Financial Services And General Government Appropriations Act, 2010

Statement

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Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend for yielding. Mr. Chairman, for almost two decades, Congress has banned the use of taxpayer funds for abortion in the District of Columbia except in the exceedingly rare and tragic cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother.

President Obama tells us he wants to reduce abortion. Well, one of the most effective and proven ways to reduce abortion is not to fund it. The evidence is compelling. And, frankly, it's logical.

The research arm of Planned Parenthood, an organization that itself every year performs over 305,000 abortions in its own clinics--a staggering loss of children's lives--their research arm, the Guttmacher Institute, has made it absolutely clear that when taxpayer funding is not available, between 20 and 35 percent of Medicaid abortions that would have been procured simply don't occur and that these children go on to be born.

Today, there are thousands of children in the District of Columbia and millions throughout the country who live, attend schools, have boyfriends and girlfriends, get married and have their own kids--dream and hope because taxpayer subsidies didn't effectuate their demise.

Pursuant to the Constitution of the United States, Congress has the authority and, I would respectfully submit, the obligation and duty, especially from a human rights perspective, to set policy as it relates to how funds are used in either protecting or destroying children. We should not be subsidizing the killing of unborn children.

By definition, abortion is infant mortality. Ultrasound technology, the rise of prenatal medicine has shattered the myth that unborn children are somehow not human, nor alive.

Dr. Alveda King, Mr. Chairman, niece of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, had two abortions. She now leads an organization known as the Silent No More Campaign, made up exclusively of women who have had abortions.

The CHAIR. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mrs. EMERSON. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. She has made it very clear that, after every abortion, one baby dies--two if they're twins--and the woman is wounded.

The intermediate and long-term psychological damage and physical damage to women is underreported and underappreciated, but as she and so many others have pointed out, it is real and frightening. Dr. King has said, How can the dream survive? She was talking about her late uncle, the late Dr. Martin Luther King. How can the dream survive--these are her words--if we murder children?

Abortion methods, Mr. Chairman, are gruesome. The cheap sophistry of choice, the euphemisms that are cynically employed to cloak it, can't mask a dismemberment abortion that hacks a child to death and can't mask poison shots that chemically burn and kill an unborn child. Abortion is infant mortality. We should not be funding it. There will be children who will die if this legislation becomes law simply because the subsidies are there to effectuate their deaths.

I hope Members will vote ``no'' on the bill.

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