Legal abortion doesn’t mean ‘safe’ abortion, despite scare tactics from abortion advocates suggesting that injuries take place only when abortion is illegal or “banned.”
The public has been fed lies for decades, which cited fabricated numbers suggesting that the number of women who died from illegal abortions prior to Roe v. Wade ranged between 5,000 and 10,000 annually. But Live Action News previously debunked these false claims, including debunking Planned Parenthood on this subject multiple times.
Live Action News previously documented:
- Hundreds of thousands of women did not die from illegal abortions annually.
- Abortion death numbers were purposely inflated to scare politicians and manipulate the public.
- The year Roe was decided, legal abortion killed more women than illegal abortion.
- No one knew exact illegal abortion death numbers, but abortion advocates acknowledged that numbers were inflated.
- Antibiotics decreased the number of illegal abortion deaths.
- Only a small percentage of women visited non-medical personnel for illegal abortions.
- Physicians referred patients to colleagues for illegal abortions.
- Physicians committed the majority of illegal abortions.
- Illegal abortions were often classified as “therapeutic” (to save a woman’s life) so they could be done by doctors.
Read more here.
Roe was End of Women Dying from Abortions
Today, abortion advocates continue to regurgitate disproven talking points, like this gem from Twitter/”X” handle @rking78708.It reads, “Roe wasn’t the beginning of women having abortions. Roe was the end of women dying from abortions.”
— Robby💙 (@rking78708) February 6, 2024
That claim is entirely false.
In fact, the number of published deaths related to legal abortions has now risen to 460, recorded by the CDC between 1973 and 2020.
When women die after a legal abortion, their names are simply forgotten by the industry which lured them to their deaths with slick marketing strategies.
A few examples are shown below.
‘Unlucky’ and Dead
In 1985, 38-year-old Ellen Lorena Williams died after her legal abortion. A jury awarded her family $1 million.
She was described by award-winning journalist Deborah Sontag in an investigative piece published at the Miami Herald as “the unluckiest of all” the women to seek an abortion at a legal facility in South Florida — one that has been protected by pro-abortion activists at times.
The abortionist, Chatoor Bisal Singh, continued to commit legal abortions long after Williams’ body and her preborn baby were in the ground.
According to Sontag’s article, just days after her legal abortion from Singh, Williams was “rushed by ambulance to Coral Reef Hospital, where she underwent emergency surgery,” but “The surgery was too late. Her uterus and bowel had been perforated during the first abortion and the infection was acute. Williams died the next morning.”
Williams’ autopsy showed she died of an acute abdominal infection.
“The Florida Board of Medical Examiners charged Singh with ‘gross or repeated malpractice,’” Sontag claimed.
1985 legal abortion death Ellen Williams (Image: Miami Herald)
They Would Have Thrown Her Body in Garbage
In 1989, New York Newsday documented the legal abortion-related death of Eunice Agbagaa at the hands of Abram Zelikman. He botched the procedure so badly that Agbagaa lost three pints of blood and lapsed into a coma as a result. Her uterus was punctured, and her uterine artery was severed on January 7, 1989 while she was undergoing a 19-week abortion at the Y&P Women’s Medical Association abortion business in New York City. She died eight days later at a local hospital.
The Syracuse Herald American alleged that after Zelikman committed the legal abortion on Agbagaa, he continued to commit abortions on other women before leaving the facility, while Agbagaa lay bleeding in recovery. The woman was left by Zelikman in the care of of abortion facility administrator Yolanda Penalver, who was not a licensed health care professional yet allegedly administered anesthesia to the abortion client.
Agbagaa’s friend, who accompanied her that day, unsuccessfully attempted to summon Zelikman back to the facility. She told the paper that she watched Agbagaa writhe in pain as she lay in the recovery room in a pool of blood. “I felt if I hadn’t been there, they would have wrapped her body and thrown it in the garbage,” she told the paper.
Read more about this tragic death here.
Legal abortion death of Eurice Agbagaa (Source: NY Newsday July 9 1989)\
Bled to Death in Storefront Abortion Clinic
A report published by the New York Times described the legal abortion-related death of 33-year-old Guadalupe Negron this way: “As her life drained from her, Guadalupe Negron sat bleeding on an operating table, drowning in her own vomit as a doctor fumbled in a failed attempt to get oxygen into her lungs.”
The paper states she “bled to death in the [abortion] doctor’s storefront Metro Women’s Clinic on July 9, 1993 in Corona, Queens [New York],” at the hands of abortionist David Benjamin, whose own staffers testified that Negron was left bleeding unattended for over an hour while Benjamin committed other abortions.
