Monday, August 22, 2011

Four anniversaries

Today's deaths are a confirmed illegal abortion by an unknown perpetrator, an unconfirmed illegal abortion, a pre-Roe legal abortion, and a post-Roe suicide.

On August 22, 1929, 34-year-old
Marjorie Johnson died in her home from complications of a criminal abortion performed that day. The guilty party was never identified or apprehended.

According to the National Organization for Women web site, Pauline Roberson Shirley was a 29-year-old married mother of six. She and the children, according to NOW, were living with her mother in Arizona while her husband was looking for work in California. NOW gives no details of the illegal abortion that Pauline underwent, but says that she was hospitalized for hemorrhage afterward and bled to death on August 22, 1940. I'd welcome any verifying information on Mrs. Shirley's death. After all, NOW also claims that Becky Bell died from complications of an illegal abortion, when in fact she died of pneumonia concurrent with a miscarriage. (There was no evidence that Becky's pregnancy had been tampered with in any way.) NOW doesn't indicate if Pauline's abortion was performed by an amateur or non-physician, which would be unusual, or if it was done by a doctor, as was the case with perhaps 90% of criminal abortions.

"April" is one of the women Life Dynamics identifies on their "Blackmun Wall" as having been killed by a safe and legal abortion. April was 17 years old when she underwent a saline abortion in New York City on August 20, 1971. The next day she was admitted to the hospital. She was in shock, with a high fever. She was treated there until her death on August 22.

Carol Cunningham was 21 years old when she underwent an abortion in the late summer of 1986. On August 22, she shut herself up in her garage at her home in Albuquerque, and started her car. She died from breathing the exhaust fumes. Her body was discovered on August 25, 1986.

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