Forty Years of Victims' Legacy of Abortion

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, 40 years ago today marks the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous, reckless, and inhumane abandonment of women and babies to abortionists. Forty years of victims, dead babies, wounded women, shattered families. Forty years of government-sanctioned violence against women and children. Since 1973, more than 55 million children have been killed by abortion, a staggering loss of children's precious lives, a death toll that equates to the entire population of England.

The passage of time hasn't changed the fact that abortion is a serious, lethal violation of fundamental human rights; and that women and children deserve better, much better; and that the demands of justice, generosity, and compassion require that the right to life be guaranteed to everyone, regardless of age, sex, race, condition of dependency, disability, or stage of development.

Rather than obscure or dull our consciousness to the unmitigated violence of abortion, the passage of time has only enabled us to see and better understand the innate cruelty of abortion and its horrific legacy--victims--while making us more determined than ever to protect the weakest and most vulnerable and end the mass deception by the abortion industry.

Earlier today, Linda Shrewsbury, an academic and an African American with a degree from Harvard, who had an abortion, told a 40 Years Of Victims press conference:

The lies that brought me to that day and its sorrowful aftermath are crystal clear in my mind: falsehoods and deceptions that concealed the truth about abortion. Lies planted in my thinking by clever marketing, media campaigns, and endless repetition led to a tragic, irreversible decision--the death of my first child.

She goes on to say:

It's past time to lance the national wound of abortion with truth. The high culture--thought leaders, media, celebrities--that brought us abortion seem vested beyond extraction.

She said she ``dreamed of the volcano of abortion truth that could erupt one day from the grass-roots--women and men and their relatives witnessing to their suppressed emotion, unspoken trauma, and lived pain. With abortion denial ended, we as a society could then reconnect with reality and life.''

Clearly, Mr. Speaker, there are seemingly ominous present-day signs that hinder ending abortion denial and a reconnection with reality and life. Certainly the re-election of the abortion President Barack Obama, public funding for abortion in the ObamaCare health exchanges that come online in 2014, a massive increase of public funding for abortion, the use of coercion to compel religious believers and entrepreneurs to violate their consciences, slick advertising, and the export of abortion worldwide.

And it is deeply troubling that despite the fact that Planned Parenthood claims direct responsibility for killing over 6 million unborn babies in their clinics, including a record 333,964 abortions in 2011 alone, Planned Parenthood remains President Obama's favorite organization.

Despite these and many obstacles, however, we will never quit. In adversity, our faith and trust in God is tested, but it also deepens and overcomes and forges an indomitable, yet humble, spirit.

The pro-life movement--and I've been in it for 41 years--is comprised of some of the noblest, caring, smart, and selfless people I have ever met. They make up an extraordinarily powerful, nonviolent, faith-filled human rights struggle that is growing in public support, intensity, commitment, and hope.

The compassionate women and men who staff thousands of pregnancy care centers, many of the women being post-abortive themselves who try to save women from that irreversible decision, help women who are experiencing unexpected pregnancies, and they provide tangible assistance and an enormous amount of love and emotional support both before and after the birth of a child.

The pro-life movement is not only on the side of compassion, justice, and inclusion. We are on the right side of responsible science and of history.

Someday future generations will look back on America and wonder how and why such a seemingly enlightened society, so blessed and endowed with education, advanced science, information, wealth, and opportunity, could have failed to protect the innocent and the inconvenient. They will wonder how and why a Nobel Peace Prize-winning President could also simultaneously have been the abortion President.

Dr. Alveda King, niece of the late Dr. Martin King, who had two abortions but is now solidly pro-life, said in one of her speeches:

My Uncle Martin had a dream. He dreamt that we would live out that which is self-evident, that all men are created equal. He called on America to admit our wrongs and turn from them. Today, I call on all of us, regardless of nationality, race, or religion, to admit our wrongs and turn from them. I believe that the denial of the right to life is the greatest injustice we face in the world today. There is no compassion in killing. There is no justice in writing people out of the human race.

History, Mr. Speaker, will not look favorably on today's abortion culture. We must, indeed and instead, work tirelessly to replace it with a culture of life.

[Begin Insert]

Mr. Speaker, forty years ago today marks the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous, reckless and inhumane abandonment of women and babies to abortionists.

Forty years of victims--dead babies, wounded women, shattered families.

