Floor Statement- Partial Birth Abortion Ban

Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, it is my intention at some point later on in the proceedings of the debate on this partial-birth abortion ban bill to offer an amendment that would bring some sunshine and light into the abortion industry in terms of disclosure.

As I indicated last night in a rather lengthy presentation on the Senate floor, the sale of fetal body parts is illegal. Ironically, President Clinton himself signed the legislation banning that. Yet it is taking place in America. I think we need to look into this matter in great detail.

The purpose of my amendment is to provide that we have disclosure so we know who is selling, who is buying, what is being sold, and whether or not laws are being violated.

As many of you know, several years ago, in 1994 and 1995, I took to the floor of the Senate on this legislation. As a matter of fact, I wrote the original partial-birth abortion ban bill. I took a lot of heat for it. I received a lot of attacks from the media, a lot of attacks from some colleagues, and certainly from the abortion industry.

President Clinton came to my State and campaigned against me in my reelection efforts, as did Vice President GORE and Mrs. Clinton. They had a regular celebrity group up there making pretty much of a big deal out of the fact that I had been this "extremist" who stood on the Senate floor and exposed partial-birth abortion. I didn't even know it existed 6 years ago.

The interesting thing to me is, why is it that those of us who are opposed to this barbaric procedure are "extremists" and those who perform it are not? They are "thoughtful liberals," I guess. It is amazing what we can do with semantics and, with a little disingenuous discussion, how we can change the debate in this country.

Senator SANTORUM and others have talked extensively on what happens in a partial-birth abortion. I am not going to go into all of that. But I will say this: It is infanticide. It is killing children in some cases outside of the womb.

We have a child who is 90-percent born but for the head, and under the so-called Roe v. Wade law, unfortunately, that child, because the head has not come through the birth canal, can be killed by using a barbaric means of needle and sucking the brains from the child. It is a horrible procedure which has been discussed here in great detail. It is amazing to me that we are "extremists," we who are exposing it, and those who do it are not. But that is the way we are with semantics.

When I came down to the floor several years ago, I brought a little plastic medical doll. When the press was finished writing about it, it was a "plastic fetus." I was accused of showing aborted children on the floor of the Senate when in fact I showed a picture of premature babies who had been born who had lived. But as many times as I corrected papers such as the New York Times, they still couldn't get it right.

This debate has been pretty harsh at times. Frankly, it is very graphic. My goal is not to try to revisit all of that but to try to get into your heart, if I cannot your face, on this issue. We all have very strong feelings about this. But I have to believe most Americans are appalled, sickened, angered, and disgusted that such a brutal act would take place in this country to be carried out against a defenseless child. Yet we condone it.

As I said last night on the floor, if every SPCA in America announced tomorrow they were going to kill all of their dogs and cats, unwanted cats and dogs, puppies, kittens, by using this procedure with no anesthetic, putting a needle to the back of the head and sucking the brains from those animals, I guarantee there would be a firestorm. There would be people protesting in front of the SPCA. But we do it to our children.

Then we say we are surprised when our children go out and kill other children, when they get into trouble with drugs and all the other things that sometimes happen to our children in society. What are we telling them? What is the message we are giving them? We are telling them: You are worthless. We tell them: You go to school today, Johnny, be a good boy, and we will abort your sister with this horrible procedure while you are in school. That is what we are telling them.

I was told from a very early age that when you are around children and talk, they listen. They hear you. A lot of times, you ask a 3-year old. I can discuss this or that, and they don't care what I am saying. They are not paying any attention. They are playing with their toys. You would be surprised at what they hear.

I tell you what they are hearing when they hear this debate. They are hearing: We are worthless; nobody cares about us. We can just go ahead and abort you, kill you-you are just to be discarded in a trash can-and go right on about our business, keep working on our jobs, having a nice vacation and our 401(k)s; everything is fine. We just go ahead and kill babies.

The vast majority of partial-birth abortions are performed on healthy women with healthy babies. Dr. Martin Haskell, who is the leading practitioner of partial-birth abortions, said: I will be quite frank; most of my abortions are elective in that 20- to 24-week range, and, in my particular case, 20 percent are for genetic reasons and 80 percent are purely elective. Mr. President, 24 weeks is 6 months.

