Clinic Death Shows Need for Caution in Abortion Decision

Laura Hope Smith

(Aug. 12, 2008) When Eileen Smith and her husband received a call from her daughter's cell phone last September, they expected to hear their daughter Laura's cheerful voice. But it wasn't her daughter calling. It was her friend Karen, calling from a hospital in Hyannis, Mass. Laura was dead — the result of a botched abortion performed earlier that day at the Women's Health Center in Hyannis.

During that call, Eileen was soon talking to a doctor. " 'Laura's gone,' the doctor told me," the sorrowful mother recalled. "I wanted to hear '50-50 chance'.... I would even accept 90-10 chance. But the word 'chance' was not in the doctor's statement. All hope was gone, along with my daughter." Eileen did not even know her daughter was pregnant.

The news serves as a caution to women in Berwyn, Cicero, Stickney, Riverside, North Riverside, Westchester, and other nearby Illinois communities, who need to learn about the complications of various kinds of abortions before deciding whether to terminate their pregnancies.

The bubbly 22-year-old woman, raised in the Cape Cod, Mass., area and who worked in retail management, was the latest victim of a mangled abortion, one of numerous occurrences around the country.

The abortionist, Dr. Rapin Osatahanondh, was indicted by a Barnstable County Grand Jury for manslaughter July 16 in the Sept. 13, 2007, death of Laura Hope Smith.

Eileen Smith filed a wrongful death civil suit earlier this year in Barnstable Superior Court, for failing to properly monitor Laura's vital signs after the procedure, among other claims. Now the doctor is facing the criminal charge of manslaughter.

The Boston Globe reported that physicians usually do not face a criminal charge when a patient dies of alleged negligence, according to Michael O'Keefe, district attorney for Cape Cod. O'Keefe told the Globe that that the indictment came after an investigation by Barnstable police, State Police, and the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine, who found Osathanondh's conduct to be "willful, wanton, and reckless."

The Globe reported O'Keefe as saying, "Suffice it to say, there was an inattention to the kinds of procedures of a lifesaving nature that one would expect in a place where an operation with anesthesia is being performed. There was nobody monitoring her, long enough to result in her death."

Paul Cirel, a Boston lawyer representing Osathanondh, said his client will plead not guilty, according to the Globe. The lawyer said that such tragedies do occur, even in the course of routine procedures, and that "this is not a matter that belongs in the criminal courts."

Similar malpractice lawsuits are filed around the country but receive little media coverage, and data on the overwhelming majority of abortion-related deaths remain undiscovered, experts say.

The website Abortionfacts.com reports that although statistics are gathered by the Centers for Disease Control, the number of women who die from bungled abortions are "grotesquely underreported."

Furthermore, the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that "Complications following abortions performed in free-standing clinics are one of the most frequent gynecologic emergencies . . . encountered."

On the other hand, Planned Parenthood, the nation's leading abortion provider, claims on its website that "Abortion procedures are very safe. But there are risks with any medical procedure." It then lists a number of complications, including blood clots in the uterus, injury to the cervix or other organs, allergic reactions, infection, incomplete abortions, in which part of the fetus is left in the womb, undetected ectopic pregnancy, and heavy bleeding.

Sources

"Doctor indicted in '07 death of abortion patient," Boston Globe, July 17, 2008
"Maternal Deaths and Long-Term Complications — Abortion and Childbirth," Abortionfacts.com
"Second-Trimester Abortion," L. Iffy, Journal of American Medical Association, Vol. 249, No. 5, p. 588.
"Abortion Procedures," Planned Parenthood.

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