One needless tragedy and two total flukes. Right?

On September 25, 1925, Faye McGinnis, age 23, died at her home in Chicago from complications of an abortion performed that day. The coroner identified two physicians, Walter Penningdorf and Walter Voight, as being responsible. They were arrested on September 25. Faye's husband, Roy McGinnis, was also arrested as an accomplice in his wife's death. The doctors were indicted for felony murder on October 15. For more about abortion in this era, see Abortion in the 1920s.

Moving on from the death we're to presume was caused entirely by abortion laws and not because there were no antibiotics or blood banks, we come to the deaths that happened because, after all, "all surgery has risks."

Minnie Lathan was 41 when she had a safe and legal abortion and tubal ligation performed some time in September of 1978. Her uterus was perforated and her colon damaged during the procedure. She developed an infection and was hospitalized at Cleveland Clinic Hospital. She died there on September 25.

Twenty-two-year-old Liliana Cortez underwent a safe and legal abortion by Leo Kenneally at his Her Medical Clinic in Los Angeles on September 20, 1986. Other than having asthma, Liliana was in good health when she went for her abortion. After the procedure, she went into cardiac arrest. There was a 40-minute delay until the paramedics arrived to transport Liliana to a hospital. She died five days later. Liliana's death was ruled a "therapeutic misadventure," which a coroner's spokesman called, "a nice medical term for a mistake." An attorney for Her Medical Clinic said, "If something like this happened at a hospital ... people would just say it was bad luck, one of those flukey things. But ... all of a sudden they make it seem like these (abortion clinics) are terrible places where terrible things happen." When you consider that Donna Heim and Michelle Thames also died "one of those flukey" deaths at Her Medical Clinic, maybe Her, at least,was a terrible place where terrible things happen.

Unless, of course, it can't be, because abortion is safe and legal.