I received a telephone call in one of my offices several weeks ago. A 9-year-old girl relayed to my staff this message:

I want to thank the Senator for being pro-life. I'm 9 years old and I would like him to tell America when he has the chance that my mother gave birth to me prematurely when she was 5 months pregnant. I'm here talking to you now. Please tell your fellow Americans not to kill children like me.

That is pretty powerful stuff.

When President Clinton held his press conference and said he had five women at the press conference who had all undergone health-saving partial-birth abortions, one of the women later involved in that press conference admitted her abortion was not necessary at all. As far as her health was concerned, it was not medically necessary. She said on a radio show soon after the press conference:

This procedure was not performed in order to save my life. This procedure was elective. That is considered an elective procedure, as were the procedures of all the women who were at the White House veto ceremony.

The sad truth is we will pass this bill; that is the good news. The bad news is it will be vetoed again for the third time by this President because we need 67 votes to override it and we don't have them. That is sad because thousands more children are going to die in the next few years because President William Jefferson Clinton won't sign this bill-thousands-and they will die brutally. We are responsible for it in this Senate because we can't get 67 men and women with the guts. Does it really take guts to stand up, go down to the well and say, aye, to ban this horrible procedure? We don't have them. And Bill Clinton has the pen. That is the Constitution.

I want everybody to know, three votes, maybe four-probably three-will decide whether thousands of children live or die. Hopefully, we keep that in mind as the debate moves forward.

I don't enjoy talking about abortions and about killing children. Why are we on the Senate floor doing this? Let me state why. Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973 that said anyone can have an abortion any time they want for any reason. Over 4,000 babies, 4,100 to be exact, die every day from legalized abortion; not from partial-birth abortion, to be fair, but from abortions. Many of them are partial-birth abortions.

When I first took the floor on this issue several years ago, I was told it might be a dozen or two dozen at the most, in extreme cases-hydrocephalic babies and other horrible deformities were the only times they were aborting. I was knocked by some, certainly in the media, that I made a mountain out of a molehill, this was not prevalent in our society, and why was I doing all this.

Now we find from the admission of their own people who perform the abortions that partial-birth abortions are very frequent. I will point out in a few moments why they are frequent. I will point out some of the dirty little secrets of this industry. It will shock Members. It shocked me.

Mr. President, 40 million children have died since 1973, since Roe v. Wade, from abortion-not partial-birth abortion but all abortions. There are 260 million Americans. Roughly one-seventh, about 15 percent, of America's population has been executed through abortion; never to be a mom, never to be a dad, never to be a doctor. Who knows. Maybe one of those kids could have been a scientist who found a cure for cancer-never have the chance to be happy, never have a chance to fulfill their dreams. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson said we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Down the drain. They didn't have a choice.

I hear a lot about choice in this debate. What choice do they have? It would be interesting to have in the gallery some of the 40 million. They could be sitting up here today. I wonder how they would vote on this bill if they could vote. I think the vote would be different. I don't think there is any question about it.

Sometimes we make judgments about why a woman, mother, should have a right to have an abortion. I am reminded of a story I mentioned last night on the floor. I will mention it again because I know some missed it. I ask this question. Answer silently. If you knew a woman who had three children born blind, then she had two more children born deaf, a sixth child born mentally retarded, and she was pregnant again and she had syphilis, would you recommend she have an abortion? If you said yes, guess who you just killed. Beethoven. He made a pretty fair contribution to the world, as I recall, but we would have killed Beethoven. How many Beethovens have we killed in those 40 million? How many great baseball players such as my colleague presiding, have we killed? How many entertainers? We will never know. But we did it. We did it.

One of the things about America, people want to blame somebody else.

My kid gets in trouble; it is not my fault; it is somebody else's fault.

We are responsible for this. We go to work; everything is fine. But don't worry about those 40 million kids-gone. Mr. President, 95 percent of those abortions are used for birth control. They were totally elective. One to two percent are done because the life of the mother was threatened or she was perhaps raped or some other horrible thing. That means that more than 38 million abortions are performed for reasons that boil down to one word:

Convenience. It is convenient, isn't it? How convenient it is. Mom was too old; mom was too young; mom was in high school; mom was in college; mom needed to work.

Who knows. I want to speak directly to any woman out there now listening to me who may be pregnant with an unwanted pregnancy. There is help out there. One does not need to do this. Do not listen to those who say that is the only alternative. There is another alternative. If anyone wants help, there are professionals to help. Call my office or the office of any other pro-life Senator. We will steer anyone to the right people to get that help. I beg women to do it.

