The Associated Press announced last weekend that Robert Crist, an abortionist that operates out of Kansas City and St. Louis, has killed another patient in a botched abortion at a Planned Parenthood-run abortion clinic. This is the third abortion death for Crist, who has faced legal actions in Texas and Missouri for botching abortion procedures.

What an excellent opportunity for the media to atone for their complicity in keeping quiet about the death of the multitude of women who have died from "safe" and "legal" abortions. To date, however, the national press has been silent on the issue.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, author of the recently released "The Hand of God," has recounted how as a founding member of the National Abortion Rights Action League he was involved in developing the deceptive media strategy to convince the public that tens of thousands of women were dying as a result of "back-alley" abortions. The Center for Disease Control recorded less than thirty abortion-related deaths from both legal and illegal abortions in 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade. The NARAL deception worked, and we in America were given "safe and legal" on-demand abortion.

But the truth was that most of the "back-alley" abortionists opened new offices in strip malls and pricey office buildings around the country. Overnight their profession was legitimized and legalized, not to mention protected with the full force of the Supreme Court. The Clinton Administration has added the FBI and the Department of Justice to the list of defenders of the abortion industry.
But what are they protecting? Candace Crandall, writing in the Summer 1996 issue of The Women's Quarterly (hardly a pro-life journal), finds that they are protecting an industry with an increasing number of unfit doctors and unregulated clinics that go to great lengths -- sometimes illegally -- to cover up their deadly mistakes. In her article "Legal But Not Safe," Ms. Crandall chronicles the long string of deaths from "safe and legal" abortions. Year by year the list of women killed by abortionist grows frighteningly longer:

Three years ago, Guadalupe Negron, a 33-year-old mother of three, died on David Benjamin's operating table watching her life bleed out of her, covered only in her own vomit. Benjamin was convicted of second-degree murder. The New York state health department had pulled Benjamin's license just two weeks before Negron's death, but allowed him to continue while his case was under appeal.

Santa Ana, CA clinic operator Alicia Hanna was caught loading the body of Angela Sanchez into the trunk of her car after Hanna had botched the abortion, which resulted in Sanchez's death in 1993. Hanna is not a doctor, nor was ever licensed to perform procedures. This hard reality prompted her to drive to Mexico to dump Sanchez's body. Hanna was convicted and sentenced to sixteen-years-to-life.

Two weeks before Christmas in 1995, Carolina Gutierrez frantically tried to get help from the Miami clinic that had performed her abortion, only to be have clinic personnel hang up on her. Repeated attempts to contact the clinic by Gutierrez were met only by the clinic's answering machine. The calls were never returned. Gutierrez went into septic shock two days later. Over the following six weeks, hospital workers tried to save her life through massive amounts of antibiotics and eventually amputating both her legs to stop the spread of gangrene. Gutierrez died February 5th, 1996

Slowly, the truth about what the abortion industry is hiding is coming to light. The CDC has recorded over 550 confirmed deaths from legal abortion procedures, with hundreds of thousands of others suffering life-threatening complications from their abortions. Additional abortion deaths go unreported. Several medical journals, including the prestigious American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, have recently carried articles decrying the cover-up by abortionists who falsify death certificates to protect their abortion business.

The political nature of the abortion question has allowed the abortion industry to fight off attempts by state health regulators to apply industry-standard regulations to their businesses. You see, when abortion is brought up as a moral question, abortion supporters claim the issue is strictly a medical procedure between a woman and her doctor, but when regulations applied to every other procedure between a patient and their doctor are applied to the abortion industry, those supporters claim that abortion is a right, not just a medical procedure, and not subject to regulation.

So goes the shell game, but the list of names of women killed by "safe and legal" abortion continues to grow. And the health standards by which abortion businesses are held to continue to decline.
But there is hope. The end of the abortion industry is near. It won't come because of political pressure or community outrage. Pro-life terrorists won't rid us of the plague through plastic explosives. The end is coming through attrition and actuaries. Malpractice insurance is almost impossible to come by for abortionists because of the shoddy medicine uniformly practiced by the abortion industry. In addition, abortionists are increasingly rare to find. There will always be the back-alley butcher who will do anything for a money, but very few medical schools train future doctors on the procedure, and the ranks of the practicing abortionists are being rapidly depleted through attrition -- a fact frequently pointed out by abortion supporters.

Maybe communities will apply enough pressure to ensure that basic health regulations are followed by the abortion industry. Maybe women who have been damaged by botched abortions will be given a hearing by the press and the courts. Maybe the deaths of women like Guadelupe Negron, Angela Sanchez and Carolina Gutierrez will help end this moral and medical blight. If that day ever arrives, we as a country can begin the spiritual renewal that will give life and prosperity back to our country. I hope I'm still around if and when that day comes.

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