Becky Bell
American teenage girl
Rebecca Suzanne Bell (August 24, 1971 – September 16, 1988) was an American teenage girl who died of complications from a septic abortion. After becoming pregnant, Bell inquired about a legal abortion but was hindered by Indiana state laws which required either her parents' consent or a waiver from a judge. Instead, Bell either obtained an illegal abortion or attempted to self-abort, leading to a fatal infection. The coroner said that Bell died of sepsis as a consequence of an unsterile abortion. Following Bell's death, her parents became advocates for the repeal of parental consent laws.
Background
Bell discovered she was pregnant in 1988. She went to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Indiana seeking an abortion. There she was told that state law required consent from her parents for the procedure and that most minors in her area traveled to Louisville, approximately 100 miles away, to avoid parental disclosure. She also had the option of going before a judge to argue for a waiver of parental consent, but reportedly feared that her parents would find out. Bell reportedly considered having an abortion in Kentucky, carrying to term and placing the baby for adoption, or running away to California.
“Becky Bell” enters the record as american teenage girl. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Becky, Bell and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4878803. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971 and 1988.
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This entry incorporates text from “Becky Bell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.