In 2013, Jennifer Morbelli was a young school teacher excited to be starting a family with her college sweetheart and husband, TJ. But when their preborn baby girl, named Madison, was diagnosed with a health condition that caused seizures, she traveled to Maryland with her family to undergo a late abortion at 33 weeks of pregnancy.
It was the last trip Jennifer would ever take.
If not for media silence about the death of a long-forgotten patient, things may have turned out very differently for Jennifer, as the latest episode of the Conceiving Crime podcast details:
An abortion so late in pregnancy carries significant risks, but Jennifer and her family likely trusted abortionist Leroy Carhart since he ‘specialized’ in second- and third-trimester abortions. He operated CARE abortion facilities in Nebraska and Maryland, traveling between the two. By the time Jennifer scheduled an appointment with him, Carhart had been committing abortions for 25 years. So she and her family traveled from New York to Maryland to undergo an abortion — with no indication that anything would go horribly wrong.
An abortion at 33 weeks would take multiple days to complete, beginning with the slow dilation of Jennifer’s cervix and a lethal injection into baby Madison’s head or heart that would cause her to go into cardiac arrest. Two or three days later, Madison would be delivered — dead. That process alone would take nine hours — and after it was over, Jennifer’s fight for her own life began.
Her health started to deteriorate soon after the abortion was complete, and she experienced shortness of breath and chest pains while in her hotel room. Carhart had already left town and was not available for a follow-up appointment with Jennifer, so her panicked family drove her to a hospital. However, Carhart refused to provide any information on Jennifer’s abortion procedure or last known health status to emergency personnel.
But Jennifer’s situation was dire. Her heart stopped six times before she died.
But Jennifer wasn’t the first woman to die after an abortion with Carhart. Another woman was just 19 years old when she was brought from Texas to George Tiller’s abortion facility in Wichita in 2005, where Carhart was the abortionist. That woman never made it home — and her story never made headlines.
If Jennifer and her family had known the truth about the other woman, would Jennifer and baby Madison still be alive?
Listen to “The Forgotten Patient” at ConceivingCrimePodcast.com.
