Pauline Shirleyselfinduced, arizona, 20s, 1940s, questionablestoriesSUMMARY: Abortion-rights web sites claim, with no substantiating evidence, that Pauline Roberson Shirley died from an illegal abortion on August 22, 1940. Her death certificate indicates no reason to believe that she died for any reason other than a miscarriage, though the word “abortion” (meaning miscarriage) might have caused confusion in her family.

My research has uncovered the real cause of the death of Pauline Roberson Shirley.

The Claim

Pauline Shirley
According to a multitude of abortion-rights web sites, Pauline Roberson Shirley was a 29-year-old married mother of six. She and the children, according to these claims, were living with her mother in Arizona while her husband was looking for work in California. These sites gives no details of the illegal abortion that Pauline reportedly underwent, but say that she was hospitalized for hemorrhage afterward and in need of transfusions. They then indicate that Pauline’s mother was looking for donors for the needed blood when Pauline bled to death on August 22, 1940.

What The Death Certificate Says

An exhaustive online search has finally yielded Pauline’s death certificate. It straightforwardly indicated that yes, Pauline Shirley, born June 2, 1910, died in an Arizona hospital. The date disagrees slightly, with the death certificate saying August 23, 1940, rather than the August 22 that is on the prochoice sites.

One can also easily piece together from the information that Pauline was indeed living with her mother. She also wasn’t living with her husband — because she wasn’t married any more. That’s really not significant. (Of course, how many children she had and what her mother was doing during Pauline’s final hours won’t be on a death certificate one way or the other.)

The cause of death section indicates “secondary anemia” and “uterine hemorrhage,” which I would say substantiates that Pauline had bled to death.

But the abortion-rights websites deviate from the death certificate in one extremely important way:

THE DEATH CERTIFICATE DOES NOT CONFIRM AN INDUCED ABORTION.

The cause of death is noted as “incomplete abortion, spontaneous (?)” “Abortion” is the medical term for a miscarriage. So what the medical examiner was indicating when he completed the death certificate was that it looked as if Pauline had died from a miscarriage, but he wasn’t 100% sure.

There is a section of the death certificate for information about external causes of death. This section is completely blank, even after an autopsy. That means that there were no signs that anybody had used instruments of any kind — either of the medical or “coat hanger” type — to perform an abortion on Pauline.

Conclusion

I can never say with 100% certainty that Pauline didn’t use some sort of abortifacient. She might have tried an herbal tea such as parsley, which is harmless, or pennyroyal, which can trigger an abortion. If she did take any kind of abortifacient, it didn’t do any obvious damage to her body. By far the preponderance of evidence that I’ve been able to uncover is that Pauline’s death was not a criminal abortion death.

Abortion-rights groups also claim that Becky Bell died from complications of an illegal abortion, when in fact she died of pneumonia concurrent with a miscarriage. (There was no evidence that Becky’s pregnancy had been tampered with in any way.) I don’t know why they persist in using those debunked examples of criminal abortion deaths when there are plenty of verifiable illegal abortion deaths with abundant documentation supporting them. I’ve done all the legwork already!

But nothing seems able to break into or out of the prochoice echo chamber, not even evidence like autopsy reports and death certificates.

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1. 1900s
2. 1910-1919
3. 1920s
4. 1930s
5. 1940s
6. 1950s
7. 1960s
8. 1970s
9. 1980s
10. 1990s
11. 19th century
12. 2000-2009
13. 20s
14. 30s
15. 40s
16. NAF
17. abortifacient
18. abortion
19. abortion mill
20. abortion mortality
21. abortionists
22. abortionists — female
23. abortionists — male
24. alabama
25. anesthesia
26. arizona
27. black women
28. botched abortion
29. california
30. chicago
31. colorado
32. connecticut
33. cover-up
34. death
35. deaths
36. deception
37. delay in transport
38. delay in treatment
39. district of columbia
40. dumped body
41. ectopic
42. embolism
43. falsifying forms
44. fetal indications
45. florida
46. former criminal abortionist
47. george tiller
48. georgia
49. hemorrhage death
50. hospitals
51. illegal – doctor
52. illegal – midwife
53. illegal – nurse
54. illegal – paramedical
55. illegal – post roe
56. illegal – unknown
57. illegal – untrained
58. illegal abortion
59. illinois
60. inadequate documents
61. inadequate equipment
62. inadequate resuscitation
63. incomplete abortion
64. indiana
65. infection
66. kansas
67. legal abortion
68. llinois
69. louisiana
70. maryland
71. massachusetts
72. maternal indications
73. maternal mortality
74. michigan
75. mills
76. missouri
77. mortality
78. national abortion federation
79. new jersey
80. new mexico
81. new york
82. north carolina
83. ohio
84. oklahoma
85. pennsylvania
86. planned parenthood
87. pre-roe legal
88. previous misconduct
89. prostaglandin
90. quackery
91. questionable stories
92. ru-486
93. rupture
94. saline
95. secret abortion
96. self-induced
97. suicide
98. teens
99. texas
100. wisconsin