They will be glad they did when they look back 10, 15, 20 years from now.

They will be glad.

I had the privilege of helping to raise funds for a home for unwed mothers, a clinic in Baton Rouge, LA, from a woman who is a saint on Earth. Her name is Dorothy Wallace. She saved 10,000 women since 1973, advising them to choose life.

If you want something emotional, attend one of her meetings and see those 10-, 12-, 15-year-old boys and girls sitting there in the audience applauding Dorothy Wallace. You can have that experience too, I would say to any young woman out there; we can help you. There are professionals who will help you get through this. Choose life.

Let me say to the three or four Senators we need, who might change their votes-I am always an optimist; you never know-pick up your grandchild, or your child, if you are that young. Most of us are too old to have young children in here-not everybody. But pick up your own children, hold them in your arms, and ask yourself this question: How close is that little child in the birth canal that you are voting to kill, how close is that child to that little grandchild of yours you are now holding? Six months? Six years? I don't know. But look at that little grandchild. He or she has feet, has a face or body. So does that little child being executed in a partial-birth abortion.

I am going to talk for a few moments on the subject of my amendment, which is on the marketing and sale of fetal tissue from aborted babies. This is a gruesome story, but I want to tell you, it is happening. I say to my colleagues, this is happening in America, and it is disgusting. It is illegal, it is immoral, and it is unethical. If somebody says, What does that have to do with partial-birth abortion? in my amendment we will find out whether partial-birth abortions are being used, in fact, to sell babies' body parts.

Like partial-birth abortion, fetal tissue sales are morally and ethically reprehensible. It is a practice I hadn't heard of until recently. I couldn't believe we did it. But it does show how far this industry has gone beyond the ethical boundaries that even most pro-choice Americans believe is legitimate. Also, like partial-birth abortion, this industry has taken a practice, the selling of fetal body parts, which is illegal under Federal criminal law, and has created a loophole to allow them to do it. There is a loophole in partial-birth abortion, too. I coined the term "head loophole" because, you see, if the arms or the toes or the trunk or the leg or anything else exits the birth canal, it is not a baby yet. Somebody created a loophole, legal mumbo-jumbo. It makes lawyers rich and kills children.

Ironically, if you turn the baby around-and they have done that; the abortionists do turn the baby around, so it is a breach birth, so the head is last-by doing that, under the law of Roe v. Wade, they can kill the child. If it is the other way around and the head exits first, they cannot. Is the head less baby than the torso and the legs and the toes? You be the judge.

Stabbing a baby in the back of the head is murder, infanticide. Call it whatever you want; that is what it is. It is done for convenience. We are going to pay a severe price for this one day. The bottom line is, they call it medicine. Are you kidding me?

Let's go back to the sale of body parts and how it relates here. Look at this chart. We see a woman walking into an abortion clinic. She is obviously pregnant. She is in distress. She is emotional. She is mixed up. "What do I do? I don't want this child. I am in a mess." Let me tell you what happens when she comes in there.

In a room adjacent to where the abortion is to be performed usually, or someplace on the premises, is a person called the wholesaler or the harvester of the child's organs. This is what is going on in this industry. That person or persons-represented here by two organizations, Opening Lines and Anatomic Gift Foundation-sit there. They have a work order in their hands.

Bear in mind the brutality and the gruesomeness of this. Here is this woman obviously pregnant, obviously in distress, sitting there. I don't know whether they have a one-way mirror or a one-way glass or what. Perhaps they just come in, cruise in, take a good look at her to see if she is healthy. But they have a work order. They have already done this. They did prep it up. You now find out this woman has a normal fetus; she is not sick; the baby is fine. That is what they find out.

While she is still pregnant with a living child, still going through the turmoil of an abortion decision, they have a work order on her blood type, on how pregnant she is, what body parts they want. I am going to prove all that to you in a moment. That is the brutality of it. Then they make some kind of deal. They say it is fee for service, but it is selling body parts-I will go into that for a moment-the buyer or buyers, universities, government agencies, pharmaceutical companies, NIH, private researchers. This is against the law, and I read the law last night.

There are four illegal and immoral things that happen with this issue.

The first is, the current law prohibits receiving any valuable consideration for the tissue of aborted children, but it is happening.

