Roe V. Wade

Floor Speech

ROE V. WADE -- (House of Representatives - January 22, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Arizona for organizing this Special Order tonight on this day that culminates a long period of time here in Washington across America where we have gathered together to march and to speak and to appeal and to pray for the end of this holocaust of abortion in America.

I have enjoyed those experiences that I have been able to share with my pro-life colleagues. As I went to the mass last night in the basilica and looked out across that sea of faces, more than 10,000 strong on the ground floor of that magnificent cathedral up on the hill in northeast Washington, realizing that there are 10,000 people in the main floor and another 5,000 in the basement, 15 to 16,000, many young people, who have done the pilgrimage from all across America, gotten on a bus and ridden for hours, maybe 18 or 20 or more hours to get here. They will go to the service, and they came to the march, the march for life today on The Mall in the cold and in the drizzle. They got back on the bus, some of them without even getting a chance to get warm, and headed back to their homes again. Those are people with conviction. Those are people that understand the two simple and basic questions that are before us here.

The first question is, and so when I ask many high school students in public auditoriums, do you believe in the sanctity of life? Is human life sacred in all of its forms? Is the person sitting next to you, is their life sacred? Is your life sacred? And I get the answer, the universal answer is yes, yes from all of them. I have never had a dissenter.

Then I asked them, there is only one other question you need to ask to determine your position on life, and that is, this sacred life, your life, the person sitting next to you, at what instant did that life begin?

We know that there is only one instant, and that is the instant of conception. But once a person understands and comes to a faithful conviction that human life is sacred, and it begins at the instant of conception, we also will never lose the debate, will never lose our conviction.

I would invite anyone in this Congress to come to this floor and debate me on those two points. I would like to have someone stand up and tell me their life began at some other instant than conception, but it will not happen, because they know that the minute, the instant that anybody over here takes a position other than this sacred life begins at the instant of conception, they have instantly lost the debate.

That's the point that I think all Americans should understand. If they do, this Nation will one day put an end to Roe v. Wade.

I am a Catholic, an active Catholic, and I understand the church's teachings on this. I wonder, sometimes about some of the active Catholics in this Congress that do not necessarily reflect the church's teachings. I would love to see, and I would call out an invitation next year for the special mass at the basilica, for the Speaker to join us there in our public prayer for those 50 million lives of those little babies, those little babies that will never have the opportunity to laugh, to love, never be hugged at night, never be kissed at night, not a single night, 50 million babies, 50 million little empty pairs of shoes, 50 million empty baby cribs, 50 million toys never played with, 50 million children, innocent as could be, denied the right to life.

I reflect upon the appointments to the Supreme Court that the President made in this past term, two magnificent appointments to the Supreme Court, and that would be Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. We got a Supreme Court decision that upheld our ban on partial birth abortion finally, finally a measure that came from this Congress that was not denied by the Court.

When I looked across the sea of faces that filled The Mall as far as the eye could see today by the tens of thousands, and perhaps by the hundreds of thousands, and reflected that they all came here to this city today because the Court injected themselves into a policy decision, not a constitutional decision.

Roe vs. Wade and Doe v. Bolten, both need to be ripped out and both need to be overturned. The two magnificent appointments to the Supreme Court that understand this Constitution to mean what it says and mean what it was understood when it was ratified by our Founders, those appointments are wonderful appointments that move us down the line.

This Constitution will protect life; it will protect marriage. But we must have a Supreme Court that protects the Constitution, that does not amend it with their liberalism and their activism.

Mr. Speaker, the next two appointments to the Supreme Court will be more important than the last two. The next two appointments to the Supreme Court will determine whether we preserve and protect life and whether we preserve and protect marriage. Those two are transformational issues before this Congress. We must stand up for life.

We said goodbye to the elegant statesman and the great lion for life, Henry Hyde, Chairman Henry Hyde. Many of us count him as a friend. I counted him as one of the honors of my life to be able to call him as a friend and someone whom I admired.

The words on the program at Henry Hyde's funeral were a quote from him that say this: ``When the time comes, as it surely will, when we face that awesome moment, the final judgment, I've often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates. You are there alone standing before God, and a terror will rip through your soul like nothing you can imagine. But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone. I think there will be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world, and they will plead for everyone who has been in this movement. They will say to God, 'Spare him because he loved us,' and God will look at you and say not 'Did you succeed?' but 'Did you try?'''

God bless his life and his effort, and may he save the lives of the unborn.

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