Gosnell pleads not guilty to federal drug charges

A West Philadelphia abortionist facing state murder charges pleaded not guilty to federal drug charges today.

Kermit Gosnell, 70, who has been in state custody, was ordered by a federal magistrate to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons on the federal charges.

No trial date has been set.

Federal prosecutors charged Gosnell last month with using his medical office as a pill mill to dispense thousands of prescriptions for highly-addictive painkillers to cash-paying customers between 2008 and January 2010.

Gosnell faces a mandatory minimum 20 years in a federal lockup if convicted of all drug charges.

The indictment said Gosnell distributed hundreds of thousands of oxycodone and alprazolam pills and 19,000 bottles of cough syrup containing codeine from 2008 to Jan. 2010. The drugs were later sold on the street for cash, prosecutors said.

Gosnell is presently awaiting a March 2013 trial date in state court, charged with murder in the 2009 death of a Virginia woman undergoing an abortion and with killing seven newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors.

He has also pleaded not guilty to those charges.