Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Anniversary: Abortion anesthesia proves fatal

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

For more abortion deaths, visit the Cemetery of Choice:



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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

She could have just as easily died after receiving anesthesia prior to surgery to remove, say, her gall bladder. She had an unfortunate reaction to anesthesia-- sad, tragic, but it happens all the time. Are you suggesting we outlaw all surgery that requires anesthesia? good luck with that. You're really stretching-- but then again, you normally have no problem with exaggerating the risk associated with abortion and pregnancy. Sad.

Christina Dunigan said...

I want abortion to be illegal because it kills babies.

However, I recognize that there are plenty of people who don't have a problem with dead babies. I do, however, harbor the absurd notion that perhaps, in my lifetime, they can actually start to care about whether or not the woman survives and start holding the abortion lobby accountable for their actions that keep the back-alley butchers in what is for them a very safe business.

Jesse Ketchum, Milan Vuitch, and Benjamin Munson had all been criminal abortionists, with clean records -- not a single patient death attributed to them. After legalization, when they no longer had to fear the law, they got amazingly reckless and killed two women apiece. Ketchum managed to kill Margaret Smith and Carole Schaner in just four months, doing hysterotomy abortions -- major surgery -- in his office.

But once abortion was legal, the deaths stopped being tragic, it seemed. The "safety" concern turned out not to be about whether the woman was safe from injury or death, but whether the abortionist was safe from prosecution.

I had thought that maybe, just maybe, the bulk of prochoice citizens would be outraged by the abortion lobby's cavalier attitude. I've been proved tragically wrong. More often than not, the abortion lobby's response to some quack playing Russian roulette with some trusting woman's life is to form a legal defense fund for him and act as if he's being picked on. Bruce Steir left Sharon Hamplton bleeding to death. Just up and left her to die. And the "safe and legal" people came out of the woodwork defending him.

A little accountability would be nice. But it's too much to ask for, it seems. The same people who don't care if you tear a baby limb from limb seem equally indifferent to whether or not his mother is stuck in a wheelchair and shoved out the door to die.

Ladybug said...

Unlike many other surgerical fields, abortion is one of the most unregulated in terms of safety and regulations. It is not a matter of accident, but rather a matter of untrained practioners (administering anesthesia), carelessness, neglect, and abuse of medical privledges. Pro-choicers have continued to place protecting legalization above safety, opposing safety regulations, which could have prevented a number of these deathers. Where are your priorities?