Abortion Clinics: Not Only Killing Mills But Toture Centers as Well

ABORTION CLINICS: NOT ONLY KILLING MILLS BUT TORTURE CENTERS AS WELL -- (House of Representatives - January 25, 2005)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, 100,000 human rights advocates endured the numbing cold and snow in a great witness for life here in our Nation's Capital. Their presence on behalf of those who have no voice of their own was truly inspiring. It was gratifying beyond words to see so many teenagers full of idealism and full of compassion and love for their littlest brothers and sisters and for all human life that is at risk.

Indeed, Mr. Speaker, the pro-life movement is the greatest human rights movement on Earth.

[Time: 19:45]

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. It is a struggle based on unconditional love, even for the proabortionists, unconditional empathy for the victims, both the child and his or her mother, and unconditional courage.

We are a movement with deep hope and expectation, that with God's all-powerful grace, and through that all-powerful grace, the culture of death will soon be vanquished by the culture of life, where all human life is cherished and respected. We pray for the day when branding an unborn child as unwanted will no longer mean a death sentence in America.

Mr. Speaker, I have always found the term "unwanted child" dehumanizing, for it relegates a child to the status of a commodity, an object, a thing, something that can be chosen or unchosen at will, not unlike any other consumer product.

Mr. Speaker, with each passing year, the horrific toll of abortion on women's lives becomes more evident, and it is time the media especially stopped censoring the truth. Women deserve better than abortion, and the compelling stories of the brave women, the postabortive women who are silent no more need to be heard. These very special women bear witness not only to the agony and the trauma of their own abortions, but to the hope of healing, reconciliation and inner peace as well.

Wounded women like Dr. Alveda King, the niece of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, who has had an abortion, Jennifer O'Neill, singer Melba Moore, civil rights activist, like I said, Dr. King, and so many others, and cofounder of this group called Silent No More Awareness Campaign, Georgette Forney, have all called on us to listen to their heart-wrenching stories and take seriously our moral duty to protect women and children from the predators who ply their lethal trade in abortion mills throughout the land.

These brave women are the new champions of life. They have refused to be silent any longer. They care too deeply about other women and their children, and they want others to be spared the anguish that they themselves have endured. And to the millions of women who have aborted, they are uniquely equipped to convey the breathtaking love and healing and reconciliation that God provides to those who ask. They do have a connection, the silentnomoreawareness.org, if those who might want to contact them just go on the Web and check them out. They are unbelievably full of compassion.

Mr. Speaker, let me also point out that with each passing year, the child body count from abortion in America grows. Since the infamous decision in 1973, more than 46 million babies have been killed by dismemberment or chemical poisoning, a number fast approaching the total worldwide deaths attributable to World War II; that is civilian and military deaths.

And as we have feared, Mr. Speaker, the much touted baby pesticide, RU-486, rushed to approval by a very biased
FDA, is poison not only to the baby, but women are dying from it as well.

And now we learn, Mr. Speaker, from science and medicine that due to nerve cell development, unborn children from at least 20 weeks onward, and most likely even earlier, feel excruciating pain, two to four times more painful than you or I would feel from the same assault.

Today, along with 75 cosponsors, I have reintroduced legislation, the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, to require in part that women seeking abortions at this stage of development be informed of this gruesome reality. These kids feel pain, and we need to make that known to those women who are procuring abortions at that gestational period.

The bill would also require that women be given the option of having anesthesia administered directly to the unborn child, because indirect administration does not cross the placenta to numb the pain that the child feels as they are being slowly dismembered by these later-term abortion methods. One of those methods, the D and E, takes about 30 minutes as the arms and the legs and the body and the torso are all hacked off. And the baby feels pain during this hideous procedure.

Interestingly, Mr. Speaker, the partial-birth abortion legal trials in various courts around the country drew new attention to the pain that unborn children feel during an abortion. In expert testimony during these trials, Dr. Sunny Anand, Director of the Pain Neurobiology Lab at Arkansas Children's Hospital, said, and I quote him, "The human fetus possesses the ability to experience pain from 20 weeks of gestation, if not earlier, and the pain that is perceived by a fetus is more intense than that perceived by newborns or older children."

He went on to explain that the pain inhibitory mechanisms, in other words the fibers that dampen and modulate the experience of pain, do not begin to develop until 32 to 34 weeks of gestation. Thus these children feel pain, and they feel it excruciatingly so.

Abortion is violence against children, Mr. Speaker, and these kids feel that pain.

Abortion clinics, if we look at them as what they really are, are not only killing centers, they are torture chambers as well. I hope that we all can move on this legislation as quickly as possible.

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