first time, they had a photo showing grahically the results of a fatal criminal abortion. A documentary of the woman's life and death continues to motivate those who fear recriminalization will lead to more of the same horrible deaths. Who was this woman? | Influential Abortion Events
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Geraldine Santoro. Rosie Jiminez died of an illegal abortion after federal funding for elective abortions was cut off. Ana Rosa Rodriguez was born minus an arm that was removed during an attempted abortion that the mother thought was legal. Becky Bell miscarried shortly before dying of pneumonia.
| On December 8, 1994, 23-year-old Magdalena Rodriguez went to Suresh Gandotra's clinic, El Norte Clinica Medica, for what she thought was a second-trimester abortion. Gandotra later commented, "I knew I screwed up," when he had pulled out part of Magdalena's bowel instead of fetal parts. Magdalena died during emergency surgery at a local hospital. What was NOT among the findings related to Magdalena's death? | Post Roe v. Wade Abortion Deaths
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Gandotra's untrained receptionist had been administering anesthesia for Magdalena's abortion.. Gandotra's attorney said, "We don't believe this was below the standard of care nor do we believe it was malpractice." The San Diego County district attorney's office begged to differ, and charged Gandotra with involuntary manslaughter in Magdalena's death. Gandotra is believed to have fled the country to avoid prosecution.
| Stacy Ruckman, 23 years old, died after a legal abortion on February 20, 1988. Her parents sued, and experts testifying on their behalf expressed outrage at the doctor's behavior in Stacy's case. Why? | Post Roe v. Wade Abortion Deaths
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Staff testified that the doctor regularly overdosed patients on local anesthetic, sometimes causing them to stop breathing.. Staff reported that when a woman would stop breathing, Dr. Scott Barrett would resuscitate her. But when Stacy stopped breathing, Barrett and his staff were unable to revive her. An autopsy found toxic concentrations of Lidocaine in Stacy's blood.
| Alicia Ruiz Hanna was convicted of second-degree murder for the death of 27-year-old Angela Sanchez at Hanna's Clinica Feminina de la Comunidad on January 19, 1993. Why? | Post Roe v. Wade Abortion Deaths
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Hanna failed to call 911 when Angela stopped breathing because she was afraid of being caught passing herself off as a doctor.. Hanna had given Angela an injection to induce abortion. Upon realizing that Angela was dead, Hanna dismissed Angela's children from the clinic and summoned a former staffer. She and the other woman were putting Angela's body into the trunk of her own car, with the intention of abandoning the vehicle at a distant location, but were caught in the act by Angela's sister and daughter, who had come to the clinic to find out where Angela had gone.
| The Miami Herald covered the deaths of Ruth Montero, Myrta Baptiste, Maura Morales, and Shirley Payne after abortions at Women's Care Center in Miami. How did the Centers for Disease Control classify the deaths? | Post Roe v. Wade Abortion Deaths
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Three were classified as legal abortion deaths, and one as an illegal abortion death.. Ruth died August 7, 1979. Maura died May 8, 1981. Myrta died December 18, 1982. Shirley died January 4, 1983. As Orlando Zaldivar's medical license was inactive at the time he performed Myrta's abortion, the CDC classified her death as being due to an illegal abortion.
| Pamela Colson, age 31, bled to death on June 26, 1994, after an abortion at Women's Medical Services in Pensacola, Florida. Pamela's death, however, continues to be overshadowed by another event that had taken place at that same clinic just over a year earlier. What? | Post Roe v. Wade Abortion Deaths
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Dr. David Gunn, who did abortions there, had been shot dead by there Michael Griffin.. The fatal bombing took place in Birmingham, Alabama. The shooting of the clinic staff was in Brookline, Massachusetts.
| When 18-year-old Holly Patterson died of a septic abortion on September 17, 2003, her family filed a lawsuit and a federal investigation was launched. Why? | Post Roe v. Wade Abortion Deaths
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Holly had been given the abortion drugs in an unapproved manner by Planned Parenthood.. The FDA's approved regimen is to give the woman methotrexate, then have her return in two days for an examination. The second drug, misoprostol, is only to be administered orally and only if the physician, on examining the patient, determines that this second step is necessary to complete the abortion. Planned Parenthood followed the more popular, but unapproved, regimen of sending Holly home with a misoprostol suppository she was to insert vaginally, without being examined first and without medical supervision. The abortion was incomplete and Holly developed sepsis and died.