Second, live births are occurring at these clinics. Live births are occurring at these clinics. It is the law of every State, when a live birth occurs, to save the life of that child if possible. But this is not happening either. Our tax dollars are being used to fund Planned Parenthood and NIH. On the one hand, if you are pro-life, you are funding Planned Parenthood with your tax dollars, and on the other hand you are funding the research on aborted children.

We will go down and finish this chart. Let's go through the steps. The buyer orders the fetal body parts from the wholesaler; that is, the buyer, the university, and so forth. The clinic provides the space for the wholesaler to procure the body parts. The wholesaler faxes an order to the clinic while the baby is still alive inside the mother. The wholesaler technicians harvest the organs-skin, limbs, et cetera. The clinic donates fetal body parts to the wholesaler who, in turn, pays the clinic a "site fee" for access to the babies. Then the wholesaler donates the fetal body parts to the buyer, and then the buyer reimburses the wholesaler for the government retrieving the fetal body parts.

That is a bunch of gobbledygook that means nothing but one thing-the sale of little babies chopped into pieces. This whole process is being thought out and carefully calculated while this woman is sitting there in the clinic.

Tell me the abortionists care about the welfare of a woman. Some estimates say the market for this is in the $420 million range. Some say it is as high as $1 billion.

I know it is difficult for those in the galleries to see it, but on television you will be able to see. This is a price list for body parts. I want you to understand what is happening here. This clinic, where this young woman in trouble goes in an agonizing, gut-wrenching decision as to whether to have an abortion or not, has a price list they are going to provide to the marketer for her baby's body parts even before she gets there.

In addition, they have a work order prepared on her as to what it is that is her background, what parts we can provide. Then they tell us this is just fee for services. If it is fee for services, why is it $600 for an intact cadaver and $325 for a spinal cord? I am not a doctor, but I assume it takes a lot more time to extract a spinal cord from a 2- or 3-pound baby than it does to put a cadaver in a box and mail it somewhere.

We have a brochure. I will read directly from the brochure. The brochure is the Opening Lines. Those are the sellers. Here is what the brochure says:

We have simplified the process for procuring fetal tissue. We do not require a copy of your approval of summary or of your research, and you are not required to cite Opening Lines as the source of tissue when you publish your work.

I guess not; it is against the law.

If you like our service, you will tell your colleagues, word of mouth. We are very pleased to provide you with our services. Our goal is to offer you and your staff the highest quality, most affordable, and freshest tissue prepared to your specifications and delivered in the quantities you need when you need it. We are professionally staffed and directed. We have over 10 years experience in tissue harvesting and preservation. Our full-time medical director is active in all phases, and we look forward to serving you.

That is what is given to the wholesaler while this poor woman sits there deciding whether or not to have an abortion. It is a great country, isn't it?

Let me explain to you how this all works directly from the horse's mouth. I am going to quote from a woman we will call Kelly. She was a wholesaler.

She was a buyer. She said:

We were never employees of the abortion clinic. We would have a contract with an abortion clinic that would allow us to go in and procure fetal tissue for research. We would get a generated list each day to tell us what tissue researchers, pharmaceuticals and universities were looking for. Then we would go and look at the patient charts.

Then we would go and look at the patient charts.

Kind of like going out and looking at a steer on the hoof, isn't it?

We had to screen out anyone who had ... fetal anomalies. These had to be the most perfect specimens we could give these researchers for the best value that we could sell for. Probably only 10 percent of fetuses were ruled out for anomalies. The rest were healthy donors.

That is showing a lot of compassion for the woman, isn't it?

Let me talk a little bit more about what other things happen in this clinic. The abortionists are having problems. It is not fun to be an abortionist anymore. The pro-life advertising and, frankly, the wake-up call to doctors and physicians have shown that abortions are declining in this country. This $300 to $1,000 they are going to charge that woman who walks in is not enough. They cannot live on that anymore. They have to make money from the fetus, from the aborted child.

What happens? Here is what the abortionists are saying, their own observations:

Abortion has failed to escape its back-alley associations ... [It is the] dark side of medicine ... Even when abortion became legal, it was still considered dirty.

And on and on.

One abortionist said:

[Abortion is] a nasty, dirty, yukky thing and I always come home angry.

Organized medicine has been sympathetic to abortion-not abortionists.

What had to happen is they had to come up with another way to make money, and they just did: selling body parts.

