Karnamaya Mongar, a Nepalese woman and mother of three, immigrated to the United States in July of 2009 after losing a 4-year-old daughter to cholera and spending 20 years
of her life in a refugee camp. She became pregnant just as she arrived
to this country and felt her family was not ready for another child,
saying, “We just got started here.”
Just four months after her arrival in the United States, Mongar’s 4-foot-11, 110-pound body lay dead at the clinic of Dr. Kermit Gosnell in an impoverished Philadelphia neighborhood.
Today, the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, whose medical staff was
responsible for overdosing Mongar with the drug Demerol, is making
headlines. Among other charges, Gosnell is charged with third-degree
murder for the death of Mongar. He could be sentenced to death if found
guilty. Much of the trial coverage has focused on Gosnell and the
deplorable conditions in which his facilities were kept. Less attention
has been paid to the lived experiences of immigrant women trying to plan
their families, or to the larger political and legal environment that
creates fertile ground for the likes of Gosnell.
And so, I would like to remember, honor, and shed light on Mongar’s
story and the reasons she ended up in Gosnell’s house of horrors.
Mongar’s experience exposes the many barriers to health immigrant
women face, as well as the horrific side effects of anti-choice
policies. She and her family were among thousands of people
expelled from their homeland of Bhutan following pro-democracy protests
and were part of a humanitarian resettlement program. Her husband had
just found a job in a chicken factory in Virginia where they lived. When
she learned she was pregnant, Mongar sought to have an abortion in her
home state of Virginia. However, 85 percent
of Virginia counties did not have an abortion provider at all. Making
matters worse, at 19 weeks pregnant Mongar was in her second trimester,
after which Virginia legislation made it illegal for clinics (but not
hospitals) to administer abortions.
Frustrated after being unable to find a provider in Virginia or
Washington, D.C., that would serve her, Mongar went to Philadelphia to
see Dr. Gosnell, who was known for performing cheap abortions regardless
of gestational age. Mongar had no idea she would never return home. She
did not speak English, was made to sign documents that were not
translated for her, and was not given the pre-op counseling required by
state law. Her clinic experience was unsanitary and dangerous;
investigators discovered fetuses in the clinic’s toilet and stored in
jars, and medical staff were untrained and included a 15-year-old high
school student who administered anesthesia.
Gosnell’s clinic thrived because of legal and funding restrictions on
abortion. Victims were predominantly immigrant women, low-income women,
and women of color who had little access to information and financial
resources. In addition to Mongar, another woman died at Gosnell’s clinic
in 2000 from a perforated uterus, and many more suffered from
perforated bowels and cervixes. Some women were even made sterile.
Keeping abortion services legal, physically accessible, and
affordable can help prevent horror stories like Mongar’s. If Virginia
legislation allowed clinics to perform second-trimester abortions and if
safe abortion providers were affordable and more numerous throughout
the state, perhaps Karnamaya Mongar would be alive today. Keeping
abortion legal and making it accessible means women’s health and safety
will be ensured. Studies have shown
that restricting abortion does not mean women will not find a way to
get an abortion. Moreover, the Hyde Amendment, which bans Medicaid
funding of abortion, gives poor women very few safe options. Faced with
an unwanted pregnancy and limited financial resources, many women are
forced to risk their health and, in some cases, their lives.
As immigrant women continue to seek better lives in the United States—currently 51 percent
of immigrants in the United States are women—we cannot neglect the
impact health-care policies and anti-choice legislation have on their
lives. This is why, at the National Asian Pacific American Women’s
Forum, I work to ensure abortion care is affordable and advocate for
health care for immigrant women. Immigrant women deserve safe,
affordable reproductive health services—not a house of horrors.
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