2 abortion-clinic workers plead guilty, 1 might testify against Gosnell

ONE OF the two women who pleaded guilty to committing third-degree murder inside a fetus-littered, illegal abortion clinic could testify against the disgraced doctor who owned the business, her attorney said yesterday.

"I can't guarantee that. That's up to the commonwealth," attorney Michael Wallace said of the possibility of Sherry West taking the stand against Dr. Kermit Gosnell and the case's other six defendants awaiting trial.

Wallace said he will advise West, 52, to cooperate with prosecutors.

"She's been cooperating. Is there a reason why she shouldn't cooperate?" Wallace told reporters after West and co-defendant Adrienne Moton, 34, entered guilty pleas at the Criminal Justice Center.

Assistant District Attorneys Christine Wechsler and Joanne Pescatore declined to comment.

West, of Newark, Del., and Moton, of Upper Darby, remained jailed and were given tentative sentencing dates of Dec. 2. Both women were unlicensed employees of Gosnell's Women's Medical Society clinic on Lancaster Avenue.

Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner told each in separate hearings that their pleas came with no deals from prosecutors and that they faced the possibility of being sentenced to more than 100 years in prison and fined more than $100,000.

Gosnell, 70, could face the death penalty if convicted. He is charged with the first-degree murders of seven babies who investigators said were born alive but had their spinal cords cut at the clinic. He is also charged with the third-degree murder of Karnamaya Mongar, 41, a clinic patient who died in November 2009 from an overdose of 17 drugs prescribed by the doctor.

Moton pleaded guilty to four charges, the most serious being the third-degree murder of "Baby D," one of the seven babies.

Lerner ordered a mental-health evaluation of West after she told him that she takes Prozac for depression and that she sees a psychiatrist.

West pleaded guilty to the third-degree murder of Mongar and to four related charges.