Warren Hern is the author of the most widely used textbook on abortion procedures. Dr. Hern says:

A number of practitioners attempt to ensure live fetuses after late abortions so that genetic tests can be conducted on them.

Hello? Are you listening? Live fetuses should be ensured. It is Dr. Hern's position that "practitioners do this without offering a woman the option of fetal demise before abortion in a morally unacceptable manner since they place research before the good of their patients.

That is a dirty little secret you are not hearing about.

In talking about live births, I said last night on the Senate floor, I have worked this issue for 15 years. I have witnessed the birth of my three children. It was the most beautiful thing I will ever experience. But this brief paragraph I am going to read you now is the worst that I have encountered in my lifetime of working on this issue. How anybody can sit anywhere watching and hearing what I am going to say to you now and say it is all right to allow this to continue in this country is beyond me. But it happens, and it is going to happen tomorrow and the next day and the day after that until we stop it.

Listen to this from a woman who witnessed this:

The doctor walked into the lab and set a steel pan on the table. "Got you some good specimens," he said. "Twins." The technician looked down at a pair of perfectly formed 24-week-old fetuses, moving and gasping for air.

Except for a few nicks from the surgical tongs that had pulled them out

That, my colleagues, could very well be a partial-birth abortion they seemed uninjured. The technician The technician is the buyer of the body parts said, "Wait a minute, there is something wrong here. They are moving. I don't do this. That's not in my contract."

She watched the doctor take a bottle of sterile water and fill the pan until the water ran up over the babies' mouths and noses. Then she left the room. "I couldn't watch those fetuses moving, she recalls. That's when I decided it was wrong."

If that is not murder, can somebody please tell me what it is? What is it? Do you realize what we are doing in this country? We are aborting and murdering our posterity.

Here is a headline from a transcript from a TV station in Columbus, OH, April 20, 1999:

Partial-birth Abortion Baby Survives 3 Hours.

A woman 5 months pregnant comes to Women's Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio, to get a partial-birth abortion. During the 3 days it takes to have the procedure, she began to have stomach pains and was rushed to a nearby hospital. Within minutes, she was giving birth.

Nurse Shelly Lowe in an emergency room at the hospital was shocked when the baby took a gasp of air. [Lowe said] "I just held her and it really got to me that anybody could do that to a baby ... I rocked her and talked to her because I felt that no one should die alone." The little girl survived 3 hours.

Mark Lally, Director of Ohio Right to Life believes this is why partial-birth abortions should be banned.

We have a chance to do it right now, today, ban it, stop it, and we are not going to do it because we are going to fail to get three or four people to say enough is enough. How much more can we take?

Abortion isn't something that just happens early in pregnancy. It happens in all stages of pregnancy. And it is legal under Roe v. Wade. Some States have banned them. Give them credit for that.

But we have the chance right here. A vote means something for a change around here. This isn't about a budget. It is not about how much taxes you are going to pay. It is not about whether you are going to get your Social Security check. It is about life. It is about whether or not a baby is going to die tomorrow and another one and another one. We can stop it with three or four votes, if three or four people have the courage to say enough is enough.

My God, Jill Stanek, the nurse at Chicago's Christ Hospital, has openly admitted that live births occur at her hospital, live births from abortions. The hospital staff offers comfort care which amounts to holding the child until it dies. There is testimony after testimony of it, live birth after live birth. I am not going to go through it all. It is pretty bad.

One little quote here:

"Once a fetus is born, it's no longer a fetus, it's a child," said George Annas, a professor of health law at the Boston University School of Public Health. "And you have to treat it that way."

Aborting a viable fetus is against the law in most States unless the mother's life or health is in danger. "If you're not sure, you can't do it," Annas said.

Nurses at Christ Hospital give "comfort care" to the aborted fetuses.

"Their skin is so thin you can see the heart beating through their chest," said nurse Jill Stanek. "It's not like they kick a lot and fight for air. They're weak."

This is going on in this industry every day. As I speak, children are dying. And we can stop it right here with four of you changing your votes. What is the big deal? You are going to lose a couple of votes from the abortion industry? Hey, those votes are worth the sacrifice for these children.

The "dreaded complication"-that is what they call it. The "dreaded complication"-oh, my God, we have a live child. What are we going to do?

I tell you what they do. They drown them in pans. They leave them in linen closets, gasping for air hours at a time, and sometimes, if there is somebody with some compassion in the place, they will hold them in their arms until they die.

