London, England — A beautician from Worthing, England died from a severe asthma attack minutes after having an abortion.
Maria Margaret Soule, 27, of Wigmore Road, Worthing, was talkative and “euphoric” after the abortion. However, she suddenly turned blue and suffered a cardiac arrest in the recovery room.
Employees at the Marie Stopes abortion facility in Brixton Hill, south London, battled to revive her. She was transferred to intensive care in a local hospital where she later died. Soule, a mother of one, had been diagnosed with mild asthma and had suffered “wheeziness” following another abortion five months earlier.
An inquest heard it was impossible to say whether the anesthetic drugs had led to the asthma attack.
Soule went to the abortion facility on December 12 last year and told Gedela Rao, an anaesthetist for 32 years, her asthma was “not serious.” Soule arrived in the abortion facility at 3:22 pm and the abortion took eight minutes to perform, Rao said.
He told the hearing: “The recovery was remarkable. She woke up. Not only did she wake up she was sitting in the middle of the trolley and was making the most entertaining conversation with [abortion facility staff]. She was disappointed as she was having a beautiful dream which was interrupted. How lively and entertaining that lady was. She wanted to go home then and there.”
But at 3:45 pm Rao was called to the recovery room where Soule was critically ill. He said: “It was a distressing scene. I found she had suffered an acute to severe asthma attack.” Rao gave her 15 liters of oxygen, adrenaline, the muscle relaxant atropine and steroids but her condition deteriorated.
Abortion facility staff attempted heart massage and electric shocks to normalize her heart rhythm, but she lost consciousness. Rao said he felt he and his staff had done everything to help her and an ambulance was called to take Soule to Kings College Hospital.
She lapsed into a coma and was diagnosed as brain dead on December 13.
Dr. Simon Cotton, a consultant at Kings, said he would have used exactly the same drugs as Dr. Rao.
Pathologist Dr. Debbie Hopster said the only abnormal finding was fluid in the lungs. She ruled out anaphylactic shock – a severe allergic reaction to the drugs – as the cause of death.
Dr. Hopster said in her experience five percent of adults who died unexpectedly were asthmatics. She said: “It is well recognised asthmatics can die suddenly.” Hopster said asthma could trigger abnormal rhythms in the heart.
Deputy coroner Dr. Adela Williams recorded an open verdict and said: “The circumstances in Miss Soule's death are so unusual we have no reasonable alternative.”
(This article courtesy of Steven Ertelt and the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)
