Acceptable Bigotry: Prejudice Against the Child in the Womb
Floor Speech
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I do thank the gentlelady for her very powerful and eloquent statement in defense of the innocent unborn child.
Mr. Speaker, earlier today, an abortionist in Philadelphia, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, was arrested and charged in the death of a mother and seven babies who were born alive but then killed by severing their spinal cords with a pair of scissors.
According to the CBS TV affiliate in Philadelphia, the district attorney said that in 1 year alone, Dr. Gosnell made approximately $1.8 million performing abortions.
The abortion industry, Mr. Speaker, is a multibillion dollar business. Planned Parenthood boasts that in 2008 alone, their abortionists killed over 324,000 babies, while raking in approximately $1 billion in fees and local, State, and Federal Government subsidies. The ugly truth is that abortionists often get filthy rich not by healing or nurturing or curing, but by dismembering and decapitating the fragile bodies of unborn children, by starving the child in the womb with lethal agents like RU486 or by other means of chemical poisoning. The ugly truth is that women are victimized by abortion, wounded and hurt physically, psychologically, and emotionally. Women deserve better than abortion.
The only thing the multibillion dollar abortion industry has produced in America and worldwide is victims, wounded women and over 52 million dead babies in the United States alone since 1973, more than six times the entire population of my home State of New Jersey. The multibillion dollar abortion industry systematically dehumanizes the weakest and most vulnerable among us with catchy slogans, slick advertising, clever marketing, and very aggressive lobbying, particularly here.
They have made the unacceptable--to be prejudiced and bigoted against a child in the womb--acceptable to some. This acceptable bigotry has been promoted for decades, despite breathtaking advances in fetal medicine, including microsurgery, underscoring the fact that an unborn child is a patient in need of care, diagnosis and care, just like anyone else, and despite the amazing window to the womb, ultrasound imaging.
In 1976, Dr. Willard Cates and David Grimes, then with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, presented a paper to a Planned Parenthood meeting entitled, and I quote this directly, ``Abortion as a Treatment for Unintended Pregnancy: The Number Two Sexually Transmitted Disease.'' These two abortion doctors reduced the child in the womb to a disease, to a parasite, to something that had to be vanquished. As far as I know, no one at Planned Parenthood objected to this dehumanizing language and obvious bigotry towards children.
Mr. Speaker, the evidence of significant harm to women who abort increases each and every year. Abortion hurts women's health and puts future children subsequently born to women who abort at significant risk. At least 102 studies show significant psychological harm, major depression, and elevated suicide risk in women who abort. The Times of London reported that senior psychiatrists ``say that new evidence has uncovered a clear link between abortion and mental illness in women with no previous history of psychological problems.'' They found that ``women who have had abortions have twice the level of psychological problems and three times the level of depression as women who have given birth or who have never been pregnant.''
In 2006, a comprehensive New Zealand study found that almost 80 percent of the 15- to 18-year-olds who had abortions displayed symptoms of major depression as compared to 31 percent of their peers. The study also found that 27 percent of the 21- to 25-year-olds who had abortions had suicidal idealizations compared to 8 percent of those who did not have an abortion.
Abortion isn't safe for subsequent children born to women who have had an abortion. And this fact is so underappreciated in the United States, and really around the world. At least 113 studies show a significant association between abortion and subsequent premature births. One study by researchers Shah and Zoe showed a 36 percent increased risk for preterm births after one abortion, and a staggering 93 percent increased risk after two. Same goes for low birth weight, similar percentages.
So what does this mean for the children? Preterm birth is the leading cause of infant mortality in the industrialized world after congenital anomalies. Preterm infants have a greater risk of suffering chronic lung disease, sensory deficits, cerebral palsy, cognitive impairments, and behavioral problems. Low birth weight is similarly associated with neonatal mortality and morbidity. Abortion causes great harm to children, to mothers.
Dr. Alveda King, niece of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, who we honored just this past Monday, has joined the growing coalition of women who deeply regret their abortions, and are, as they call themselves, Silent No More. Out of deep personal pain and compassion for others, Dr. King, who has had two abortions herself, and the other women of Silent No More challenge us to respect, protect, and tangibly love both the mother and the child. The women of Silent No More give post-abortive women a safe place to grieve and a road map to reconciliation.
This week, with the full and unequivocal support of Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor, more than 125 Members and I will introduce the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, a government-wide prohibition on taxpayer subsidization for abortion and conscience protections with durable remedies.
Abortion is not health care. We know that. And polls show that taxpayers strongly oppose publicly funded abortion, 67 percent, according to a recent university poll. Our new bill is designed to permanently end any U.S. Government financial support for abortion, whether it be direct funding, or by tax credits, or by any other subsidy.
Regarding conscience rights, last year Cathy DeCarlo, a nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, was compelled, despite her strong moral and religious objections, to assist in a grisly D&E abortion, which has been described by the U.S. Supreme Court as a procedure where the doctors use forceps to literally tear apart the unborn child. The child often feels pain. It's done later in pregnancy. D&E is a gruesome act of child abuse.
Ms. DeCarlo sued, asserting her right to conscience had been violated under existing Federal law, namely, the Church amendment. Her case was dismissed, however, due to the lack of prescribed remedies. The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act protects conscience rights of individuals and institutions, entities as we call them, by empowering the courts with the authority to prevent and redress actual or threatened violations of conscience.
Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to yield to my good friend and colleague Doug Lamborn, who has been a great defender of life.
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I yield now to the gentlewoman from Ohio, Jean Schmidt. I don't think there has been a single battle on the life issue that she has not been speaking out in front, speaking in defense of the unborn and their mothers.
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Thank you so much for your statement and for your emphasis on adoption, an alternative that is often forgotten, and it provides such a meaningful way for building a family. Thank you for that.