| In 1991, 17-year-old Latachie Veal bled to death after an abortion at a Houston clinic. The Centers for Disease Control is charged with verifying and tracking abortion-related deaths. How did they classify Latachie's death? | Post Roe v. Wade Abortion Deaths
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They didn't.. The CDC noted no abortion deaths in Texas for any woman in Latachie's race and age range for 1991. This is despite the fact that in 1992, the doctor discussed the death during a National Abortion Federation seminar that was attended by two members of the CDC's staff responsible for investigating abortion mortality.
| In 1991, 17-year-old Latachie Veal bled to death after an abortion at a Houston clinic. Her death made headlines not only in the Houston area, but in Kansas City, Missouri as well. Why? | Post Roe v. Wade Abortion Deaths
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Another woman had died in Kansas City after an abortion by the same doctor.. Diane Boyd, a 19-year-old mentally challenged woman, had died in 1981 after Dr. Robert Dale Crist, a member of the National Abortion Federation, had injected her with drugs in preparation for an abortion. Those drugs had interacted with the medications Diane was taking and caused her death.
No. It's hard to even pin down definitions on "legal" and "illegal" as they related to abortion. And this can be very important both politically (in tabulating "legal" or "illegal" abortion deaths) and personally (if an injured woman wants to sue after an abortion). The Centers for Disease Control defined "legal abortion" as "a procedure, performed by a licensed physician or someone acting under the supervision of a licensed physician, that was intended to terminate a suspected or known intrauterine pregnancy and to produce a nonviable fetus at any gestational age." But when death certificates are coded, the coders use the ICD-9 (International Classification of Diseases - 9th Edition). The ICD-9 does not define legal or illegal abortion clearly, but leaves that to the coder's judgment. And then judges in different jurisdictions might decide that an abortion breaks the specific laws of that jurisdiction. So a woman might go to an openly operating facility, undergo what she thinks is a legal abortion, die of her complications, and there may be no agreement as to whether or not her abortion was "legal." If the doctor's medical license was suspended at the time of the abortion, the CDC will classify the abortion as "illegal." But the person coding the death certificate (if the abortion is coded at all) will note that the abortion took place in an "abortion clinic" and code it as "legal." If the woman's family sues, the doctor and/or facility may argue that they cannot legally sue because the abortion was "illegal" i.e. in many jurisdictions, one may not sue for injuries sustained while one was participating in an illegal act (one bank robber shoots another bank robber during the course of a robbery). So even what seems like the most straightforward issue of all opens a massive can of worms.
No. Pro-choice people use "PAS" to mean Post-Abortal Syndrome, the period of time immediately after the abortion when the uterus is filling with clots. Pro-life people use "PAS" to mean Post-Abortion Syndrome. This is when a woman shows the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the stressor event was an abortion.
No. Some people believe the term should only apply to people who are born after an attempt to abort the pregnancy. Others believe it applies to anybody born after January 23, 1973 (when the decision of Roe v. Wade wa shanded down by the US Supreme Court), because they think from that point on, any fetus that makes it to term has survived a danger period during which his or her life could have been ended legally. Others believe it should be applied only to women who are still alive after a traumatic abortion experience.
| Sometimes the woman shows all the symptoms of pregnancy, but there is no real embryo or fetus in her uterus. There are only globs of tissue similar to the inside of a pomegranate. Is there agreement on what this tissue is called? | Abortion: Defining the Terms
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Yes. The woman's condition is called "gestational tropoblastic disease" and the tissue in her uterus is called a "hydatidiform mole."
No. There really is no agreed-upon definition of what constitutes a "clinic" in abortion practice. The term is usually used to mean an outpatient facility where abortions are done as a significant part of their practice. But what *legally* constitutes a "clinic" varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. A lot of facilities that would look like clinics, and would be called "abortion clinics" in conversation, are legally physicians' offices. And then there are the folks at the far end of the pro-life spectrum that argue that any place abortions are done is not a place of healing and therefore can't be a "clinic." And there are folks at the extreme end of the pro-choice spectrum who believe that the term "abortion clinic" is negative and limited, and prefer terms such as "women's health center."
| There is often news coverage of legislation to ban a certain kind of late abortion. What is this kind of abortion called? | Abortion: Defining the Terms
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All of these terms are used (PBA or Partial Birth Abortion, D&X or Dilation and Extraction, Intact D&E or Intact Dilation and Evacuation). There's yet another term. The original name for this type of procedure was "intrauterine cranial decompression."