Forty years of government sanctioned violence against women and children.

Since 1973, more than 55 million children have been killed by abortion--a staggering loss of children's precious lives--a death toll that equates to the entire population of England.

The passage of time hasn't changed the fact that abortion is a serious, lethal violation of fundamental human rights. And that women and children deserve better--much better. And that the demands of justice, generosity and compassion require that the right to life be guaranteed to everyone, regardless of age, sex, race, condition of dependency, disability, or stage of development.

Rather than obscure or dull our consciences to the unmitigated violence of abortion, the passage of time has only enabled us to see and better understand the innate cruelty of abortion--and its horrific legacy victims--while making us more determined than ever to protect the weakest and most vulnerable, and end mass deception by the abortion industry.

Earlier today, Linda Shrewsbury, an academic and African American with a degree from Harvard who had an abortion told a ``40 Years of Victims'' press conference that: ``the lies that brought me to that day and its sorrowful aftermath are crystal clear in my mind--falsehoods and deceptions that concealed the truth about abortion. Lies planted in my thinking by clever marketing, media campaigns and endless repetition led to a tragic irreversible decision--the death of my first child.

I didn't really understand back then. At age 20, I had no inkling of the mental and emotional darkness I was about to enter. I couldn't have grasped the immense psychological toll abortion would take for years into the future--unrelenting tears, guilt, shame, and depression. After spending many years in denial, I did eventually find healing. When I understood and rejected distortions about fetal development, doublespeak about choice, rights, planned and wanted children; I understood the reality and victimhood of my aborted child. I understood the absence of moral bases for choosing to ``dis-entitle'' an innocent human being of life. When I embraced truth, truth set me free and I finally gained inner peace.

It's past time to lance the national wound of abortion with truth. The high culture--thought leaders, media, celebrities--that brought us abortion seem vested beyond extraction. I dreamed of the volcano of abortion truth that could erupt one day from the grassroots--women and men and their relatives witnessing to their suppressed emotion, unspoken trauma, and lived pain. With abortion denial ended, we as a society could then reconnect with reality and life.''

Clearly there are seemingly ominous present-day signs that hinder ending abortion denial and a reconnection with reality and life--the reelection of the abortion President Barack Obama, public funding for abortion in the Obamacare health exchanges that come on-line in 2014, the use of coercion to compel religious believers and entrepreneurs to violate their conscience, and the export of abortion worldwide.

And, it is deeply troubling that despite the fact that Planned Parenthood claims direct responsibility for killing over 6 million unborn babies, including a record 333,964 abortions in 2011 alone, Planned Parenthood remains President Obama's favorite organization.

Despite these and any obstacles, we will never quit. In adversity our faith and trust in God is tested, but it also deepens and overcomes and forges an indomitable yet humble spirit.

The pro-life movement is comprised of some of the noblest, caring, smart and selfless people I have ever met. They make up an extraordinarily powerful, non-violent, faith-filled human rights struggle that is growing in public support, intensity, commitment and hope.

The compassionate women and men who staff thousands of pregnancy care centers throughout America provide women who are experiencing unexpected pregnancies tangible assistance, love and emotional support both before and after the birth of her child.

With malice towards none, even President Obama for whom we must pray, we believe that the nightmare that is abortion on demand will end.

The pro-life movement is not only on the side of compassion, justice, and inclusion; we are on the right side of responsible science and of history.

Someday future generations will look back on America and wonder how and why such a seemingly enlightened society, so blessed and endowed with education, advanced science, information, wealth and opportunity could have failed to protect the innocent and inconvenient. They will wonder how and why a Nobel Peace Prize winning President could also simultaneously have been the Abortion President.

Dr. Alveda King, niece of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, had two abortions but is now pro-life. She said in one speech: ``My Uncle Martin had a dream. He dreamt that we would live out that which is self-evident--that all men are created equal. He called on America to admit our wrongs and turn from them. Today, I call on all of us, regardless of nationality, race or religion, to admit our wrongs and turn from them. I believe that the denial of the right to life is the greatest injustice we face in the world today. There is no compassion in killing. There is no justice in writing people out of the human race.''

History will not look favorably on today's abortion culture. We must instead work tirelessly to replace it with a culture of life.

