Pro-life advocates have been using the trial of Kermit Gosnell to advocate an agenda that would ultimately send more women into dangerous clinics run by monsters like him, NARAL President Ilyse Hogue said on Monday's PoliticsNation.
"I'm angered. I go to work every single morning to prevent women from falling into the clutches of Kermit Gosnell," she said, adding, "The anti-choice extremists are the ones that keep the Gosnells in business and we'll just see more of it if they get their way."
Congressional Republicans have used the case to justify new restrictions on abortion, from ending Federal funding for organizations like Planned Parenthood to enacting new restrictions on late-term abortions.
If federal funding for abortion were to end, poor women would be left to deal with more men like Gosnell, who is accused of killing several late-term fetuses by snipping their spinal cords after they were born alive, and of murdering a woman who overdosed on sedatives while waiting for an abortion. He has plead not guilty and his lawyers have argued there was no evidence the fetuses were "alive" when their necks were snipped.
Hogue argues that decreasing funding for abortions helped drive more poor women to Gosnell's Philadelphia clinic. "Pennsylvania got an F in our Who Decides? report simply because they don't make funding available for this kind of medical procedure," she said.
According to reporting from RH Reality Check, Gosnell provided services at cheaper prices thanmore reputable competitors in the Philadelphia, easily driving poor women to his clinic. One patient said she chose Gosnell's clinic over a Planned Parenthood facility because she faced protesters. "The picketers out there, they just scared me half to death," she said.
Responding to critics on the right arguing the case has been subject to a media blackout, Hogue said "I want more media scrutiny on this case because that's only way to turn these anti-choice extremist crocodile tears into policies that actually protect women by not throwing up obstacles for them getting safe and legal abortions."
"The same voices that are talking about trying to make this a mandate on abortion care are the same voices that would keep these same poor women from accessing contraception. They simply don't believe that women should have choices over their own future," she added.
Planned Parenthood is already barred from any federal funds for abortion services, which make up only 3% of its services, although it does receive federal grants to subsidize contraception, cancer screenings, sexually transmitted infection screenings and other health services for low-income women.
That's why Hogue believes that "anti-choice extremists are the ones who keep Gosnells in office."