Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I would like to address the issue before the Senate. It relates to the divisive and controversial issue of abortion. It comes at an unusual moment in the history of the Congress.

This week, for the first time, the Pope will be addressing a joint session of Congress. It was 50 years ago when the first Pope visited the United States. The arrival of Pope Francis this week is a cause of great celebration to people from my State of Illinois and across this Nation because of their respect for his leadership of the Catholic Church. It calls to question, of course, the relationship between religion and our government.

This summer I finished a book called ``Mayflower,'' which told the story of the Pilgrims coming to the United States, settling in in our country, looking for a new opportunity but looking more than anything for freedom of religious belief. They were followed by scores and thousands of others who came for the same reason.

My mother was an immigrant to this country, brought here at the age of 2. Her mother brought her and her sister and brother to our shores for a variety of reasons. But there is one thing that sticks out in that journey. Up in my office I have something that my grandmother carried across the ocean from Lithuania to the United States. It was a Roman Catholic prayer book written in Lithuanian. It was contraband in 1911 in Lithuania for her to possess it because the Russians were in control and the Russians were imposing the orthodox religion and making it difficult to practice the Catholic religion. I never knew my grandmother, but she was one brave lady to bring three kids across the ocean and stick in her bag that prayer book which meant so much to her, that prayer book which she could use in the United States of America without the government telling her she could not.

We have tried to strike the right balance between religion and our democracy from the beginning. I believe our Founding Fathers got it right. They said three things in the Constitution about religion: first, that each of us would have the freedom to worship as we choose or to choose not to worship; second, that the government would not choose a religion and that we would not have an official government religion; and third, that there would be no religious test for public office in America.

I thought those were settled principles, but this Presidential campaign suggests otherwise. We had the outrageous suggestion by a Republican Presidential candidate this last weekend that a Muslim should never serve as President of the United States. I would think that a man of his background and learning would at least take the time to understand our Constitution and the express provision which says that he is wrong, that there will never by a religious litmus test to serve in public office in the United States.

And now, this week on the floor of the Senate, we will have two votes on the issue of abortion. There was a time when this issue came before us frequently--not so much lately. It is a divisive and controversial issue; that is for sure. But this week the Republican Senate leadership has allowed two of their Presidential candidates to raise this issue on the floor of the Senate. It is no coincidence this issue comes before us the same week the Pope, the leader of the Catholic Church, will be addressing a joint session of Congress. It is more than a coincidence.

This particular bill relates to when a person can terminate a pregnancy. For 47 years, if I am not mistaken--maybe I have that calculation slightly wrong--we have had Supreme Court guidance on when the government can play a role in the decision about the termination of a pregnancy. Now there is an effort on the floor of the Senate to change that basic guidance from the Roe v. Wade decision. Each time we step into this question, into something which seems as clear as ``at 20 weeks we will draw a line and after that there cannot be a legal termination of pregnancy,'' we find we are walking into an area of uncertainty.

I remember meeting many years ago, when we were debating this issue, a woman from Illinois. She was from the town of Naperville. In 1996 she told me a harrowing story of how legislation such as the bill before us would have impacted her. She learned late in her pregnancy that the child she was carrying could not survive outside the womb. Her doctors diagnosed her baby with at least nine major anomalies, including a fluid-filled cranium with no brain tissue. Sadly, she also had underlying medical conditions--personal conditions--that complicated her pregnancy even more. Doctors were concerned that if she went through with the pregnancy at that point, she ran the risk of never having another baby. With tears in her eyes, she told me how she and her husband agonized over the news and eventually decided it was best for them and their other children to terminate that pregnancy.

If the bill before us today--the 20-week abortion bill--had been the law of the land back then, sadly it would have jeopardized and endangered her health.

Well, 18 years later she came back to see me. I learned she was able to do what was best for her family in terminating that pregnancy. That was her decision with her doctor and her husband. But she was given a second chance. Soon after, she became pregnant again. This time she was thankful to give birth to a healthy baby boy. When she came to see me, she told me about her son Nick. She said he had become a star football player and had a bright future ahead of him.

If this bill had been the law of the land, this woman in Illinois--and others like her--would not even have had the choice to terminate a pregnancy for her own health protection and for the opportunity to have another baby. That is the challenge we face when we try to spell out in law all of the medical possibilities, limiting opportunities and decisions to be made by individuals under the most heartbreaking circumstances.

This bill has other issues. The fact that the rape and incest exceptions, which have largely been built into the law to this point, would be changed dramatically by this law raises questions as well. There is a requirement, as I understand it, in this law that victims of incest would have had to report to a law enforcement agency that crime of incest before they would even be able to terminate a pregnancy under these circumstances. That is not even realistic--to think some young child in a household, who has been exploited by another member of the family, would think to go to a law enforcement agency and report that other member of her family before they could qualify to terminate a pregnancy in this circumstance.

That shows the extremes this bill goes to. I hope we will defeat this measure. I sincerely hope the other Republican Presidential candidate, who is going to try to shut down the government over the funding of Planned Parenthood later in the week, does not prevail either. We need to move on to find other issues--not divisive issues but issues we can build a bipartisan consensus on to make this a stronger country.

We need to address the issue of funding our government and to accept the responsibilities to move forward in a bipartisan fashion. This bill does not do that.

I yield the floor.

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