Pro-lifers celebrate the sanctity of life. Unborn babies are not disposable commodities. We recognize that unborn children, like their older brothers and sisters, have inherent worth, value, and dignity. They are children too. If left alone to grow and mature, they too will become older brothers and sisters--and perhaps parents themselves someday.

Modern medicine and scientific breakthrough--especially the widespread use of ultrasound--have shattered the pernicious myth that unborn children are mere blobs of tissue. It's time to recognize birth merely as a celebratory event in the life of a person--not the beginning of life. And we've got to step up our efforts to educate and persuade. Far too many politicians, judges, journalists and others choose denial and deceptive speech over truth.

Today doctors diagnose illness and disability before birth. New and exciting breakthrough health care interventions for the unborn--including microsurgeries--are leading to an ever expanding array of successful treatments and cures of sick or disabled unborn babies in need of help. Unborn children are society's littlest patients who like any one of us might need health care.

In stark contrast, abortion methods rip, tear and dismember or chemically poison the fragile bodies of babies and abortion pills cause premature expulsion from the womb and death. There is nothing benign, compassionate, or just about an act that utterly destroys the life of a child and often physically, psychologically, and emotionally harms women. And despite the near total absence of any meaningful reporting by the media, women get hurt and some even die from legal abortions.

According to the most recent Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report, from 1973 to 2008 at least 403 women tragically died in the United States from legal abortion. And that sad fact is almost certainly a significant undercount because the methodology employed by CDC is passive and voluntary and likely to miss instances of both mortality and morbidity.

In the years since CDC's ``most recent report,'' many more women have surely died. Like Tonya Reaves, a 24-year-old woman who died last July from a botched second trimester dismemberment abortion--a D&E--at a Chicago area Planned Parenthood abortion mill.

The abortion industry excels at surface appeal argument and propaganda. Indeed the misleading term ``safe abortion'' purposely misses the point that no abortion--legal or illegal--is ever safe for the baby and that all are fraught with negative health consequences for the mother.

Today, at least 104 credible studies show significant psychological harm, major depression and/or elevated suicide risk in women who abort.

The Times of London reported that, ``[S]enior ..... 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 78.6% of the 15-18-year-olds who had abortions displayed symptoms of major depression as compared to 31% of their peers. The study also found that 27% of the 21-25-year-old women who had abortions had suicidal ideations compared to 8% of those who did not have an abortion.

At this morning's ``40 Years of Victims'' press conference courageous post-abortive women, as well as the mother of a minor girl who was transported across state lines to New Jersey to evade Pennsylvania's parental involvement laws spoke eloquently of the anguish of abortion.

Irene Beltran said: ``My entire being was overcome by terror, and I felt deep anguish in the core of my soul when I ended the life of my own child for the sake of convenience. At the clinic I was treated like livestock being herded from one step to the next ..... When the abortionist administered the poison in my stomach I was mortified and shocked because I felt my child kick and turn very hastily. Years later I found out she was being burned and could feel the pain. Since I was 6 months pregnant this would be a two-day process. The second day consisted of the abortionist tearing my daughter out of me--limb from limb, piece by piece. But I did not go back. After feeling my daughter fight for her life I went straight to my mother's home crying for help. She drove me to the Labor and Delivery Department at a local hospital. I arrived at the hospital grasping on the slim chance they could save my daughter, but there was nothing the doctors could do. The effects of the toxin were irreversible.''

Marcia Carroll said even though ``my daughter chose to have the baby, raise it ...... The father's family arranged a taxi, a train, and subway rides to sneak her across state lines to New Jersey where his family met them in front of the abortion clinic...... They planned, financed, harassed, and ultimately threatened my daughter into having the abortion ...... As a result of the legal abortion that was completed unbeknownst to me, my daughter suffered years of depression, intense grief, post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares, and thoughts and even attempts of suicide.''

Kellie Stauffer spoke of her abortion at the age of 14: ``We all thought abortion would erase the situation I had gotten myself in and we would go on living life the way it was. That was not the case. ..... life sadly was never the same. I hated myself. I tried to numb my pain in any way I could find, drugs, alcohol, food, meaningless relationships, but nothing took away the deep darkness that overwhelmed my soul. ..... She persuaded me to go to a Rachel's vineyard retreat and that weekend saved my life. I allowed myself to feel the forgiveness God had been showing me all along. ..... I will never forget what I did to my first child. I am still brought to my knees in tears at times when I remember the pain I caused her. In response to God's grace and for my daughter's spirit I will be silent no more.''

