Five Tragic Anniversaries

There are so many anniversaries today that I can only provide brief snippets. Click on each woman's name to learn more about how abortion was the last choice she ever made.

On January 16, 1901, Jennie Mallard died at Alexian Brothers Hospital in Chicago from an abortion performed that day. Mrs. Margaret Simmons, who was either a nurse, a midwife, or a physician, was arrested and held in the death.

Jennie Martin, a 28-year-old homemaker, died January 16, 1906 from complications of a criminal abortion. Dr. William F. Briney was held by the coroner's jury.

On December 23, 1941, Dr. Samuel Roth was sentenced to a year in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter in the illegal abortion death of a woman I identify as Jane Roe of 1937. Roth, whose license was suspended at the time, performed the abortion in his office on January 16, 1937.

Former abortion entrepreneur Carol Everett, in Blood Money, tells of how the abortionist in one of her clinics sent a woman home to bleed to death over a pitcher of margaritas. Carol opens her book with the story of the woman she calls "Sheryl Mason." At Life Dynamics, we did some detective work and found 34-year-old Shary Graham, who died January 16, 1982 after an abortion at one of Carol's Dallas-area abortion mills.

Thirty-eight-year-old Pamela A. Wainwright was admitted to Shallowford Community Hospital in Dunwoody, Georgia on January 15, 1987, for an abortion and tubal ligation. Pamela was taken to the operating room for her surgery the next day. Dr. Wendell Phillips placed a needle into Pamela's abdomen to pump in carbon dioxide. He did not ensure proper placement of the needle. Instead of pumping carbon dioxide into her abdomen, he pumped it into her bloodstream. Pamela died almost immediately from cardiac arrest, due to vapor lock in her heart.