1975: Hospital abortion kills patient

Thirty-one-year-old Mitsue Mohar went to Pacolma Lutheran Hospital in Los Angeles County for a safe and legal abortion on August 5, 1975. Dr. Baca performed the D&C abortion under general anesthesia. After the abortion, Mitsue went into convulsions. She remained 16 days at Pacolma Lutheran without regaining consciousness. On August 21, she was transferred to LA County/USC Medical Center, where she died on September 10 without ever regaining consciousness. The autopsy found that she had suffered hypoxic encephalopathy (brain damage due to not enough oxygen) due to cardiac arrest during the abortion, and had developed pneumonia which eventually killed her.

Of course, advocates of legalized abortion will dismiss Mitsue's death with a casual, "Well, all surgery has risks," then launch into the well-known claim that legalization significantly reduced abortion deaths.

As you can see from the graph below, abortion deaths were falling dramatically before legalization. This steep fall had been in place for decades. To argue that legalization lowered abortion mortality simply isn't supported by the data.