Abortion Ring

P:. Virginia Lee Wyckoff, 21, University of Oklahoma coed, died of septicemia in Oklahoma City General Hospital after telling physicians an abortion had been performed upon her by John W. Eisiminger, an osteopath.

P: Mrs. Nancy Seay Lee, 17, died in Oklahoma City General Hospital, whither she had been taken "about dead." Frank Lee University of Oklahoma football player! to whom she had been secretly married! said she had been aborted by Dr. Richard E. Thacker.

P: F. S. Roach told County Attorney Lewis R. Morris that his wife had died after an abortion by Dr. Thacker.

P: Miss Robbie Lou Thompson and Mrs. Isobel Frances Ferguson died in Oklahoma City, Miss Ruth Hall in the Nazarene settlement of Bethany, six miles away, of general sepsis attributed to abortions.

These six cases within the past fortnight provided Oklahoma with a full-size medical scandal last week. Subsequent developments caused the scandal to swell horridly.

Osteopath Eisiminger was arrested, charged with murder, clapped into jail without bail. In a six-page statement he detailed the operation he had performed on Miss Wyckoff, setting at rest the supposition that the abortion had been attempted by osteopathic manipulation. He said he had not believed Miss Wyckoff was pregnant. Nevertheless, he had performed a curettage (scraping of the walls of the uterus). Fifty-year-old Osteopath Eisiminger remained in jail.

Dr. Thacker, an M. D. and onetime Army lieutenant, was also charged with murder. He fled. With his wife and instrument case he got into a sedan and disappeared in the direction of Mexico.

Governor William Henry ("Alfalfa Bill") Murray ordered Chief Charles Ambrose Burns of the State Bureau of Investigation to make a separate study of the abortion cases and report to him personally. President William Bennett Bizzell of the University of Oklahoma at Norman, some 20 miles from Oklahoma City, said: "The tragedies have caused grave concern at the university. I do not believe, however, that the university can become involved."

In three days Prosecutor Morris collected evidence which, he said, "indicates that at least 50 women and girls have died here in the last year from illegal operations. Oklahoma City is the centre of a thriving, criminal operation industry." He said a "ring of at least a dozen doctors" had been performing abortions, that four known private nursing homes were operated to care for the patients. A Mrs. Leona Smith told Prosecutor Morris she had done an average of five abortions a month during the past three years. She used a formula which cost her $500. "I charged $75 a case and all recovered."

Law & Ethics, In all States abortion is legal if it is necessary to save the patient's life. Because of the difficulty in proving that any specific abortion was not necessary, prosecutors find it next to impossible to secure convictions. Medical practice, more strict, requires that a doctor, before performing an abortion, obtain the agreement of one colleague that it is necessary. Pregnancy can be arrested by a number of means, all more or less uncertain, more or less hazardous. Commonest is the taking of drugs to cause contraction of the uterus, expulsion of the fetus. The danger of this method is that enough of a drug to cause an abortion is almost invariably harmful. Abortion may also be brought about by the insertion of an instrument. A danger of this is that the placenta may not be expelled, that its retention may cause septicemia and death. Legitimate abortion is brought about by curettage, a delicate operation requiring a skilled surgeon. Miscarriage may also be induced by manipulation, by heat (rays), by violent exertion.

In many U. S. cities exist "clinics"* where a woman may obtain an abortion and treatment. Fees range from $100 to $250. Part of the fee may go to the consultant who "makes it legal." Part goes to the "nursing home" where the patient stays for a period of from two days to a week. In the higher priced of these "clinics" the curettage method is used. The operator may be a skilled surgeon whose sympathy or venality overcomes his professional ethics, or he may be a bungler.

*Not to be confused with birth control (contraception) clinics, which discountenance abortion, would do away with it by substituting contraception.

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