

The above picture is a police photo of Gerri Santoro, who died in 1964 at age 27 in a Connecticut motel room after a botched illegal abortion. To anyone with their priorities straight, this photo should be far more disturbing than any photo of scraps of post-abortion fetal tissue, of the type waved by anti-abortion protestors outside clinics. No fetus was ever the beloved sibling of fourteen brothers and sisters, as was Gerri Santoro. No fetus was ever the loving mother of two daughters, as was Gerri Santoro. No fetus ever endured the verbal and physical abuse of a spouse for the sake of the marriage, as did Gerri Santoro--and then left the marriage for the sake of the children, as did Gerri Santoro. No fetus ever put her life into grave peril to try to keep her husband from taking her children, as did Gerri Santoro, when she heard her estranged husband was coming to visit the girls-- when she panicked at what he might do when he found she was pregnant by another man. And no fetus was ever left to die alone in a motel room by the man that operated on her using borrowed medical implements and a textbook. No fetus ever sacrificed its life in a painful suicide because the U.S. law, with its self-righteous pre-Roe surety that stripping women of their rights and even their lives was best for the nation, provided it no choice. Gerri Santoro made this sacrifice. And she has not been the only one.