Olivia Gans Turner said: ``I was not told vital information about the child I was carrying. Including the medical fact that by the time I had an abortion at 12 weeks, my baby already had a beating heart and brain waves! ..... I have not forgotten one moment of that day, and never will. That single day changed my life forever.''

Abortion not only has deleterious effects on women but on children born subsequently to women who have had a previous abortion.

At least 115 studies show a significant association between abortion and subsequent premature births. Researchers Shah and Zao showed a 36% increased risk for preterm birth after one abortion and a staggering 93% increased risk after two.

Similarly, the risk of subsequent children being born with low birth weight increases by 35% after one and 72% after two or more abortions. Another study shows the risk increases 9 times after a woman has had three abortions.

What does this mean for her 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 from chronic lung disease, sensory deficits, cerebral palsy, cognitive impairments and behavior problems. Low birth weight is similarly associated with neonatal mortality and morbidity.

The extremism of the pro-abortion industry is shocking.

Last spring, the House of Representatives took up a bill to ban sex-selection abortion. The bill garnered a solid majority--246 to 168--in the House. President Obama, however, made it absolutely clear that he would veto the sex-selection abortion prohibition should it be sent to the White House.

While sex-selection abortion almost exclusively targets girls for extermination--simply because they are little girls--the egregious practice remains legal in most states. In fact, only four states--Illinois, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma and Arizona--and several countries including the United Kingdom proscribe it.

And if that's not shocking enough, many remain unaware of the fact that sex-selection abortion is part of a deliberate plan of population control--a war on women. In other words, abort the girls so they can't grow up someday and have children of their own.

In her book ``Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men,'' Mara Hvistendahl traces the sordid history of sex-selection abortion as a means of population control.

``By August 1969, when the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Population Council convened another workshop on population control, sex selection had become a pet scheme,'' Hvistendahl writes. ``If a reliable sex-determination technology could be made available to a mass market,'' there was ``rough consensus'' that sex-selection abortion ``would be an effective, uncontroversial and ethical way of reducing the global population.''

Many of you might recall the undercover sting operation by Live Action that exposed several Planned Parenthood affiliates who were eager, ready and willing to facilitate secret abortions for underage sex-trafficking victims--some as young or younger than 14. As the prime sponsor of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act--the landmark law to combat human trafficking--I found the willingness of Planned Parenthood personnel to exploit young girls and partner with sex traffickers to be absolutely appalling.

Now, Live Action has released sting-operation videos--part of a series, ``Gendercide in America''--that show Planned Parenthood personnel advising undercover female investigators how to procure a sex-selection abortion. Caught on tape, one staffer tells an investigator to wait until her baby is 5 months along to get an ultrasound that reveals the sex of the child. Then, if it's a girl, kill it.

For most of us, ``it's a girl'' is cause for enormous joy, happiness and celebration. But far too often, this phrase can be a death sentence.

These cruel, anti-woman policies have had horrible consequences everywhere, especially in China (and India as well).

China's one child per couple policy in effect since 1979 constitutes massive crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg Nazi war crimes tribunal properly construed forced abortion as a crime against humanity--nothing in human history compares to the magnitude of China's 34-year assault on women and children.

In China, brothers and sisters are illegal in most instances.

The price for failing to conform to the one child per couple policy is unbearably high. A Chinese woman who becomes pregnant without a permit will be put under mind-bending pressure to abort. She knows that ``out-of-plan'' illegal children are denied education, health care, and marriage, and that fines for bearing a child without a birth permit can be 10 times the average annual income of two parents, and those families that can't or won't pay are jailed and their homes smashed in.

If the brave woman still refuses to submit, she may be held in a punishment cell, or, if she flees, her relatives may be held and, very often, beaten. Group punishments will be used to socially ostracize her. And her colleagues and neighbors will be denied birth permits. If the woman is by some miracle still able to resist this pressure, she may be physically dragged to the operating table and forced to undergo an abortion.

