Pa. ripped for failures in abortion mill case
PHILADELPHIA — A filthy abortion mill where prosecutors say babies were delivered alive and killed with scissors would have been shut down long ago if not for extraordinary failures by state regulators, one of whom dismissed a death at the clinic with “people die,’’ a grand jury report charges.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, a family practice physician with no certification in gynecology or obstetrics, was arraigned yesterday on eight counts of murder in the deaths of seven babies and one patient.
Nine employees also have been charged, including four with murder.
Gosnell asked in court that seven of the murder charges be explained and raised his eyebrows as Magistrate Jane Rice detailed the allegations of the baby deaths.
In its report, the grand jury said failures of the Pennsylvania Department of Health and other agencies allowed Gosnell’s “house of horrors’’ to persist for decades, with body parts of babies on the shelves and clogging the plumbing, a 15-year-old high school student administering intravenous anesthesia, and Gosnell’s wife, a cosmetologist, performing late-term procedures.
“Had state and local officials performed their duties properly, Gosnell’s clinic would have been shut down decades ago,’’ the grand jury wrote.
The new governor, Republican Tom Corbett, agreed the conditions described in the report were “horrific,’’ spokeswoman Janet Kelley said yesterday.
The administration is reviewing the report, and Corbett is meeting with his new secretaries of health and state, she said.
Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams accused the Health Department of “utter disregard’’ for Gosnell’s patients, mostly poor minority women such as 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar.
Mongar died at the clinic after being given too much Demerol and other drugs in November 2009, prosecutors said.
Complaints about Gosnell to state regulators went nowhere, even though 46 lawsuits had been filed against him.
In its report, the grand jury quoted the department’s chief counsel as saying there was nothing suspicious about Mongar’s death because “people die.’’
The prosecutor, a Democrat who released the report a day after Corbett succeeded Democratic Governor Ed Rendell, said he had no legal means to charge regulators, in part because of the time that had elapsed.
William J. Brennan, a lawyer who represented Gosnell during the investigation, has declined to comment.
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