‘House of horrors’ abortionist dies in prison; pro-life advocates call for stronger protections

A notorious Philadelphia abortionist who was serving several life sentences for infanticide of three babies who survived abortions, manslaughter for the death of a woman, and for performing numerous abortions beyond Pennsylvania’s regulatory standards, has died. The superintendent’s office of the Smithfield Correctional Institution in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, confirmed in an email to OSV News that Kermit Gosnell died March 1. The office said he was admitted to an outside hospital where he died. He was 85. OSV News inquiries with the Huntingdon County Coroner about the cause of death have not yet been answered. Gosnell was convicted in 2013 for the murder of three babies after facing murder charges in the deaths of seven identified babies. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Karnamaya Mongar. She was a 41-year-old refugee from Nepal, who was so heavily sedated prior to the abortion she was scheduled to have, that she stopped breathing. Her medical emergency was not acted on quickly enough because of dangerous conditions in the clinic and a staff coverup. A 2011 grand jury indictment found through testimony of staff and patients at his West Philadelphia clinic that Gosnell, through a series of coverups and ultrasound image manipulation, often terminated the lives of unborn babies well beyond the 24-week gestation limit on abortions in Pennsylvania. As a result, the indictment said babies were “often born alive at his clinic.” If they were breathing or showing other signs of life, the doctor cut their spinal cords with scissors. The grand jury report labeled Gosnell’s clinic, the Women’s Medical Society, a “house of horrors” after investigators found fetuses and fetal body parts in a variety of containers including plastic bags, milk jugs, cat food containers, medical specimen cups as well as blood stains on the floor and furniture, cat feces and dust everywhere. Bags of biohazards had piled up in the basement and in a freezer. Federal agents made the grisly discovery when they entered the clinic in 2010 as part of a joint investigation of Gosnell carried out by the FBI, Philadelphia police and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Dangerous Drug-Offender Unit into “illegal prescription drug activities.” The 2015 documentary, “3801 Lancaster: American Tragedy” about Gosnell’s life and criminal trial highlighted the failure of state regulators to act on the multiple violations they found at the clinic on the three occasions they inspected the facility from its opening in 1979 through 1993. The film also noted beyond those inspections, the state received and still failed to respond to numerous complaints including alerts from a medical examiner’s office of Mongar’s death, an abortion of a 30-week-old whose mother was 14 and suffered complications, and patients contracting the same venereal disease after having abortions at the clinic. SBA Pro-life America, a Washington-based pro-life policy group, in a March 23 post on X announcing Gosnell’s death, called for change. The abortion industry today STILL fights health/safety standards, inspections, & transparency. Babies are STILL born alive after botched abortions and left to die without care in too many states. We need this to change NOW. This horror echoes in the DC 5 — five late-term babies…— SBA Pro-Life America (@sbaprolife) March 23, 2026 “The abortion industry today STILL fights health/safety standards, inspections, and transparency. Babies are still born alive after botched abortions and left to die without care in too many states. We need this to change now,” said the six-part post. Illinois Right to Life president Mary Kate Zander in a March 23 message about Gosnell’s death also pointed out regulatory inaction on the findings at his clinic and used it as a call to action in Illinois. “Because Illinois does not regularly inspect the State’s many abortion clinics, women who travel here for abortions, or who live here, are at risk for substandard care,” said Zander in the statement. “Even those citizens who support legal abortion want abortion to be ‘safe,’ — at least for the mother.” Illinois’s abortion policies are considered “very protective” according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion research and policy group that advocates for legal abortion. The state has done away with parental consent for minors to have abortions, calls itself a safe haven for out-of-state doctors who perform abortions their home states have made illegal, and mandated public college and university campus pharmacies stock drugs intended for abortion, among other measures. Pro-life advocates have said the industry has mostly gone unregulated in this state. “We are calling upon Governor (JB) Pritzker to put the health and safety of women first, and to reinstate regular, intentional, and thorough inspection of Illinois’ abortion clinics,” said Zander. Simone Orendain is an OSV News correspondent and writes from Chicago.