NOW does not indicate if Vivian's abortion was self-induced, done by an amateur, or done by a nurse or similar practitioner -- which would be unusual -- or by a doctor, as was the case with perhaps 90% of criminal abortions.

In Patricia Miller's The Worst of Times

• The woman's name was Vivian
• She had two children, the older of which was almost six years old
• She was separated from her husband
• She died in May of 1950
• The children were taken to live with their maternal grandparents prior to their mother's fatal hospitalization
• She was hospitalized
• While hospitalized, she died of peritonitis
• Neither story has any details whatsoever of how the abortion was performed, or by whom, or even who was suspected or what police investigation took place.

• NOW has Vivian dying at age 24; Gloria said her mother was 27
• NOW said that the estranged husband arrived at the hospital "too late," and gave the impression that Vivian was already dead; Gloria said that her father brought Vivian to the hospital, but it was too late to save her. (This may just be muddling rather than skewed facts.)

Gloria indicated that she learned "the truth" of how her mother died when she needed a copy of the death certificate years later. The death certificate said "spontaneous abortion". Gloria clearly doesn't understand that this means a miscarriage; she took this as proof that her mother had obtained some sort of illegal abortion, much like Bill and Karen Bell misunderstood the word "abortion" on their daughter Becky's autopsy cover page, thought it meant an induced abortion, and assumed that it must have been a criminal or self-induced abortion.

NOW's researchers certainly should have known that a "spontaneous abortion" is a miscarriage, and would have nothing to do with any sort of "back alley abortion". Ditto for Patricia Miller. Ditto for the people who drag Bill and Karen Bell around the country, propping them up in front of microphones as human shields for their own agenda.

This obituary of retired Pittsburgh Police CommanderGwendolyn J. "Gwen" Elliott says that Gwen's mother was Vivian Campbell and died of a "botched abortion" when Gwen was 5, but Gwen didn't find out until she was an adult. This means that Gwen was almost certainly "Gloria" in Miller's book. Since it's an obituary, there was no fact-checker. But again, NOW and Patricia Miller should have had sense enough to know that a "spontaneous abortion" is a miscarriage.

I'd welcome any verifying information on Mrs. Campbell's death. After all, NOW also claims that Becky Bell died from complications of an illegal abortion. (There was no evidence that Becky's pregnancy had been tampered with in any way.)

During the 1950s, we see an anomaly: Though maternal mortality had been falling during the first half of the 20th Century, and abortion mortality in particular had been plummeting, the downward trend slowed, then reversed itself briefly. I have yet to figure out why. For more, see Abortion Deaths in the 1950's.

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

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