UNITED States House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal if.) has asserted that Congress is “rigged” to suppress the interests of women and keep their voices out of the discussion, a day after Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) and an all-male panel of his colleagues advanced a bill to restrict abortion rights across the U.S..

“This is an environment that is almost rigged, intentionally or not, wittingly or not, rigged so that the status quo just goes on,” Pelosi told The Huffington Post in an interview.

“We have to kick open the door and make our own environment, reduce the role of money (in campaigns), insist on the civility of debates, and bring more women here, and that’s a better reflection of our country.”

Pelosi said that as a mother of five children, it infuriates her to see an all-male subcommittee pushing a bill to restrict women’s reproductive rights.

“What right — I mean, really, I guess they’re elected, they have a committee, they write a bill, but by what moral authority are they to make such a suggestion?” she said.

“It always gets me because I have five children. When I brought my baby home, Alexandra, my oldest was turning six. As a practicing Catholic, I think I have the credentials to talk about this subject.”

Any of you who’ve had five children in six years can step up to the plate.”

Republicans threatened to shut down the federal government over Planned Parenthood funding in early 2011, and women’s reproductive rights have been the subject of contentious political debate ever since. Pelosi said that conflict, and the subsequent fury over the birth control coverage requirement in the Affordable Care Act, has really brought to light something she had noticed in Congress for years.