| "Penny" Roe, Self-Induced Abortion Death | |
In 1978, a Colorado woman suspected she was pregnant. She procured two 1/2-ounce bottles of pennyroyal oil and drank them to cause an abortion. A medical botanist, Dr. Walter Lewis, wrote about the case: The Centers for Disease Control investigated the woman's death, along with other deaths from illegal abortion. They concluded that this woman, like the others whose deaths they studied, had sought an abortion outside the medical establishment for "ideosyncratic reasons."
Source: Lifestyle on Trial
Within two hours she vomited blood and bled from the vagina and eyes. By the third day her liver was damaged. On the sixth day, she sank into a coma and died on the seventh day.