This is America-the "dreaded complication."

You know what some of the abortionists say?

Reporting abortion live births is like turning yourself in to the IRS for an audit. What is the gain?

You know: Sure. Hey, we had a live birth here. My goodness, that is embarrassing.

Now we have come to this; not only do we have a live birth, if we let it die, we can sell its body parts, and we can make a fortune that we could not make off the woman because she could not afford to pay me. That is what we are doing.

I am going to expose this filthy, disgusting fraud as many times and as often as I can. I am going to get the sunshine into this industry. I am going to get to the bottom of it; and I am going to stop it, if it is the last thing I do. And it may be, but I am going to do it.

You have to have a feticidal dose of saline solution. It is almost a breach of contract not to. Otherwise what are you going to do? Hand her back a baby that's been aborted and has questionable damage?

Another one says:

If a baby is rejected in abortion and lives, then it's a person under the Constitution.

I witnessed it. Gianna Jessen was aborted. She is now 26, 27 years old. I saw her sing "Amazing Grace" before 1,000 people 4 or 5 years ago. She said: I forgive my mother. She made a mistake, and I forgive her. But please, help other mothers get through this so what happened to me doesn't have to happen to somebody else.

Change your votes, colleagues-four of you. Let's once-just one time-let's beat President Clinton on something. He has gotten away with everything-everything. He always wins. We never win against him. Just one time, let's override his veto.

This guy says:

I find late abortions pretty heavy weather both for myself and for my patients.

I guess it is heavy weather; it is real heavy weather.

I want to go back to these charts. This is an emotional experience. Anybody who can't be passionate on this issue when we are talking about the lives of children-and all we need is four or five votes on the floor of this Senate to stop this killing; that is all we need.

Look here. These are the charts. What does it say? NIH, that is where this stuff is going. It is illegal, but it is going there anyway; and we are paying for it.

Do you know what it says here? Ten minutes from the fetal cadaver, within 10 minutes they want it on ice. Nobody could get a cadaver on ice in 10 minutes-unless it is a live birth or a partial birth. And I will prove it to you.

One method of killing children is saline. That has to go into the amniotic sack and poison the baby. Another one is D&E, where you chop the child to pieces with an instrument in the womb so it comes out in so many pieces the nurse has to assemble them all in a towel to be sure all the pieces are there so there is nothing left inside the woman. The third method is one here called digoxin, DIG, where the needle goes into the heart of the baby and dissolves the organs. That is a nice way to die.

Let me ask you a question. Those of you, those three or four of you that I pray to God will get on this vote, let me ask you a question: If you are buying body parts, and you need one of those body parts to do research can you take a body part that has been hacked to pieces in the D&E method? No. You know it.

Can you take a body part from some baby who has been poisoned with saline or had their tissues dissolved from digoxin? No.

There are only two methods left: partial birth and live birth. That is where they are getting the tissue. Wake up, America. That is where they are getting the tissue. And here is the proof right here. Here is the work order: "Please send list of current frozen tissues." "No digoxin donors." They are telling them:

Give us a live birth. Give us a partial birth. We don't want any babies like this.

We can't use their organs.

This is happening in America, and I am sick of it. And I am sick of losing every year. "Prefer no DIG." Over and over again, the requests would mention the tissue must be fresh. It is over and over again. You see it everywhere.

Here is another one: Remove specimen and prepare within 15 minutes, 10 minutes.

Ladies and gentlemen, the truth is, you cannot get this kind of tissue the way they want it without a live birth or partial birth.

That is a fact: Dirty little secrets, in a dirty, disgusting industry that is profiting at the expense of women who are in a horrible situation, and then selling the body parts-the ultimate humiliation of this poor aborted child-and we cannot get 4 people, we cannot get 67 votes on the floor of the Senate to override this President. What would Daniel Webster, at whose desk I sit, say? What would our founders say? What would Jefferson say, who said life first, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? I could go on and on.

I am going to stop because I am mentally exhausted, to be candid about it. There is sexual abuse of these women. They are lying there on the table, and people are making mocking remarks about their genitalia. I could go on and on with stories about it. It is disgusting.

I am going to shine the light into this industry, and I am going to expose it. I am going to stop it. If I have to do it myself, I am going to stop it. If it is not an amendment, it will be a bill; whatever it takes, it is going to provide for full disclosure. It is going to put the light into those clinics, and we are going to find out about this stuff. We are going to stop it.