Over the years, I have chaired 43 congressional human rights hearings focused in whole or in part on China's one child policy. At one, the principal witness, Wuijan, a Chinese student attending a U.S. university, testified about how her child was forcibly murdered by the government. She said, ``[T]he room was full of moms who had just gone through a forced abortion. Some moms were crying. Some moms were mourning. Some moms were screaming. And one mom was rolling on the floor with unbearable pain.'' Then Wuijan said it was her turn, and through her tears she described what she called her journey in hell.''

Not only has the Obama Administration turned a blind eye to the atrocities being committed under the one child policy, but continues to provide financial support--contrary to U.S. law--to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), an organization that supports, plans, implements, defends and whitewashes the Chinese government's brutal program.

Twenty nine years ago--on May 9, 1984--I authored the first amendment ever to a foreign aid bill to deny funding to organizations such as the UNFPA that are complicit with China's forced abortion and involuntary sterilization policy. It passed. After all these years, it is astonishing that policy makers--including and especially the Obama Administration--remain indifferent or worse, supportive, of these massive crimes against women and children. The Obama Administration has long enabled this cruel policy by its silence and financial support to the tune of $50 million a year to the UNFPA.

The result of this policy is a nightmarish ``brave new world'' with no precedent in human history, where women are psychologically wounded, girls fall victim to sex-selective abortion (in some provinces 140 boys are born for every 100 girls), and most children grow up without brothers or sisters, aunts or uncles or cousins.

Women bear the major brunt of the one child policy not only as victimized mothers. Due to the male preference in China's society and the limitation of the family size to one child, the policy has directly contributed to what is accurately described as gendercide--the deliberate extermination of a girl--born or unborn--simply because she happens to be a girl.

As a result of the Chinese government's barbaric attack on mothers and their children, there are some 100 million missing daughters in China today.

Because of the missing girls--China today has become the human sex trafficking magnate of the world. Women and young girls from outside the country are being sold as commodities throughout China--a direct consequence of the one child policy. Several prominent people including Ted Turner have suggested that the United States--indeed the world--needs to follow China's example and promulgate a one child per couple policy.

Mr Speaker, despite the best and slickest market branding money can buy, the stubborn fact remains that Planned Parenthood clinics are among the most dangerous places on Earth for a child. Planned Parenthood's own personnel are now taking a second look and, thanks to ultrasound, are clearly seeing what is being done to millions of children in the womb.

One of those abortion providers who took a second look and walked away is Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood abortion clinic director. In her book ''Unplanned,'' Abby Johnson exposes the duplicity and cruelty of what really goes on behind closed doors at a Planned Parenthood clinic. In it she writes how she witnessed and assisted in an abortion of a 13-week-old baby by holding the ultrasound probe, and as she pointed out in the book, it was the first ultrasound-guided abortion at that facility.

She writes in the book: ``The details startled me. At 13 weeks you could clearly see the profile of the head, both arms, legs, and even tiny fingers and toes. With my eyes glued to the image of this perfectly formed baby, I watched as a new image emerged on the video screen. The cannula, a straw-shaped instrument attached to the end of the suction tube, had been inserted into the uterus and was nearing the baby's side. It looked like an invader on the screen: out of place, wrong. It just looked wrong.''

She goes on to write: ``My heart sped up; time slowed. I didn't want to look, but I didn't want to stop looking either. At first, the baby didn't seem aware of the cannula. It gently probed the baby's side, and for a quick second I felt relief But I couldn't shake an inner disquiet that was quickly mounting to horror as I watched the screen.'' Remember, this is an abortion clinic director saying this.

``The next movement was a sudden jerk of a tiny foot of the baby as he started kicking, as if trying to move away from the probing invader.''

``As the cannula pressed in, the baby began struggling to turn and twist away. It seemed clear to me that the fetus could feel the cannula, and it did not like the feeling. And then the doctor's voice broke through, startling me: `Beam me up, Scotty,' the abortionist said lightheartedly to the nurse. He was telling her to turn on the suction, in an abortion the suction isn't turned on until the doctor feels he has the cannula in exactly the right place.

Abbey Johnson, abortion clinic director, went on to write: ``I had a sudden urge to yell, Stop; to shake the woman and say, Look at what's happening to your baby. Wake up; hurry. Stop them. But even as I was thinking those words, I thought of my own hand and saw my own hand holding the probe. I was one of them performing this act'' of abortion.

