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Gerri Twerdy Santoro
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| The name of the woman
is Gerri Twerdy Santoro. She was just 28 years old.
She was a sister, a daughter, and she was the mother
of two daughters when she died a very painful and
frightening death. |
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Gerri's photograph from MS Magazine
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| This New York Coroner's
picture first appeared in MS Magazine in April 1973.
When Gerri's picture appeared in MS, no one knew
her name or all the circumstances that surrounded
her death from an illegal abortion. While it was
assumed that she died at the hands of a back alley
butcher, the family later confirmed that she died
the way most women died before Roe vs. Wade legalized
abortion in thiss country in 1973; she died from
a self-induced abortion. |
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| Gerri was estranged from
her abusive husband when she met Clyde Dixon and
became pregnant by him. Terrified that once her
abusive husband returned to town and learned it
was Dixon's baby she was carrying, he would kill
her. She was determined and desperate to end her
unintended pregnancy. That desperation and determination
made her akin to thousands upon thousands of women
in those days that were desperate and determined
enough to terminate their unintended pregnancies
in spite of the fact that abortion was illegal.
Illegality affected the safety of abortion but it
never affected the number of abortions that were
performed. |
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| Gerri was 6 1/2 months
pregnant in June 1964. Gerri's boyfriend obtained
a medical book and borrowed some surgical equipment.
They went to a motel where Dixon tried to perform
the abortion. When the attempt failed, when it all
went terribly wrong, Dixon fled the scene, leaving
her there to die, alone, in this cold impersonal
hotel room. She was bleeding profusely and tried
with towels to stop it but she couldn't. How frightened
she must have been, knowing she was going to die.
She was found like this, on her stomach with her
knees under her, her face not visible, bloody, nude,
alone and dead. |
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| Two lives were needlessly
and sadly lost here. This horrible sad picture of
death makes clear that illegal abortion not only
harms and kills women, it has never ever saved one
baby. |
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