In testimony Wednesday in St. Louis Circuit Court, [abortionist] Crist said that it is not uncommon for second-trimester fetuses to leave the womb feet-first, intact and with their hearts still beating. He sometimes crushes their skulls to get the fetuses out. Other times, he dismembers them.
Reporter Jo Mannies of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch describing a trial where abortionist Robert Crist gave testimony about how he performed abortions.
Robert Crist is an abortionist at Reproductive Health Services of St. Louis. He has also worked at Planned Parenthood. He has been quoted a number of times in articles about clinic violence and abortion rights. Few of his patients are aware that he has killed at least three women through botched abortions.
Nineteen-year-old Diane Boyd lived in a state institution for the mentally retarded. There, she was beaten and raped in July of 1981, and was later discovered to be pregnant.
The abortion was performed October 22, 1981. Diane died the next day.
According to suits later filed by Diane’s mother, RHS staff and abortionist Robert Crist did not check for possible drug interactions before giving Diane valium and sublimaze. These drugs evidently reacted with Diane’s usual medication, thorazine, causing her to stop breathing. Diane’s mother said that the clinic lacked heart monitoring equipment or resuscitation equipment.
Diane was not the last woman to die after abortion by Crist. Seventeen-year-old Latatchie Veal bled to death after an abortion by Crist in 1991. Twenty-two-year-old Nichole Williams died of DIC (disseminated intravascular coagulopathy) after an abortion by Crist in 1997.
Robert Crist remains a physician in good standing in The National Abortion Federation.
