Did Harry Reid Really Say Abortion Protesters Forced Women to Go to Murdering Doctors Like Gosnell?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) during a press conference on Tuesday was asked a simple question by a reporter for the conservative news site The Weekly Standard.

The reporter wondered if Reid supported Mike Lee's proposed bill that would limit late-term abortions in the District of Columbia. (There are currently no limits on abortion in the nation's capital.)

Image: YouTube

The Senator from Nevada did not give a direct answer to the question. Instead, he took the opportunity to place the blame for Gosnell's atrocities squarely on those who, he says, are responsible for the house of horrors in Philadelphia: anti-abortion advocates.

"Do you support Senator Lee's bill or do you oppose that?" the Weekly Standard reporter asked.

"Listen," Sen. Reid responded, "and I know you're all trying to... What led to the convictions of murder for this man is that people have been pushed back into these holes to do something that's legal."

Reid's rambling (non) answer to the question continued:

I think all this picketing of these clinics, throwing chemicals into them so you can't use them...you can't get the chemicals out...all these restrictive laws...the law of the land now is what the Supreme Court has said. And I think to keep pushing these clinics back to situations where they wind up like this is wrong.

Reid, who has stated in the past to be "pro-life," seemed to take a strong pro-abortion stance in his concluding remarks on the subject.

I think that no matter how you stand on the issue of abortion, people who make that decision, should do it and not be worried about infections and some butcher like this doing the bad things he did. It should be in a place that's clean and sterile and have people that know what they're doing and care about what they do.

Watch Reid respond to the question here:

Follow Mike Opelka on Twitter @stuntbrain

(H/T: The Weekly Standard's John McCormack).