WASHINGTON, D.C. December 8, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The surviving daughter of a woman who died during an abortion at a grisly Philadelphia clinic is suing the city for ignoring the facility’s record of unsanitary conditions and unsafe practices.
Karnamaya Mongar, a 41-year-old refugee from Nepal, died after unlicensed medical staff administered an overdose of Demerol in November 2009.
The clinic, the Women’s Medical Society run by Kermit Gosnell, became known as the “house of horrors” after investigators raided the facility and discovered urine and blood-stained chairs, cats that roamed the premises freely, unsterile instruments that spread venereal diseases, and jars of dismembered fetuses.
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Gosnell is facing murder charges for Mongar’s death and seven additional charges for delivering late-term babies in his clinic, then severing their spines or slicing their throats with scissors.
A federal lawsuit filed by Mongar’s daughter, Yashoda Gurung, says the city Department of Public Health’s “policy of inaction ultimately cost” her mother her life.
The lawsuit specifically targets Department of Public Health and current City Health Commissioner Dr. Donald Schwarz.
The city department noted twice, in 2008 and 2009, that Gosnell kept dead babies’ bodies in a refrigerator and boxes of fetal tissue piled up until they began to smell. However, after receiving Gosnell’s “plan” for removing the biohazards and its standard city fee, it did nothing to assure he followed through. Schwartz explained, “The department was told, apparently, to collect the money, make sure the plan came in, get the fee, and not enforce.”
The plaintiff’s complaint states that Lori Matijkiw, a Philadelphia employee, made a vaccine inspection in July 2008, where she “took note of the dirty and hazardous conditions of the office, the lack of required documentation of refrigerator temperatures, bloody fetuses stored in a freezer just below ice trays containing chicken pox vaccines, and ‘red fluid spilled/frozen on the floor of the freezer,’” but “nothing was done about the dirty conditions or the storage and leakage of bloody fetuses.”
A second visit in October 2009, the complaint says, “found that [the clinic] was still filthy, still contained expired vaccines and still lacked appropriate refrigerator temperature documentation.” The inspector also found out the clinic’s “doctor” was not licensed, but operated without sanction.
Gurung’s lawsuit will benefit from the grand jury report released in January of this year. The section entitled, “How Did This Go On So Long?” goes on for 82 pages.
It states: “Had the Philadelphia Department of Public Health reported to state officials all that its employees knew or suspected about filthy facilities, fraud, the unlicensed practice of medicine, anesthesia chosen by patients based on cost, infectious waste improperly handled and stored, and vaccines stored next to medical waste, perhaps state authorities would have taken action against Gosnell and Women’s Medical Society.”
The grand jury exposed a pattern of inaction that included the Pennsylvania state Department of Health and Department of State, as well as city authorities and members of the abortion industry.
The DOH found numerous violations at the facility in 1989, 1992, and 1993, but it let Gosnell off easy because it had “deliberately chosen not to enforce laws,” the report said. The Department of State never conducted an onsite inspection, despite numerous complaints.
“Had state and local officials performed their duties properly,” the report added, “Gosnell’s clinic would have been shut down decades ago…Even nail salons in Pennsylvania are monitored more closely for client safety.”
Former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, a pro-abortion Catholic and a Republican, ended state inspections of abortion clinics in 1995. Current Governor Tom Corbett, who is pro-life, has said, “This doesn’t even rise to the level of government run amok. It was government not running at all.”
Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams accused the state health department of showing “utter disregard” for the vulnerable women who became Gosnell’s victims.
The abortion industry also failed to report the abysmal conditions inside the clinic. A representative of the National Abortion Federation inspected the “house of horrors” in December 2009, when Gosnell applied for membership. The grand jury found that she reject his NAF application: “She just never told anyone in authority about all the horrible, dangerous things she had seen.” This forced investigators to ask “why an evaluator from NAF, whose stated mission is to ensure safe, legal, and acceptable abortion care, and to promote health and justice for women, did not report Gosnell to authorities.”
Gosnell has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges, although several workers in his clinic have entered a guilty plea.
Prosecutors have vowed to seek the death penalty against Gosnell.
Since his initial arrest, a host of mostly poor and minority women have accused Gosnell of physically abusing them, drugging them, or forcing them to have abortions. One woman says in 1998, when she was 15-years-old, Gosnell slapped her, tied her to the stirrups, forcibly undressed her, and compelled her to undergo an abortion.
Although killing a viable child outside the womb is illegal, investigators believe Gosnell performed the gruesome procedure “hundreds” of times during his 30-year career.
Terminating late-term babies in any context ran afoul of Pennsylvania state law. However, it proved profitable. Gosnell reportedly made millions of dollars in his clinic. He owns seven properties, including a $900,000 beach home.