Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX)

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX)

“Democrats do not want abortion to be safe or rare,” Stockman said in a statement. “Democrats oppose even the most basic of health and safety standards for abortion mills. Democrats don’t care how many women are maimed, infected with diseases or die on the routinely-filthy abortion mills. Democrats worship abortion with same fervor the Canaanites worshipped Molech.” [...] “The courts call it murder. Democrats call it ‘health care,’” Stockman said. “Despite the blood-soaked horror of Gosnell’s clinic, Democrats refuse to loosen their embrace of unrestricted, unregulated, taxpayer-funded abortion on demand.”

One of the main reasons Gosnell was able to operate in the first place was that he preyed on women who felt that they couldn't get better abortion services elsewhere. At least one patient told reporters that she feared going to Planned Parenthood because of the protesters. Gosnell mostly exploited women's poverty, undercutting reputable clinics on their prices. For many women in poverty, getting the money together for a clean, safe abortion takes a long time, often so long that they are past the time when they can legally get one. Gosnell was waiting to scoop those women up and subject them and their families to his violent parody of medical care.

Given that Rep. Steve Stockman has previously managed to link gun control and abortion by suggesting that "If babies had guns, they wouldn't be aborted," his latest mouth-foaming over abortion maybe shouldn't come as a surprise. Taking the verdict against Philadelphia's Dr. Kermit Gosnell as a launching pad, Stockman had this to say:In actual fact, not only have Democratic politicians pretty widely condemned Gosnell, but pro-choice advocates have pointed out that the filthy, horrifying conditions in Gosnell's clinic were enabled by restrictions on the availability of safe, responsible abortions:If we actually had taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, in other words, poor women wouldn't be forced to turn to butchers like Gosnell, who operated in the kind of conditions that women seeking abortions routinely faced pre-Roe—the kind of conditions that would once again be the most common abortion experience if Stockman's goal of criminalization became a reality. Not that Stockman, who voted against not only the bipartisan version of the Violence Against Women Act but voted against the restrictive Republican VAWA as well, gives one shred of a damn about women's health.