ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DEAD [OR MAIMED] WOMAN.(investigations following failed abortions)(Brief Article)(Editorial)

The details were so gruesome, the behavior so bizarre, the indifference to human life so astonishing that it took an entire month to try abortionist John Biskind and his assistant for the 1998 death of LouAnne Herron at the now-closed A-Z Women's Center in Phoenix, Arizona. (See story, page 4.)

But once sequestered last month it took a jury of seven women and one man no time at all to find the 75-year-old Biskind guilty of manslaughter and Carol Stuart-Schadoff guilty of negligent homicide in a death that followed a botched late-term abortion. The Arizona Republic reported that the jury foreman said "jurors made up their minds to convict Biskind and Stuart-Schadoff immediately upon beginning deliberations."

Biskind and his assistant are scheduled to be sentenced March 20. Penalties range from probation to 12-1/2 years in jail for Biskind and probation to three years for Stuart-Schadoff. Attorneys for both are appealing the verdicts.

Someone, I don't remember who, once wrote about contemporary university departments of history that they are "under the domination of a cult of untruth." However, when it comes to media coverage of abortionists, historians are positively bastions of objectivity by comparison. (Present company excluded.)

In the interests of economy, we'll focus on just the two "botched" abortions reported in this edition of National Right to Life News, Biskind, for one, and a Planned Parenthood clinic out in the San Francisco Bay area. (See story, page 15.) Both examples are so grotesque as to be almost surrealistic.

What happened to LouAnne Herron? According to the Republic, "Evidence showed that Herron, 33, bled to death after Biskind punctured her uterus during the late-term abortion in April 1998 at the A-Z Women's Center. At one point, Biskind testified that he left the clinic to go to his tailor as Herron lay bleeding."

Actually, the testimony paints an even more depressing picture of craven indifference to human life. The jurors heard "a parade of prosecution witnesses, medical assistants who testified that Herron was begging for help before she died; emergency crews who said they were called too late; and other doctors who testified that Biskind ignored the blood pooling under her body and other undeniable signs that she was dying."