file: /pub/resources/text/ProLife.News/1991: pln-0101.txt
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Volume I No. 1

[ Recently, the NOW has been traveling about the country, showing a
very fancy video drumming up support for the overturn of parental
consent/notification laws in various states.  The video focuses upon
the tragic death of Becky Sue Bell, who has been nationally acclaimed
as a victim of such laws, having died from a septic, illegal abortion.
Her parents and friends speak in the video on the tragedy of her
death, and how they wished she had not feared to tell them about the
pregnancy - that the law caused her death in that she died from an
illegal abortion.  There is no medical evidence that such an abortion
ever took place, nor that this was indeed the cause of Rebecca's
death. ] -Editor-


from the Bernadell Technical Bulletin, Vol2 No4, Nov 1990

The Bell Affair: 

We all regret the death of Rebecca Suzanne Bell, the 17-year-old young
woman from Indianapolis who died on September 16, 1988.  Her premature
death has been ruthlessly memorilalized by abortion advocacy groups
including Planned Parenthood and the Fund for a Feminist Majority.
These groups have enlisted Rebecca's parents into appearing in, and
traveling with a video condemning parental notification/consent laws
as being responsible for Rebecca's death.  Their claim is that if she
had not been fearful of consulting with her parents regarding her
pregnancy, she would not have sought an illegal abortion and would be
alive today.

If the following coroner's report is to be believed, then the entire
story that the abortion advocates have created is replete with medical
inaccuracies, and has been twisted to serve their needs.
Unfortunately, this is not very surprising.

Indiana has had a law requiring parental consent for abortion, with a
judicial bypass provision.  From the clinical material available it
appears that Rebecca Bell became pregnant in mid-May 1988.  Quoting
from the report of Coroner Denis J. Nicholas, MD issued on 3 October,
1988:

 "She did not confide this information to her parents.  According to
her friend Heather Clark, Rebecca Bell told the father of the unborn
child about the pregnancy and he broke off all contact with her in
mid-July.  Rebecca told Heather Clark that she intended to have an
abortion.  [She] also had a history of substance abuse for which she
was hospitalized from mid-February through April 1988.  Bell
reportedly was at a party where various drugs were being used
(cocaine, 'speed' and LSD) on the week-end of September 10-11.  On
Tuesday, September 13 she awoke with a headache, stayed home from
school and developed an elevated temperature.  She was somewhat
improved on Wednesday but was found on Friday, September 16 when her
father went home about noon and she was ill.  He took her for an x-ray
which showed pneumonia bilaterally.  She was hospitalized where she
went into cardiopulmonary arrest later that night."

Her death was attributed to "septic abortion with pneumonia."  In
order to appreciate how fabricated, how medically unsound this
diagnosis is, one needs to realize that to make a diagnosis of
infected (septic) abortion severe enough to kill a woman one_must_ be
able to demonstrate the presence of massive inflammation/infection in
the uterus and pelvis...Further, there is virtually always evidence of
instrumentation, ie. the marks of a surgical clamp on the cervix, ir
evidence of a forceful dilation of the cervix (which would be
especially noticeable in a 17-year-old who had never been pregnant or
delivered a baby).  There were no such findings:

The autopsy on her body was carried out by Jesse C. Giles, MD, a
pathologist in the Forensic Division of the Indiana University School
of Medicine.  Dr. Giles made a post mortem examination of the
reproductive organs of Rebecca Bell, and upon gross and microscopic
examination of those organs found:

A) There was no evidence of any inflammation or infection in any
   portion of the uterus tubes, or ovaries.
B) There was no evidence of any inflammation of infection in the small
   amount of pregnancy tissue still present in the uterus.
C) There was no evidence of any instrumentation anywhere in the female
   organs.
D) All blood cultures were negative.
E) There was no evidence of any peritonitis, a classic finding in any
   woman dying of an infected abortion.
F) There were no septic emboli in the lung.  In cases of severe
   infection, infection enters the veins, and produces abscesses (Not
   pneumonia) in the lungs.

Thus in the Bell case NONE of these critical findings were made by the
examining pathologist.  Indeed, in a conversation with Dr. Giles on 4
October 1990, he confirmed that none of these essential findings were
present at the autopsy.

One also notes that Heather Clark, reportedly Rebecca's best friend
(and seems now to have disappeared), as been quoted repeatedly as
insisting that Bell never procured an illegal abortion, and that when
she became ill with pneumonia, she had a spontaneous abortion
(miscarriage).  This supports the findings in the autopsy.

Rebecca Bell did not die from a septic (infected) illegal abortion as
claimed.  There is not one shred of credible evidence to support this
claim.  On the other hand there is a clear preponderance of evidence
to hold that she miscarried her pregnancy owing to the high fever and
toxicity from an overwhelming pneumonia.


To those who have twisted the truth and convinced a set of grieving
parents to turn this young woman into a martyr for abortion rights, I
can say little short of holding them in complete contempt.  How many
shall listen to their story, and believe it?

For more information (or a subscription to this journal) write: 
Bernadell Technical Bulletin, PO Box 1897, New York, NY 10113-0950 USA

Any ideas for or further articles that you would like published are
quite welcome.  At present, there are ~20 names on the roles.

					steve