BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Madam Speaker, for the sake of all of those who founded this Nation and dreamed of what America could someday be, and for the sake of all of those who died in darkness so Americans could walk in the light of freedom, it is so very important that those of us who are privileged to be Members of this Congress pause from time to time and remind ourselves of why we are really all here.
Thomas Jefferson, whose words marked the beginning of this Nation, said:
The care of human life and its happiness, and not its destruction, is the chief and only object of good government.
The phrase of the Fifth Amendment capsulizes our entire Constitution. It says no person shall ``be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.''
And the 14th Amendment says that no State shall ``deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.''
Madam Speaker, protecting the lives of all Americans and their constitutional rights, especially those that can't defend themselves, is why we are all here. Yet today, Madam Speaker, a great shadow looms over America. More than 18,000 very late-term abortions are occurring in America every year, placing the mothers at exponentially greater risk and subjecting their pain-capable unborn babies to torture and death without anesthesia and without any Federal protection of any kind in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
It is the greatest human rights atrocity in the United States today, and almost every other civilized nation on Earth protects pain-capable unborn babies, at this age particularly. And every credible poll of Americans shows the American people are overwhelmingly in favor of protecting them, yet we have given these little babies less legal protection from unnecessary cruelty than the protection we have given farm animals under the Federal Humane Slaughter Act.
Madam Speaker, it just seems that we are never quite so eloquent as when we decry the crimes of a past generation, but we often become so staggeringly blind when it comes to facing and rejecting the worst of atrocities in our own time.
Thankfully, Madam Speaker, I believe the winds of change are now beginning to blow and that this tide of blindness and blood is finally turning in America because today--today--we are poised to pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act in this Chamber. And no matter how it is shouted down or what distortions or deceptive what-ifs, distractions, diversions, gotchas, twisting of the words, changing of subject, or blatant falsehoods the abortion industry hurls at this bill and its supporters, it remains that this bill is a deeply sincere effort, beginning at the sixth month, at their sixth month of pregnancy, to protect both mothers and their pain-capable unborn babies from the atrocity of late-term abortion on demand. Ultimately, it is one that all humane Americans can support if they truly understand it for themselves.
Madam Speaker, this is a vote all of us will remember the rest of our lives. It will be considered in the annals of history and, I believe, in the counsels of eternity, itself.
But it shouldn't be such a hard vote because, in spite of all of the political noise, protecting little unborn, pain-capable babies is not a Republican issue, and it is not a Democrat issue. It is a test of our basic humanity and who we are as a human family.
It is time that we open our eyes and let our consciences catch up with our technology. It is time for the Members of the United States Congress to open our eyes and our souls and remember that protecting those who cannot protect themselves is why we are all here. That is why we are here.
Madam Speaker, it is time for all Americans to open our eyes and our hearts to the humanity of these little pain-capable unborn children of God and the inhumanity of what is being done to them.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT