The Pro-Life Caucus

Floor Speech

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Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, we are here tonight on the 41st anniversary of ROE v. WADE. And put simply, my colleague from Tennessee said, the science is just wrong. ROE v. WADE, the decision, they just got it wrong.

I entered premedical study in 1973, the year that ROE v. WADE was issued by the Court. I remember taking genetics courses as a premed. I remember learning about genetics, learning about human genetics.

Then in 1975, when I went to medical school, I actually did a research project with one of the scientists who was mapping the human genome. I always remember one of the things we did which was kind of neat is we actually took one of our cells and stained the DNA. I still have the picture at home of my DNA.

I remember the scientist telling me, you know, you look at that DNA and that is human DNA. It is not any other DNA. It cannot be mistaken for any other DNA. In fact, Mr. Speaker, as you know, we can now map a person's entire DNA. Any scientist looking at that map of any human being's DNA will tell you that is a human being. It is not a cat. It is not a dog. It is not a monkey. It is not another primate. It is a human being. It is the only thing that that DNA could belong to.

Well, that is very interesting, because of course if you go back to the ROE v. WADE case and you read about Norma McCorvey, who was Jane Roe--of course, that was a pseudonym. Her name was Norma McCorvey. She was pregnant at the time with her third child. Two of them had been adopted previously. It was a difficult pregnancy as any. It was a problem pregnancy. It was an unplanned pregnancy.

Well, Norma ran into two lawyers who wanted to overturn it, two ambitious lawyers who, later, she would go on to say she was ``the pawn'' of two young and ambitious lawyers who just wanted to test the case, the Texas law. They wanted to bring it to the Supreme Court. They told her that her fetus was just ``a blob of tissue.''

Mr. Speaker, we know much better than that. Science knows much better than that. It was not a blob of tissue. It was a human being. It had the same chromosomes, the same DNA, the same genetics as you and I. Any scientist in the world could tell that that was a human being. In fact, from the moment of inception, the scientific truth is we are dealing with human beings, in the case of ROE v. WADE, 56 million human beings whose lives were ended as a result of that decision.

Now, we are going to celebrate, and I mean celebrate, with a pro-life rally next week. And in the end, we are going to win this struggle, because in the end, what the Justices determined were legal beings are going to be really determined to be human beings worthy of protection.

I will tell you why there are going to be so many of the Nation's youth at that rally. Because our Nation's youth grew up knowing that ROE v. WADE is in fact the law of the land, and in fact the law says legally their existence may have been threatened.

Mr. Speaker, I have told this story before. If anybody doesn't believe it, I want them to meet Jennifer.

My wife volunteers at a pregnancy center. One of those places where women with troubles, troubled pregnancies, they are in a bad situation. They know that in this country it is legal to have an abortion, but what they really want is help. And my wife is fluent in Spanish. She was raised in Puerto Rico. She is the only person at that pregnancy center in Maryland who speaks Spanish. She wasn't supposed to be there that day when Maria, on political asylum from Guatemala, called.

It was Maria's third baby, just like Norma McCorvey's third baby. She was having a hard time because her husband had left her. It was going to be a hard time to raise that child. She called the clinic, because honestly she was looking for an abortion referral. And Maria doesn't speak English. She speaks a few words, not fluently enough to be understood. It just happened my wife was there. My wife talks to her and she helps her, and the pregnancy center helps her. Maria, who really didn't want an abortion but knew it was legal and an option, gave birth to Jennifer. Jennifer is now in middle school. She is a great kid. I would challenge anyone to look into Jennifer's eyes and say that ROE v. WADE got it right.

Mr. Speaker, next week thousands, tens of thousands of young people are going to be on The Mall to join with us to say, simply put, ROE v. WADE got it wrong.

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