Activists and commentators on both sides of the abortion issue reacted to the Kermit Gosnell verdict.
Pro-abortion organizations condemned Gosnell but turned the decision around to argue against restrictive abortion laws.
“Anti-choice politicians…will only drive more women to back-alley butchers like Kermit Gosnell,” said Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America in a statement. She said Pennsylvania had received an ‘F’ from NARAL because of its “medically unnecessary laws that restrict access to safe and legal abortion care,” implying that Gosnell’s back alley-style abortion mill was the result of abortion limits.
“This case has made clear that we must have and enforce laws that protect access to safe and legal abortion, and we must reject misguided laws that would limit women’s options and force them to seek treatment from criminals like Kermit Gosnell,” stated Eric Ferrero, vice president for communications of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Pro-life groups applauded the decision, but hoped it would lead to closer scrutiny of the abortion industry.
“This could spell the end of Roe v. Wade,” said Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, in a news release. “For the first time, America has gotten a long hard look at the horrors that go on inside abortion clinics … Gosnell is not alone by any means.”
“Regulating abortion mills or the act of abortion will not solve this terror against the innocent,” said Judie Brown, president of American Life League, in a press release. “Abortion is a filthy business, and shiny clean abortion chambers do nothing to change the grievous crime to the most innocent.”
Janet Morana, executive director of Priests for Life and co-founder of Silent No More Awareness Campaign, said that the verdict, “provides a measure of justice for all women harmed by abortion.”
“Gosnell is found guilty simply because, according to the law, he killed these babies the wrong way,” said Monica Migliorino Miller, director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society. “If he had ended their lives while they were still within their mothers’ wombs, legal authorities would have sanctioned and protected those killings.”
Members of the media chimed in, too.
“Gosnell, though a villain in his own right, is also the product of a system that has recklessly abandoned its responsibilities to the public,” Walter Russell Mead wrote on his blog for The American Interest. “That we live in a country that monitors the size of our sodas, but fails to monitor our abortion clinics, is a sign of broken politics.” He also asks what pro-abortion organizations like Planned Parenthood are doing about such cases.
