Nearby abortion clinic physician charged with murder

The family of a woman who died at an illegal late-term abortion clinic a block from campus has sued the city.

Yashoda Gurung, daughter of the late Bhutanese immigrant Karna Maya Mongar, sued the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Public Health and the City Health Commissioner, Donald Schwarz, in federal court.

Mongar died of a fatal drug overdose in 2009 allegedly administered by workers of Kermit Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society, once located at 3801 Lancaster Ave.

According to the Courthouse News Service, Gurung said the department’s “policy of inaction” permitted the clinic’s unlawful activity to continue for decades, despite a 2003 tip to a sanitation worker and a 2008 inspection of the clinic that found “bloody fetuses stored in a freezer,” according to the complaint.

Again in October 2009, a month before Mongar’s death, the same city employee who visited in 2008 still found the clinic failed to meet certain standards.

According to a Philadelphia Grand Jury Report, Gosnell — who is reported to be the only licensed medical professional who worked at the clinic — was not present when Mongar arrived to his clinic for an abortion procedure. He often allowed his untrained employees to perform procedures in his absence, the report claimed.

“[Mongar] received repeated unmonitored, unrecorded intravenous injections of Demerol, a sedative seldom used in recent years because of its dangers. Gosnell liked it because it was cheap,” according to the report.

Several hours later, Mongar stopped breathing. The staff “hooked up machinery and rearranged her body to make it look like they had been in the midst of a routine, safe abortion procedure,” as they waited for paramedics to arrive, according to the report. However, Mongar was likely brain dead before paramedics were even called.

Six have pleaded guilty in connection to the clinic, including two employees — Lynda Williams and Sherry West — who were charged with third-degree murder, drug delivery resulting in death, violations of the controlled substance act and conspiracy in connection to Mongar’s death.

Gosnell, who denies the allegations, has been charged with eight counts of murder. He is currently held on a $2 million bail and faces the possibility of a death sentence if convicted.

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