A former employee of Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic took the stand on Wednesday.
Elizabeth Hampton, who worked at the clinic periodically from 1999-2009, testified that she quit after noticing actions she “didn’t go along with.”
Hampton admitted that she had problems with alcohol until she went sober in 2006, but then resorted to drinking after she left the clinic.
“I left because of things I saw” she tearfully said.
Hampton was paid 10 dollars an hour under the table to clean the clinic 12 hours per day, 5 days per week. Despite calls from Gosnell and his wife Pearl, Hampton’s foster sister, she refused to return to the clinic until 2009, under financial pressures.
She added that employees were paid extra during second trimester abortions, and that she received 20 dollars per second trimester patient.
Hampton then testified regarding former patient Karnamaya Mongar, who went into cardiac arrest at the clinic during her abortion and later died at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
She said she gave Mongar two pills of Cytotec, a drug used to open the cervix and aid in the abortion process, despite receiving no medical training.
After Mongar was taken to HUP, Hampton said the clinic resumed business operations the same night and remained open the next day.
During the FBI investigation of the clinic, Hampton said that she wasn’t “totally truthful” with investigators because she was scared. She was later arrested for perjury in August 2010 and pleaded guilty.
After the investigation, Hampton said that Gosnell ordered the employees to clean and scrub the clinic. The first floor was repainted. When asked why he did so, Hampton replied “If he said to do something, we did it. We didn’t question him.”
During direct examination from the prosecution, Hampton said that Gosnell treated white patients differently.
“They would get better and more attention” she said.
Hampton added that white women would wait in cleaner rooms on the second floor, and that Gosnell was friendlier with them.
Cross-examination of Hampton will continue tomorrow. Steven Massof, an unlicensed doctor who worked with Gosnell and pleaded guilty to two counts of third-degree murder, will take the stand tomorrow.
