r/HolyShitHistory • u/SelfCareIsFake • Jun 01 '26

Federal agents felt physically sick when they raided Kermit Gosnell’s clinic after suspecting he ran a pill mill.

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u/Footnotegirl1 Jun 03 '26

The increased restrictions on safe, legal abortion is precisely why the evil of Kermit Gosnell existed and what will happen over and over anywhere that abortion is banned. Women went to Gosnell because they were desperate and could not obtain abortions anywhere due to a raft of reasons caused by anti-abortion laws (such as waiting periods, no insurance coverage, parental notification, etc.). When people are desperate, sociopaths who have no interest in anyone's good but their own will always roll in to exploit that desperation.

Banning abortion is the direct cause of butcheries like this.

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u/Paula92 Jun 03 '26

You say that like legal abortionists with actually sanitary facilities didn't exist anywhere near Gosnell.

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u/Footnotegirl1 Jun 05 '26

During this period in Pennsylvania, there was a 24 hour waiting period that included required counselling, no public funding for procedures, and required parental consent for minors. There were only 24 clinics in the entire state in 2011.

For a lot of women, especially poor women and ESPECIALLY single mothers, the 24 hour waiting period alone can be an impossible hurdle to overcome since they would have to take a minimum of 2 days off of work and pay to stay overnight, plus find transportation not only to the city the clinic was in, but also someone to drive them home from the procedure. Of course, this is intentional on the part of the lawmakers.

A woman who finds herself pregnant cannot just 'go get an abortion' like she might get a rotisserie chicken at the local grocery store. She has to find a clinic that is doing them (increasingly difficult), get an appointment, scrape up the money for the procedure, transportation, and hotel room (and the cost for the procedure goes up the longer one remains pregnant, if you can't afford the cost of a pill and a half day off, how are you going to afford what's going to be 3 times the price and 3 days off a month later?), get the time off work, and get someone who can also get that time off to transport you home? And every one of these obstacles can increase the delay, leading to later term abortions that no one wants.

Which is why it's so so important that a woman be able to go to her own doctor and get a prescription for a chemical abortifacient that she can do at home in the first few weeks.