In the debate over reproductive rights in America, there is almost no such thing as a new idea. But new stories and images can refresh shopworn arguments. Hence the pro-life movement’s interest in the trial of Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortion provider whose name is coming up in legislative battles across the country.

Gosnell, for those who missed the story, is on trial this spring for crimes that might very well make him the worst abortion practitioner in post-Roe v. Wade America. He is charged, among other things, with aborting fetuses into toilets in his blood- and feces-smeared clinic, the Women's Medical Society; using broken equipment and dangerous sedatives to save money; intentionally targeting disadvantaged and desperate clients by offering abortions on the cheap and past Pennsylvania's 24-week legal cutoff; employing unlicensed staff members to treat nonwhite patients while seeing the white patients himself; killing infants that he accidentally aborted alive by, as he called it, “snipping” their spinal cords with scissors; causing the death of one woman, who overdosed on sedatives at his staff's hands; and perforating the uteruses, cervixes, and bowels of other patients, one whom died of an ensuing infection.

When Gosnell’s trial began in March, the conservative media pounced on major outlets, accusing them of ignoring the story because of liberal bias. The finger-pointing that ensued (on both sides of the partisan divide) almost drowned out the logic at the center of the anti-abortion movement's original accusation: that pro-choice liberals kept the story out of the papers because they knew it hurt their cause, and that anyone who supports the right to abortion is responsible for Gosnell’s atrocities. It's not just a media story, though: Conservative activists and legislators, many of whom have been trying to do away with abortion for years, see political potential in this gruesome tale.

When you think about the fact that Gosnell's alleged practices put him in flagrant, intentional violation of the law, it seems silly that his name is now a rallying cry for more legislation. But the accounts of lethally low standards in his clinic lend themselves all too well to one of the pro-life cause’s most powerful strategies: “TRAP” laws. (The acronym stands for Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers.) These are seemingly minor requirements that purport to protect women’s health, but that in fact make it vastly more difficult or expensive for doctors to provide abortions. Most commonly, they force clinics to go through burdensome and expensive building renovations or licensing processes, or mandate that doctors who provide abortions have hospital admitting privileges—which many hospitals in southern and rural areas withhold from anyone who does the procedure. TRAP laws are arbitrary measures; conservatives like them specifically because they put clinics out of business. But what better figure than Gosnell—who hired a fifteen-year-old to assist with procedures, and left his hallways so cluttered that a stretcher bearing a woman in critical condition allegedly could not fit through—to distract from TRAP laws’ true purpose, and their irrelevance to women's safety?

Sure enough, Gosnell has been a popular conservative bogeyman in TRAP fights since the grand jury report of his crimes came out in January 2011. Unsurprisingly, he had the most direct influence in Pennsylvania. After the raid on the Women’s Medical Society, an “Ambulatory Surgical Center” requirement that had until then failed to clear the legislature speedily passed. "ASC" regulations are building codes for facilities that perform complex procedures; with the exception of abortion clinics, they are not imposed on outpatient centers—like dentist’s and dermatologist’s offices—that perform minor, low-risk surgeries. Keep in mind that abortion has a complication rate of under 0.3 percent. In 2011, a Democratic state representative whose 22-year-old cousin died of sepsis after going to Gosnell said on the floor, “"I honor her memory by voting for this bill … so women will no longer walk into a licensed health-care facility and be butchered as she was." According to Andrew Hoover of the Pennsylvania ACLU, “Gosnell was the driving force" in the debate.