``My eyes shot back to the screen. The cannula was already being rotated by the doctor and now I could see the tiny body violently twisting with it. For the briefest moment it looked as if the baby was being wrung like a dishcloth, twirled and squeezed. And then the little body crumpled and began disappearing into the cannula before my eyes. The last thing I saw was the tiny perfectly formed backbone sucked into the tube. And then everything was gone. The image of that tiny dead baby mangled and sucked away kept replaying in my mind. What was in this woman's womb just a moment ago was alive. It wasn't tissue. It wasn't cells. This was a human baby, fighting for life. A battle was lost in the blink of an eye.

``What I have told people for years''--8 years as a clinic director at a Planned Parenthood clinic-- ``what I have told people for years,'' Abby Johnson continues, ``what I believed and taught and defended is a lie.'' Abby Johnson is now an amazing pro-life leader.

Mr. Speaker, as we stand here on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives this afternoon marking 40 years since seven members of the U.S. Supreme Court imposed abortion on demand for all nine months on the United States of America, the legacy of Roe v Wade--dead babies and injured women, shattered families--begs reappraisal. And courageous women like Abby Johnson are showing the way.

Mr. Speaker, we have a duty to protect. The struggle to re-establish durable protections for the most discriminated minority in America today--unborn babies-- is worth any personal sacrifice, inconvenience or pain.

We cannot allow the violence against women and their children to continue.

[End Insert]

I would like now to yield to my good friend and colleague, Marsha Blackburn.

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Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I thank my good friend for yielding, and I applaud his tremendous leadership over the years in defense of the culture of life, for being consistent on all human rights issues--from child soldiers and combating that abuse of children to the abuse of unborn children by way of abortion. So I thank him for that. I would just make a few points, because we are coming to a close, Mr. Speaker.

Today, doctors diagnose illness and disability before birth. New and exciting breakthrough health care interventions for the unborn, including microsurgeries, are leading to an ever-expanding array of successful treatments and cures of sick or disabled unborn babies. A few other Members have made this point very clearly, as do I, which is that unborn children are society's littlest patients, and they might need health care just like any one of us.

In stark contrast, abortion methods rip, tear, dismember or chemically poison the fragile bodies of unborn babies to death, and abortion pills cause premature expulsion from the womb and death. There is nothing benign, compassionate, or just about an act that utterly destroys the life of a child and often physically, psychologically, and emotionally harms women. And despite the near total absence of any meaningful reporting by the news media, women get hurt and even die from legal abortions.

According to the most recent Centers for Disease Control report, from 1973 to 2008, at least 403 women tragically died in the United States from legal abortion. And that sad fact is almost certainly a significant undercount because the methodology employed by CDC is passive and voluntary and likely to miss instances of both mortality and morbidity.

In the years since CDC's ``most recent report,'' many more women have surely died, like Tonya Reaves, a 24-year-old woman who died last July from a botched second trimester dismemberment abortion, a D&E, at a Chicago area Planned Parenthood abortion mill.

The abortion industry, Mr. Speaker, excels at surface appeal argument and at propaganda. Indeed, the misleading term ``safe abortion'' purposefully misses the point that no abortion, legal or illegal, is ever safe for the baby, and all are fraught with negative health consequences for the mother.

Today, at least 104 credible studies show significant psychological harm, major depression, and/or elevated suicide risk to 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 who have had no previous history of psychological problems. They've found that women who've had abortions have twice the level of psychological problems, three times the level of depression as women who have given birth or who have never been pregnant.

One comprehensive study out of New Zealand in 2006 found that 78.6 percent of the 15- to 18-year-olds who had had abortions displayed symptoms of major depression as compared to 31 percent of their peers.

Mr. Speaker, there are at least 115 studies that show significant association between abortion and subsequent premature births. You never read about this in the news media.

Researchers Shah and Zao show a 36 percent increase for pre-term birth after one abortion and a staggering 93 percent increased risk after two.

What does this mean for children? Pre-term birth is the leading cause of infant mortality in the industrialized world after congenital anomalies. Pre-term 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.

These are consequences that are visited upon a woman later on. She's never told this at the abortion clinic that subsequent children that she will have later in her life could suffer prematurity and low birth weight.

And, finally, the extremism of the pro-abortion industry is shocking.

Last spring, the House of Representatives took up TRENT FRANK's bill to ban sex-selection abortion. The bill garnered a solid majority, 246-168 in the House. President Obama, however, made it absolutely clear that he would veto the sex-selection abortion prohibition should it be sent to the White House.

