07/05/2024
I ran across this story while researching next season, simply because one of the home addresses I was checking into was owned by someone who was named briefly in one of these articles. Since the topic of ABORTION is as timely now as it has ever been, I figured I’d share a blast from the past.
*The Sting*
One afternoon in August of 1961, a couple met up with JERRY LEE NATIONS who was part owner and sometimes manager of Johnny Bremer Pizza, on Colonial Drive in Orlando, Florida.
The couple was Mrs. Dorothy Yohn, billed as an “unwed girl in trouble” accompanied by the kind young gent who’d got her there, played by Patrolman William Robinson.
The parties were introduced by Mrs. Margaret Mount, essentially a go-between.
Jerry Lee Nations was a private investigator by day, abortionist by appointment, and heavily favored in news coverage as handsome, despite the charges. He was an eclectic guy who’d grown up in the area. He had a monkey that got loose a few years earlier, and the local paper reported on its escapades. Nations had also managed a water ballet team that performed at one of the local swanky hotels.
Unbeknownst to Nations, the couple he was about to service was a cop and the wife of a Orlando Police department Lieutenant, and he was about to be the target of a sting operation.
At the pizza joint, Jerry Lee Nations assured the prospective patient that he was “experienced in abortions” and told her there was nothing to worry about. He’d give her a little shot, it would cause her to dilate, and she’d abort in a couple days. The PI problem solver mentioned that he usually had access to a couple of local doctor’s offices, but because this was such short notice, they’d have to take care of business at his office, directly behind the pizza joint, which was, perhaps, a bit less gynecological in tone than one would hope for such a medical procedure.
The group, sans Mrs. Mount, who apparently had better things to do, headed around back for their “appointment.”
On the stand, Mrs. Yohn, the cop’s wife who was playing the part of pregnant woman, described the place as very cluttered and dirty, with a drafting table, couch, a desk, and stuffed chair. She said Nations went into the other room and came back with a blue suitcase containing leg stirrups, a pillow, quilt, a pan, and a briefcase containing a syringe and vial of liquid.
When she asked if he was a doctor, Nations told her he had medical experience and had been training for years.
“There’s nothing to it,” Nations said, confidently. “I’ve done it many, many times.”
While he unpacked his handy dandy abortion kit, the “doctor” and his guests discussed the price. He asked for $500, a pretty penny in 1961. They said they only had $300 but could get him the rest when the bank opened the next day. Nations agreed and told them that the ever-helpful Mrs. Mount would be happy to pick up the balance. The “doctor” then gave her some red pills to take in case she started hemorrhaging.
Here's where I want you to imagine yourself in the scenario; a cramped little room behind a pizza joint, close enough to the actual pizza ovens that you could probably smell the garlic wafting across the parking lot.
Nations took out a cotton swab and squirted some alcohol on it, then swabbed the woman’s arm.
Now, if that’s me, and I’d volunteered for this little shindig, with my cop husband’s approval, I’m probably wondering how far I’m supposed to take this charade before someone yells uncle. I feel like a fake doctor looming over me with the needle an inch from my arm might be cutting it a bit close…but that’s just me.
To prove that maybe this endeavor wasn’t planned as well as one might hope if you’re the one looking down the business end of a hypodermic needle, the male cop in this acting duo suddenly said he needed some air. He asked Nations to unlock the door so he could step outside and catch his breath.
Nations complied, the cop playing the husband role walked out, and Nations proceeded to inject Mrs. Yohn with that needle full of abortion serum.
I picture the cop outside flailing his arms wildly at his cohorts in apprehension, because I presume he wasn’t wearing a walkie talkie for quick communication, and he was doing something a little more physically stringent than a come-hither motion.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Yohn is inside with the fake doctor doing the heavy lifting – and I think it’s probably fair to mention here that women will always have to do the heavy lifting when it comes to abortion, just as they must figuratively and literally do the heavy lifting when it comes to growing and birthing a baby. If abortion is illegal, women will still get abortions. Some won’t. Some will be forced into an unwanted pregnancy and all that implies, and for the life of me I cannot understand why anyone of sound mind would want that to happen.
The reporters really buried the lede here, too.
‘What’s in the vial?’ I found my inner monologue gasping with as much horror as Brad Pitt in the psychological thriller Seven, asking ‘What was in the box?’
Nations wasn’t the only one on the hook. The pretty, raven-haired Mrs. Mount, a 29-year-old mother of two, was also brought up on charges. She pled guilty and, through tears, testified that she’d worked with Nations for several months leading up to this incident and had also done some detective work assignments for him. She told the court that Nations would get $300 for an abortion and she and another contact person would split the rest.
While Nations and his cohorts had been under surveillance for seven months, the man himself testified that he learned how to perform these procedures from a former Orlando doctor named Bradford Carson White, having watched Dr. White perform abortions at the physician’s office before he began trying them on his own using Dr. White’s instruments.
Nations alleged that the doctor received a cut from the fees he charged his female clients.
Judge Cooper wondered aloud in open court why neither the County Solicitor, the defense attorney, or the Orlando Police Department who’d led the raid had come forth with any allegations related to the 35-year-old doctor, and ordered Florida’s Parole and Probation Commission to bring the doctor to Orlando from his home in Fernandina Beach so they could get to the bottom of it.
Dr. White had left a lucrative practice in Orlando earlier the same year, headed for Fernandina Beach, after being placed on two-year probation in criminal court on a reckless driving charge.
For his part, the Doctor flatly denied Nation’s accusations.
“I knew Jerry and had some business dealings with him, but certainly not along those lines. It’s absolutely ridiculous. He’s out of his mind.”
He said he’d once negotiated with Nations to buy a medical building he owned but dropped that deal “when this thing broke.”
What, you might be asking, was a private investigator doing owning the Central Florida Medical Center Bldg. on Mills Street in Orlando? Good question. It was but one of many questions that never got answered in the newspaper accounts.
Lt. William Yohn of the Orlando Police Department – husband to the faux pregnant woman involved in the sting operation - testified that his department had Nations under surveillance for some time and that he frequently visited Dr. White’s office, but “we had not quite reached the point in our investigation where we could question Dr. White.”
During the testimony, several women that Nations performed “abortive operations” on had testified, though it was never clear via the reports whether these were all chemical type abortions, or if any more invasive procedures were involved.
One assumes the need for stirrups attached to a drafting board indicates a more troubling answer.
Yet another unanswered but significant detail.
The handsome Jerry Lee Nations was eventually convicted on abortion charges and given just shy of a 7-year sentence. He would later plead guilty to 5 more charges that seemed to precipitate him becoming the key witness in the Doctor’s trial. While on the stand Nations testified that he’d performed more than 30 abortions, some at his office behind the pizza joint, and some at the doctor’s office.
Nations testified that he and the doctor had known one another since around 1959 when he went to him for a physical examination related to insurance coverage. They got to talking about how abortions would be a good way to make some money and, well, you know how it is? If there’s a way to make money of a woman’s misery, there’s a man, or doctor, or both, out there ready to exploit it.
Margaret Lou Mount and one more individual both pled guilty to their involvement and were each given seven-year probation sentences.
No word on exactly how many women fell victim to the fake doctor slash private investigator and his six-foot drafting board with leg stirrups mounted on either side – but it’s rarely about the women, is it?