She was 19 to 20 weeks pregnant. Read more here.
Abortion death recounted in New York Times
Infection From Legal Abortion Kills Woman
In 1996, I attended the funeral of abortion client Carolina Gutierrez, who received a life-threatening infection after her legal abortion, which led to the amputation of multiple parts of her body. But the infection eventually won, and Carolina and her preborn child both lost their lives. Tragically, she was not the first or last woman to believe the lie that legalizing abortion made it safe.
Her name will never be mentioned by Big Abortion, and her death remains secretly behind the veil of legalized abortion.
Photo of Carolina Gutierrez at funeral (Carole Novielli, with permission of Carolina’s family)
Father’s Emotional Testimony of Daughter’s Abortion Pill-Related Death
In the video below, Monty Patterson gives an emotional testimony before a 2006 U.S. House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources of the Committee on Government Reform, where he recounts the legal abortion pill death of his daughter, Holly Patterson.
- “I watched Holly succumb to a massive bacterial infection as a result of a drug-induced abortion.”
- “Not a day goes by that I do not recall her brilliant blue eyes, engaging smile, laughter, and sheer gentle beauty.”
Holly died along with her baby just days after her legal 7-week abortion from a Planned Parenthood-administered RU-486 abortion pill regimen in September of 2003. She had just celebrated her 18th birthday.
It was Planned Parenthood’s implementation of the unapproved regimen and off-label use of the abortion pill that led to Holly’s death from septic shock.
Woman Left to Bleed Out
In 2012, Planned Parenthood left Tonya Reaves, a young Black woman, bleeding after her legal abortion in Chicago. She died later at the hospital. The abortion providers in her case were never arrested or charged with a crime.
The autopsy report is a tragic record of Planned Parenthood’s negligence:
Planned Parenthood abortion patient Tonya Reaves dies sues abortionist
Brother Speaks about Abortion-Related Death of his Sister
Tyler Sheppard, brother of 24-year-old Cree Erwin-Sheppard, recounted in the video below how his sister suffered a painful death on June 30, 2016, shortly after submitting to a legal abortion at a Michigan Planned Parenthood. In the video below, Tyler says:
- “I want Planned Parenthood to be off the table as a choice.”
- “They’re ravaging these women.”
- “They killed my sister.”
- “Justice has not been given to my sister. I lost two people that day — not just a sister, but a niece or a nephew, as well.”
In a chilling 911 call to authorities, Erwin-Sheppard’s mother can be heard wailing as she finds her daughter’s lifeless body in a bedroom inside her home, hours after the abortion. The panicked call and mother’s emotional screams are difficult to listen to.
“Its cold – my daughter – she’s dead,” she told the 911 operator through her tears. “She’s cold as ice.”
Read more about Cree Erwin-Sheppard’s deadly abortion from the Kalamazoo Planned Parenthood here.
Mother Recounts Final Hours with Daughter after Legal Abortion
Keisha Atkins was 23 when she and her baby died as a result of a late-term abortion she received at Southwestern Women’s Options (SWO) abortion business on February 3, 2017. SWO was founded by Dr. Curtis Boyd in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Testifying during a wrongful death lawsuit brought by malpractice attorney Mike Seibel and his team, her mother, Tina Atkins, stated:
- “She was on 100% oxygen… not in good shape… Pale as a sheet…”
- “First thing out of her mouth was ‘Mom, I’m gonna die.’”
- “She was septic, nothing they could do.”
She was referred to SWO by the University of New Mexico hospital.
A report from the Albuquerque Journal described what transpired, noting that due to a lawsuit filed by the family, the “University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center and a private late-term abortion clinic in Albuquerque agreed to pay her estate a total of $1.26 million in exchange for the dismissal of a politically charged wrongful death/medical malpractice lawsuit, according to state and court records obtained by the Journal.”
ALBQ Journal SWO and UNM abortion death lawsuit settlement $1 26M
Abortion proponents are good at exploiting images of dead women when it is convenient for them. But where have they been for over 50 years as women and teen girls lay bleeding to death after legal abortion procedures?
Keisha Atkins, Lakisha Wilson, Tonya Reaves, Cree Sheppard, Jennifer Morbelli, Christin Gilbert, Jamie Lee Morales — just a handful of women who have died from legal abortion.
The fact is that every abortion death, whether from legal or illegal procedures, lays squarely at the feet of abortion advocates, not pro-life bans, and not pro-life activists.
