1986: The Invisible Woman

According to her death certificate, Janyth Caldwell, age 36, died February 4, 1986, a month after George Wayne Patterson attempted to perform a safe and legal abortion on her.

The Alabama state Medical Examiner attributed her death to loss of oxygen to the brain, due to internal hemorrhaging from an ectopic pregnancy.

A proper pre-abortion examination should be able to determine if the pregnancy is ectopic, in which case standard abortion techniques will not touch the embryo. Proper post-abortion pathology reports would detect that no embryo was removed from the uterus, and would clue the abortionist in to the fact that the pregnancy was ectopic. Patterson evidently missed both of these opportunities to detect Janyth's ectopic pregnancy and prevent her death.

Even though, in theory, women who choose abortion should be less likely to die of ectopic pregnancy complications, experiences shows that they're actually more likely to die, due to sloppy practices by abortion practitioners. Brenda Vise, for example, suffered this fate after getting abortion drugs at a clinic that was operating illegally after having been shut down by Tennessee authorities.

According to official documents, another Alabama woman, Mary Bradley, died after an abortion performed by Dr. Patterson.

Patterson himself also suffered an early death at somebody else's hands. He was gunned down outside a pornography theater in an apparent gangland slaying. Tellingly, national pro-choice organizations lament the gangland shooting of an abortionist, while ignoring the fact that he himself had killed two women. I'm not saying that Patterson deserved to die; I'm just pointing out that the self-proclaimed protectors of women's lives might show a bit more of an interest in whether or not the women in question live or die, and might rate the lives of women as least as important as the lives of abortionists.