I yield to Marlin Stutzman, the distinguished gentleman from Indiana.
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I thank the gentlelady for her statement and for her leadership. This class, and I think the American public would really appreciate this, of 87 Members elected on this side of the aisle, they are overwhelmingly pro-life, and more pro-life women than ever now sit as Members of Congress. It is really very encouraging.
I would like to yield to my good friend and
colleague from Illinois, Bob Schilling.
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Mr. Schilling, thank you very much for your great statement. And your comments about your child saying, who will defend the baby? I remember a woman by the name of Jean Garton who was with Lutherans for Life. She was preparing a slide show of actual abortions, which are hideous to behold, but it is a reality that has to be understood to know what abortion really is. And her young child walked in and said, Mommy, who broke the baby? looking up at the shattered bodies of unborn children. So from the mouths of children, truth is spoken.
I would like to welcome back to the House, as we all do, Steve Pearce, a Member from New Mexico. We are just so glad to have you back.
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I thank the gentleman for his leadership and the expertise of being an OB-GYN who has been there and knows better than almost all of us how sacred and fragile the life is of an unborn child, as well as his or her mother.
I would like to yield to Jim Lankford from Oklahoma and thank him for being here this evening.
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Dr. BROUN, thank you for your eloquence and your kind remarks, and I want to thank you for your leadership. Again, as a medical doctor, I think you and Dr. ROE and the other docs bring such credibility.
I hope Americans are listening. I hope my friends on the other side of the aisle who take the other side of this issue will begin listening. There needs to be a reevaluation. America needs to take a second look, a long and sustained look at the surface appeal arguments of the abortion rights side.
Abortion is violence against children. It dismembers a child; it decapitates a child; it chemically poisons a child. One of our earlier speakers talked about RU486 and how tailor-made abortions are being promoted by Planned Parenthood. RU486 actually operates in two ways. The first chemical starves the baby to death so the child in utero, the child in the womb simply cannot get nourishment to continue living. The second chemical brings about the expulsion of that baby--who is usually dead, but not always. If that isn't child abuse, if the other methods of abortion are not child abuse, I don't know what is.
This idea that life begins at birth belongs in another era, especially with ultrasound technologies available, as several of my colleagues have said, the ``window to the womb.'' As a matter of fact, it should be noted that even the leading pro-abortion activists in the 1960s and early 1970s, Dr. Bernard Nathanson from New York, one of the three cofounders of NARAL, which is one of the leading pro-abortion groups in the country, Dr. Nathanson said he presided over 60,000 deaths to children as he ran the largest abortion clinic in New York City. He went on to become a pro-lifer. And what caused that huge change of heart both in his mind and in his heart? It was that he began doing blood transfusions and began to see that an unborn child is a patient just like any other patient who may be sick, have a disability, that early efforts and interventions could mitigate whatever that anomaly might be. And because of that he said, how can I be in one room killing a baby with poison or dismemberment while in another doctor's office or in another operating theater providing this prenatal surgery? He saw the schizophrenia inherent in treating some children because they're wanted as being acceptable, and we welcome them, and if they are unwanted, they're throwaways. The feminists had it right when they said no woman should ever be treated as an object. Well, we all know that the unborn child, if he or she is unwanted, is treated like an object and a throwaway, and no human life is a throwaway.
Let me also say that Abby Johnson, who just recently, a little over a year ago, left a Planned Parenthood directorship in Texas--what caused her to change? She saw an ultrasound abortion in real time and said, I just saw the baby crumple right in front of my very eyes. If that isn't a human rights abuse, I don't know what is either. So she became a pro-lifer and now speaks out very, very boldly.
Finally, Dr. Alveda King, as I mentioned earlier, is Martin Luther King's niece. Dr. King had two abortions. She was a ``pro-choicer.'' She now is one of the most eloquent pro-life leaders in the United States and even in the world. She has said, ``How can the dream survive''--talking about her uncle's dream of inclusion, of human rights, of civil rights for all--``how can the dream survive,'' she writes, ``if we murder the children?''
She goes on to talk about how the African American population in this country is so disproportionately targeted by Planned Parenthood and others. The number of abortions for African Americans is about five times the rate of Caucasians and it is because of targeting. There are other reasons, but that is one of the main reasons. That's where the Planned Parenthood clinics are, frankly.
Abortion hurts women, she makes it so clear. She is eloquent in her defense, as are others, in ministering to women who have had abortions. One thing about this pro-life movement--and I've been in it for 38 years, I've been in Congress for 31 years--it loves them both. It says to both the mother and to the baby, we want to put our arms around you, we want to help, we want to be of assistance. And to any post-abortive woman, we are all about trying to help and to assist and provide some kind of pathway to reconciliation. That's where the
post-abortive women like Dr. Alveda King play such a crucial role in helping women who otherwise would feel so dis en fran chised and left out.
I want to thank our leadership, Speaker Boehner, our majority leader, Eric Cantor. We have a very pro-life leadership who recognizes how sacred life is, how this Congress, this House needs to defend the defenseless. Tomorrow, I will be joining the distinguished Speaker as he speaks on the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. We will be having a press conference tomorrow. We have over 125 cosponsors. I have never seen a leadership so dedicated to protecting innocent human life as these individuals in our leadership. I would hope my friends on the other side of the aisle would take a second long look at the carnage, the unbelievable pain and agony and suffering that abortion has visited upon women. It is not pro-women. Abortion exploits women. And it's certainly not pro-child either because it decimates unborn children as well.
So we have a great leadership. We have an excellent group of Members, men and women, Democrats and Republicans. And I do hope that we will move this human rights issue forward. The young people are with us, and this is the greatest human rights struggle ever.
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