Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2003

Floor Speech

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

It is actually insulting and certainly annoying that there is some sort of accusation that those of us who think that the substitute is preferable do not care about women and do not care about the babies that they are carrying. As a mother, as a grandmother of four children, we have to recognize this bill for what it is. If we want to go after protecting pregnant women, we ought to go after protecting pregnant women, not about threatening to take away their right to choose, which this is a thinly veiled effort to do because we are trying to create a special status of human being, of a fetus, of an unborn child. While I kind of admire the strategy, it does not get to the heart of this issue.

The proponents say we have to have this bill to protect pregnant women from violence, but the truth is this bill does not even address crimes committed against the woman at all, it only addresses the new crime created in this bill, which is a crime against a zygote, an embryo, a fetus. Furthermore, this bill would not even apply to the tragic Laci Peterson, as we understand the facts of the case, and as is true in the vast majority of domestic violence cases. Those crimes are covered by State law and not Federal law.

H.R. 1997 only touches on few and rare instances when pregnant women could be harmed by someone committing a Federal crime. The undisputed aim of this bill is to move forward a calculated anti-choice agenda in which embryos and fetuses are codified into law as humans with all of the human rights afforded people in our society. This would bring us one step closer to overturning Roe v. Wade and taking away a woman's constitutional right to choose.

Instead, if we truly care about protecting pregnant women from violence and creating stiffer penalties for those who harm pregnant women, we should pass the substitute to this bill, known as the Motherhood Protection Act. The substitute recognizes that the pregnant woman is a victim when she is assaulted, instead of making the fetus distinct and separate from the woman, which anybody who is pregnant or has been pregnant knows is really not when you are carrying that child. The substitute classifies assault against her and assault on her pregnancy as two crimes, both crimes against the woman. Unlike H.R. 1997, the substitute gets to the heart of the matter: protecting pregnant women from violence.

I urge my colleagues to vote no on H.R. 1997 and yes on the substitute amendment.

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