Three Equally Dead

On January 15, 1907, 24-year-old housekeeper Sarah M. Cushing died in Wesley Hospital in Chicago, from complications of a criminal abortion performed there that day. A midwife named Gertrude Plenz was arrested on January 24, and held by the coroner's jury. Mrs. Plenz was also arrested in the abortion death of Margaret McCarthy in 1904.

On January 15, 1915, 22-year-old Margaret Jenickes died in Chicago after an abortion perpetrated that day, presumably by Dr. C.A. Erickson. Joseph Martin was also held. Though Erickson was indicted on February 1, the case never went to trial because the me wee exonerated by a Grand Jury. No other suspect in Margaret's death is mentioned in my sources.

Eurice Agbagaa, a 26-year-old immigrant from Ghana, went to Abram Zelikman for a safe, legal abortion on January 7, 1989. After the abortion, Eurice bled so heavily that the receptionist, Yolanda Penalzer, became alarmed and asked Zelikman to do something. Zelikman told her that the bleeding was normal and that she should put an ice bag on the patient. He then left the facility, leaving Yolada to care for the patients in recovery. Yolanda tried repeatedly to reach Zelikman at his home, but couldn't contact him. Finally she called an ambulance. The ambulance crew found Yolanda performing CPR on Eurice, who was in shock from bleeding due to a perforated uterus and severed abdominal artery. Eurice remained in a coma until her death in the early morning of January 15.

Eurice isn't the only woman who ended up having an abortion far later in the pregnancy than she intended. read more about
**Unintended Late Abortions**.