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Unethical Abortion Doctor Sued for PA Wrongful Death and Charged with Murders

By Michael Monheit

This is the story of a 41-year-old wife and mother who spent her life in a third-world country only to come to America under a humanitarian resettlement program. Karnamaya Mongar, then died in Philadelphia as the result of worse than squalid third-world-like conditions at the hands of a greedy, depraved man calling himself a doctor and operating his clinic, the Woman's Medical Society, like a house of horrors.

The Grand Jury's factual report reads far worse than sordid fiction.

The doctor who was neither a board certified obstetrician nor gynecologist performed illegal late term abortions on women who did not understand the procedure or did not speak English. Payment was based on how far along the pregnancy was and how much pain killers were required.

Dr. Gosnell has a medical degree, but set up his clinic with unlicensed and untrained staff that routinely administered drugs but were not trained to handle drug interactions and life-threatening medical emergencies. Even if they knew how to handle such emergencies, the equipment was antiquated or broken.

The victim Mrs. Mongar received repeated unmonitored, unrecorded intravenous injections of Demerol, a sedative seldom used in recent years because of its dangers. Gosnell liked Demerol, because it was cheap. After several hours, Mrs. Mongar stopped breathing. When employees finally noticed, Gosnell was called in and briefly attempted to give CPR.

There was no life-saving defibrillator used because it was broken; nor did Gosnell administer any emergency medications that might have restarted her heart. After much crucial delay, the paramedics finally arrived, but Mrs. Mongar was probably brain dead before they were even called.

In the meantime, the clinic staff hooked up machinery and rearranged her body to make it look like they had been in the midst of a routine, safe abortion. Abortions at the Women's Medical Society were anything but routine or safe. Procedures were executed by inducing labor to heavily sedated mothers, then killing the often alive and crying babies by snipping or severing their spinal cords. Fetuses lined the clinic in boxes and jars like eerie science project experiments.

Abortion is normally one of the simplest and safest medical procedures when done correctly by a trained staff and within legal limits of less than 24 weeks gestation. Even two of Gosnell's staff chose to have their abortions elsewhere.

The paramedics were able to generate a weak pulse but because of cluttered hallways and a padlocked emergency door, it took more than 20 minutes to find a way to get Mrs. Mondar out of the building. Doctors at the hospital managed to keep her heart beating, but the abortion clinic's staff failed to honestly inform how much anesthesia they had dosed.

The Pennsylvania District Attorney is filing criminal charges including seven first-degree murder charges against Gosnell for the deaths of infants.

Attorney Bernard W. Smalley of the Pennsylvania personal injury law firm Anapol Schwartz is filing a civil lawsuit on behalf of the Mongar family seeking punitive damages for the wrongful death of their matriarch.

'Our investigation is ongoing and we are seeking infromation from anyone who has knowledge of the circumstances surrounding The Women's Medical Society and the abortion doctor Gosnell,' said Attorney Smalley. 'This case is eerily similar to one I succesfully prosecuted more than 20 years ago. How this can still be happening today shocks the conscience. We will get to the bottom of this and hold accountable those who allowed this to happen.'

According to Mr. Smalley, more than 20 years ago he brought a case of medical negligence against Gosnell although the charges were less serious and the victim did not die although she suffered a serious, life-threatening infection. The insurance company paid the monetary damages. There was no loss of license; business as usual.

Bernard Smalley, Esquire has practiced law in Pennsylvania for more than 30 years, focusing his practice on helping the injured as well as family members of those who died because of medical negligence and other personal injury-related causes.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Michael Monheit

Full post as published by Phoenix Personal Injury Lawyer on January 23, 2011 (boomark / email).