No. Dr. Warren Hern, for example, considers abortion to be safer than a pregnancy. This is because he has concluded that statistically, the woman is less to end up as an "abortion mortality" statistic than as a "maternal mortality" statistic (see his medical textbook, "Abortion Practice" published in 1984). At the other end of the spectrum are those who do not hold an abortion to be necessary to "preserve the life of the mother" unless she is in immediate danger of dying and there is no alternative that will spare the life of the fetus. That's a lot of room for disagreement!
| One of the arguments about limits on abortion is that the "health of the mother" needs to be taken into consideration. Do all parties involved agree on what constitutes the "health of the mother?" | Abortion: Defining the Terms
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No. The US Supreme Court, in Doe vs. Bolton (1973), defined the mother's "health" as it relates to abortion: "The medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors -- physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age -- relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health." At the other end of the spectrum, many pro-life advocates do not want to allow for any "health" exception at all. They want every effort made to preserve the life of the fetus, regardless of how ill the mother is, and will only allow for abortion if it's immediately necessary to prevent the mother's death.
Yes. An ectopic pregnancy is one in which the embryo attaches to some part of the woman's body outside her uterus. Both sides agree that these pregnancies are very risky for the mother, and that there is virtually no chance that the embryo can survive. Almost nobody, even among those most strongly opposed to abortion, opposes removing these embryos.
No. Traditionally, "gestational age" is the age of the "pregnancy." It's based on the last event that can be observed: the woman's last menstrual period. But sometimes the "gestational age" is counted from conception, which is usually two weeks after the mother's last menstrual period started. This can lead to arguments. For example, a pro-life person may display a picture of fetal development and say that the fetus is 8 weeks old (counting from conception). But a pro-choice person might argue that it's not an 8-week fetus, because in the 8th week of pregnancy, the fetus is only 6 weeks old and not nearly so well developed. See how confusing it can get?
| On August 14, 1994, Kris Humphrey died from complications of an illegal abortion. Who performed the fatal procedure? | Illegal Abortions Post-Roe
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Kris did it herself.. Kris had decided to use pennyroyal tea to abort her pregnancy because she'd had an unpleasant experience with legal abortion at a Planned Parenthood. She also mistrusted modern medicine because her brother had died from an allergic reaction to a painkiller. What Kris failed to do was ensure that the embryo was actually in her uterus. She actually had an ectopic pregnancy. Her persistent efforts to use herbs to end the pregnancy caused liver damage and clotting problems which killed her.
| In December of 1993, Angela Sanchez's sister and daughter found two women stuffing Angela's body into the trunk of her own car. An investigation revealed that Angela had died from an illegal abortion. Who had performed the abortion? | Illegal Abortions Post-Roe
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The owner of an abortion clinic.. Alicia Hannah's abortion clinic, Clinica Feminina de la Comunidad, was operating openly and apparently legally. Hanna had begun passing herself off as a doctor and performing abortions at the facility when the physician who had been performing abortions quit. Hanna had given Angela an injection to induce abortion. Angela stopped breathing, and staffers attempted to revive her but did not summon paramedics because Hanna feared that she would go to jail and lose her children if it was discovered that she was running the clinic illegally. She and the other woman had planned to abandon Angela's car, with her body in it, at a distant location. In December 1994, Hanna was convicted of second-degree murder for Angela's death. She was sentenced to 16 years to life.
| In April of 1990, a 32-year-old California woman died of complications of an illegal abortion. Who performed the fatal procedure? | Illegal Abortions Post-Roe
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The woman's boyfriend.. An autopsy report from the San Bernadino County Coroner's office tells the story of this woman, a systems analyst for a defense contractor. She had an appointment to abort her second-trimester pregnancy scheduled for April 30, 1990, at a local abortion clinic. But for some reason, she didn't wait for her appointment. On April 28, she allowed her boyfriend to insert a plastic tube into her uterus in a home-abortion attempt. She died of infection.
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