Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist convicted in 2013 of murdering three babies born alive and of involuntary manslaughter of Karnamaya Mongar from a painkiller overdose, has been ordered to pay almost $4 million dollars to Mongar’s daughter.
However, lawyers admitted that Gosnell, who is currently serving a life sentence, is broke and without insurance, and is “unlikely” to ever pay.
As Live Action News covered at the time, Gosnell was also convicted of 21 counts of illegal abortions past 24 weeks and more than 200 misdemeanor counts of violating informed-consent requirements. A 2010 FBI raid on Gosnell’s clinic found “blood on the floor,” a “stench of urine fill[ing] the air,” a “flea-infested cat wander[ing] through the facility,” “cat feces on the stairs,” semi-conscious women “moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sit on dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets,” and a “row of jars contain[ing] the severed feet of fetuses.”
The Gosnell story also sparked intense debate between abortion opponents and defenders. Pro-choicers argued that Gosnell thrived because pro-life laws had driven more reputable, early-term abortion clinics out of business, leaving women nowhere else to turn.
But pro-lifers argued Gosnell was a symptom of the abortion industry’s disregard for women, noting that an inspector from the National Abortion Federation declined to report on the health violations she discovered at his clinic and that Pennsylvania’s pro-choice Republican Governor Tom Ridge ended clinic inspections in the state.