While sex selection targets almost exclusively girls for extermination, simply because they're girls, the egregious practice remains legal in most of our States. In fact, only four States--Illinois, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Arizona--and several countries, including the United Kingdom, prohibit sex-selection abortion. And yet we have not been able to get that legislation enacted into law, and it's opposed by President Obama.

Mr. Speaker, we need to stand up for life. Again, I want to thank my good friend and colleague from Nebraska for having this second Special Order on defending life. And like JEFF, I do look forward to the March for Life on January 25 where we will all rally in defense of the defenseless.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I thank the gentleman for yielding and for raising that important issue.

The People's Republic of China doesn't have a pro-life movement per se. The government is a dictatorship. Regrettably, going back to 1979, they enacted with great push and encouragement from the United States and from the West, Europe especially, a one-child-per-couple policy where brothers and sisters are illegal, where women are systematically, forcibly aborted, and forced sterilization is commonplace to achieve quotas. Not only does a woman have to get a birth authorization from the Government of China to have a baby; if she has an out-of-plan birth, she is aborted forcibly.

Over the years, as chairman of the China Commission and as chairman of the Human Rights Committee of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I've chaired 43 congressional hearings on human rights in China; and many of those were focused on, as you pointed out, women who had to be behind screens to tell their story about the gross indignity, the exploitation, the crimes against humanity that had been committed against them.

In China today, there are approximately 100 million, maybe more, missing daughters, the direct consequence of sex-selection abortion and what is often referred to as gendercide, the deliberate killing of a little girl simply because she is a girl.

In her book ``Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men,'' Mara Hvistendahl traces the sordid history of sex-selection abortion as a means of population control. And almost no one knows about this. You'll never read about this in the local papers. You don't hear about it on the major news broadcasts. She writes:

By August 1969, when the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Population Council convened another workshop on population control, sex selection had become a pet scheme.

Hvistendahl writes:

If a reliable sex-determination technology could be made available to a mass market, there was a rough consensus that sex-selection abortion would be an effective, uncontroversial, and ethical way of reducing the global population.

What that means is that you kill the girl child in the womb, you end one life, and that girl who will never grow up to be a woman because she has been exterminated because she happened to be a girl, will never be a mother. So it is a means of population control. It is absolutely an egregious violation of human rights, and yet our own President refuses to support a ban on sex-selection abortion. He talked about we the people and inclusion yesterday. Where's the inclusion of all unborn babies, but those who are particularly targeted for elimination, the girl child?

And I would also add, finally, Live Action, an undercover sting operation that they had done--and it's on the Web, you can watch it, you can watch the raw footage, liveaction.org--in their series, ``Gendercide in America,'' they showed Planned Parenthood personnel in this country advising undercover female investigators how to procure sex-selection abortions. I watched that and was sickened by the admonishment, the so-called counseling that was all caught on tape.

One staffer tells the investigator to wait until her baby is 5 months along, get the ultrasound. That's when you can determine the gender of the child, boy or girl, and if it's a girl, that's when you can kill it.

And it was all made very clear. The investigators were laying out a scenario where, if it's a girl, I want the girl child to be destroyed. And there was Planned Parenthood accommodating that to the nth degree.

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Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I thank my friend for yielding and for raising again another very important point. You know, at several of these hearings, which were covered very scarcely by the news media, unfortunately, we had some powerful witnesses from women who are actually the victims of coercive abortion.

Over the many years we've had such hearings, and when they tell their story, and they talk about the helplessness and almost hopelessness of the situation, trying to evade family planning cadres in China as they hunt them down.

You know, most people are unaware of the fact that it begins with economic coercion. If you have a baby out of plan, you are fined if you do not voluntarily walk into the abortion mill for the child to be destroyed. And many women want those children.

One of the women we had testify, her name was Wuijan. She was a Chinese student attending a U.S. university, and part of her testimony--these are her words--she said, when she was rounded up, literally grabbed by the family planning cadres and thrown into a van, totally against her will, she said:

The room was full of moms who had just gone through a forced abortion. Some moms were crying. Some moms were mourning. Some moms were screaming. And one mom was rolling on the floor with unbearable pain.

Then Wuijan said that it was her turn, and through her tears she described her journey into hell. Here is a woman, just like so many others that we heard from, who were literally trussed, picked up, arrested.

