Karnamaya Mongar survived 20 years in a refugee camp after fleeing war-torn Bhutan, but died months after arriving in the US in 2009 and seeking an abortion.
Mongar, 41, is the subject of one of eight murder counts in the ongoing Philadelphia trial of Kermit Gosnell. Gosnell, an abortion provider, is also charged with killing seven babies allegedly born alive.
Through a translator, Mongar’s daughter testified on Tuesday about the labor-inducing drugs and painkillers her mother was given as she waited hours for Gosnell to arrive one night for the second-trimester procedure.
Yashoda Gurung, now 24, had stayed with her mother in a waiting area and tried to say goodbye before her mother was moved to the procedure room.
“My mom was sleeping. That’s what I thought. I tried to wake her up and the lady said: ‘Leave her alone,’” Gurung told jurors on Tuesday, speaking through a translator.
Prosecutors believe Gosnell’s untrained, unlicensed staff gave the 1.5m Mongar a lethal combination of oral and intravenous drugs, and failed to properly monitor her vital signs or attempt to resuscitate her when things went wrong. She was pronounced dead the next day at a hospital.
“They said: ‘I’m sorry. The situation was bad when we got her,’” another relative, Damber Ghalley, testified.
Gosnell’s lawyer, Jack McMahon, has argued that Mongar had unreported respiratory damage and died of unforeseen complications. Mongar was 19 weeks pregnant, well within the 24-week limit in Pennsylvania.
Ghalley, who had waited outside, said he talked to Gosnell as Mongar was being carried out to an ambulance, and Gosnell insisted he had done nothing wrong.
“He said: ‘The procedure was done. Your sister’s heart stopped,’” said Ghalley, who had driven Mongar and her daughter to the clinic from their home in rural Virginia, five hours away.
Clinic employee Sherry West jumped in Ghalley’s car to accompany the family to the hospital. She said everything would be fine, Gurung testified. However, the next day doctors told the family otherwise. Mongar had died.
Ghalley said he saw Gosnell outside the hospital picking up West.
“He said the same thing: The procedure was done. I didn’t do anything wrong. I would be able to answer any person, anywhere,” Ghalley recalled. “He did not express any sympathy.”
On cross-examination, Gurung conceded that the staff had checked on her mother as they sat together in the clinic’s waiting area, and had her blood pressure taken. Prosecutors have alleged during the month-long trial that no one properly monitored patients at the clinic.
In addition to the murder charges, Gosnell is also charged with violating Pennsylvania abortion law by performing abortions after 24 weeks.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
RSS