Everything else is regulated in this country. You can't do anything without the Government being on your back. Then let's put the Government on the backs of the abortion industry, for crying out loud: Any entity that receives human fetal tissue obtained as a result of an induced abortion shall file with the Secretary of HHS a disclosure statement. Let's find out who is buying, who is selling, and what is happening.

Oftentimes in these clinics, a young woman comes in; she is pregnant and needs an abortion. She is presented with a form, which she is asked to sign, that says that her baby can be chopped up and sold.

We get two stories out of the abortion industry. They say: Now, look, this woman is in a distraught emotional state. We are here for her health and safety and her good emotional state. We are not going to put this form in front of her. We will do it after she has the abortion.

I hate to give my colleagues the bad news, those of you who support this god-awful procedure, but they want the baby within 10 minutes. So unless they are going to wake her up out of whatever state she happens to be in, they don't have time to do that then. They do it before. That is what they do. They are going to tell you they don't, but they do.

Here is some proof for you. The name is changed to protect the innocent.

On July 1, 1993, Christy underwent an abortion by-fictitious name-John Roe. After the procedure, Roe looked up to find Christy pale with bluish lips and no pulse, no respiration. Christy's heart had stopped. There are no records that her vital signs were monitored during the procedure. Additionally, Roe was not trained in anesthesia and the clinic had no anesthesia emergency equipment or staff trained to handle an anesthesia complication. Paramedics were able to restore Christy's pulse and respiration, but she was left blind and in a permanent vegetative state. Today, she requires 24-hour-a-day care and is fed through a tube in her abdomen. She is not expected to recover and is being cared for by her family. Christy had an abortion on her 18th birthday. Happy birthday, Christy.

Any hospital in America would have had licensed anesthesiologists who were capable of stopping that from happening. But it didn't happen. For those of you who say, well, I guess she must have, she could have signed that card-really? In a vegetative state, you think she signed the permission slip?

I have her permission slip here. It was signed on June 29, 1993. Does anybody think she signed that in a vegetative state? She was brought in there, and she was told-the language was pretty gruesome in there-what we can do with your baby after you are finished with the abortion. She signed it. Not only that, she said: I understand I will receive no compensation for consenting to this study. Study? It is a study? It is chopping the baby up into God knows how many parts and sending it off to some research laboratory. She doesn't get a dime out of it, and they make probably $5,000, when added all up. That is what is happening.

I say bring a little sunshine in. I have two options on this proposal-one, to offer an amendment to this bill. I want to be honest about it. I don't want to do anything at this point to stop this bill from passing, nothing, not even this amendment, if that is what it takes. So it will either be an amendment, if we gain votes; if we can't gain and we lose votes as a result of it, I will prepare a bill. But I will not stop on this issue. I will not stop until the light shines in on this disgusting industry.

It is amazing. We go after the tobacco people. What bad guys they are. Somebody smokes a cigarette, and somehow everybody else is to blame but the guy who smokes it. So we go after the tobacco company, fine them billions. This is a heck of a lot worse than that. If they can go after the tobacco companies, then we can go after these guys. That is exactly what I am going to do. Be prepared out there because I am coming. I am not going to stop until the light shines in on this.

I will close with one final plea. Several times on my side of the aisle I have made a personal appeal to the five or six Republicans who refuse to support the ban on partial-birth abortions. I have asked privately, please change your vote, please change your vote and save lives. Two times we voted on this and the President vetoed it, and two times I couldn't switch those votes. I understand vote switching. I don't like it when I am asked to switch mine. But it is not about the budget and taxes and health care or anything else; it is about life. We are going to save lives if four Members change their votes.

I make another appeal that I hope, for once, will not fall on deaf ears:

Please consider changing your vote on this bill. Let's pass this thing with over 67 votes, so President Clinton can have his little veto ceremony and we will override it. That is the day I am looking forward to in America. And then, whether it is on this bill or some separate bill, we are going to shine the light into these abortion clinics. We are going to find out what is going on, and the American people will know.

So be prepared. If you have any documents to hide, you had better hide them. We are coming after you. I have had enough of it. Live births and partial births, killing children coming into the world, drowning babies in a pan-I have had enough of it. You can defend it, if you want to, and go ahead and vote to defend it. Not me. I am coming after you.

I yield the floor.