I had a woman back in the 1990s, who was pretty much smuggled out of China, who ran one of the family planning centers in Fujian Province, and she self-described herself: ``By day I was a monster, by night a wife and mother of one.'' And she talked about it, and she got asylum here eventually.

But she talked about how she would use every part of the police state to ensure that women, even if they evaded family planning cadres up to the ninth month--to drag her in and to kill the baby, and if it's very late in the pregnancy, with a poison shot of formaldehyde or some other substance right to the soft part of the brain to kill the baby.

These are crimes against humanity. They are ever-present throughout China. And again, they're missing 100 million girls, maybe more, because of gendercide and the loss of life. There's no precedent. There's no example that even comes close of a government using abortion as a tool of population control and the like. And it came right out of the population control movement and what happened in the early or late sixties and especially into the seventies, right here in the United States.

In 1984, I say to my friend, Mr. Fortenberry, 29 years ago I offered the first amendment on this floor, from this podium, to a foreign aid bill to deny funding to any organization, such as the U.N. Population Fund, that is complicit in China's forced abortion policy and involuntary sterilization. It passed, and it morphed into what became known as the Kemp-Kasten Amendment, offered on the appropriations bill by Congressman Jack Kemp.

After all of these years, it is astonishing to me that we still have so many Members of Congress, we have an administration, in the Obama administration, that is, at best, indifferent, and I would say, at worst supportive of these crimes by giving money to the groups that are on the ground enabling these crimes against women. The Obama administration has enabled this cruel policy by its silence and its financial support to the tune of some $50 million a year to the U.N. Population Fund.

We passed, in this House, a prohibition. They, unfortunately, ignore it, do findings that do not comport with the reality on the ground, and then end up sending this money.

And I met with a woman whose name is Peng Peiyun, who ran the family planning program in China, I say to my friend, Mr. Fortenberry, for several hours in a conversation in Beijing. She kept coming back to the fact that the U.N. Population Fund was there on the ground and found nothing but voluntary abortions. Of course, there are a loss of lives, too, but no coercion. So the whitewashing that the U.N. Population Fund has been able to provide to this egregious violation of women's rights in China, and now we today, under the Obama administration, are funding it, Mr. Fortenberry. So it's something that has to end. We should be on the side of life and respect, not enabling such terrible things.

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Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. One of the things that is so noble about the pro-life movement is that it loves and cares for women during the time of their crisis. And if they do procure an abortion, they are there, again, with Project Rachel and all of these outreaches to help women find reconciliation and peace.

Mr. FORTENBERRY. And men.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. And men, too, have lost track of the number of women we have met that found that peace. We had four women today at the 40 Years of Victims who told their story of the terrible crisis of the abortion but also the reconciliation and peace that they found later.

You make a very good point, Mr. Fortenberry, about the young generation. I have never seen more pro-lifers at the March for Life than we are seeing now. And I went to the first one back in 1974 with my wife, Marie, and then made every one thereafter. When I speak in schools, I used to get a great deal of pushback in answer to a question on the right to life. There are still people who push back, but many students say, It's life. Ultrasound has helped enormously. It's a window to the womb. We all remember Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the founder of NARAL, who became a pro-lifer. He said, ``If wombs had windows, abortion would end.'' The ultrasound is a window to the womb. And you can see that magnificent unborn child moving, shaking around, sucking his or her thumb, doing somersaults inside the womb. Blobs of tissue and protoplasm don't do this.

I think this young generation also has another perspective as well. One of my favorite musicals is ``Les Miserables.'' My wife and I have seen it twice--once in New York, once here in Washington. And now the movie. There's a very haunting song in ``Les Miserables,'' a song by Marius, one of the chief people in that musical, Victor Hugo's ``Les Miserables,'' and it's called, ``Empty Chairs and Empty Tables.'' And he says, ``There's a grief that can't be spoken, there's a pain,'' and it goes on and on, ``Empty chairs and empty tables where my friends will live no more.''

We have empty chairs and empty tables. A third of this generation has been killed by abortion. You look to your left, you look to your right in a classroom or at a diner, there are missing children and now young adults even up to the age of 40, since 40 years ago Roe v. Wade was handed down. Empty chairs, empty tables. And I would add to that, empty cribs.

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