CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
HOUSE
PAGE H9801
Oct. 21, 2003

THE CASE FOR LIFE

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kline). Under the Speaker´s announced
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) is
recognized for 60 minutes.

Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to come before the House
tonight in a continuous series that this Member of Congress had the
privilege of beginning scarcely a month ago, but a series of speeches
that I hope will periodically and intermittently be a part of the fabric
of my congressional career for howsoever long the Lord permits me to
serve here.

I simply call it, Mr. Speaker, the case for life, and it is my ambition
from time to time to time to come onto this blue and gold carpet of this
Capitol and speak to my colleagues, and anyone else who may be
listening, on the moral and intellectual and historical arguments for
the sanctity of human life; and to perhaps, Mr. Speaker, in some small
way enliven the moral sensibility of a Nation and be a part of an
ongoing debate in America on this topic.

Mr. Speaker, this is a debate that continues at this very hour in the
other body of this Congress. At this very moment, I am pleased to say,
as a pro-life Member of Congress, that the United States Senate is at
this very moment passing a conference report on the Partial-Birth
Abortion Ban Act. That legislation, as of today, will have three times
passed the Congress since 1995 and will be delivered for the first time
to the willing desk of President George W. Bush, where, unlike the veto
stamp of President Clinton that met the ban of partial-birth abortion
not once but twice, President George W. Bush, upon returning from his
tour of the Asia-Pacific Rim, will no doubt, in an emotional ceremony,
put his pen to this legislation and end a practice that has no place in
civilized society.

So it is especially poignant for me, just a few steps down the hallway
from that Chamber, to rise tonight and continue my discussion of the
case for life. And particularly tonight, Mr. Speaker, I feel prompted to
speak about abortion and American women. You see, it has always been my
belief, since first having my conscience enlivened on this issue, that
there is not one victim of abortion, but there are two. There is
undoubtedly the nascent human life that is ended abruptly and in
darkness, but there is the other life that goes on that pays a price
that psychologists are talking about today, but many Americans simply
choose to ignore.

There are also other voices that I want to reflect on tonight as well,
chiefly from our own history. As we think about the great American women
who led this Nation in increasing measure towards equal status for women
in voting rights and in property and in station in our society, women
like Susan B. Anthony, Emma Goldman, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton come to
mind.

I just came from a stroll in the rotunda, Mr. Speaker, where I grabbed a
piece of paper and scribbled the names of a few of those heroic women
that actually appear on a statute at the very center of our Capitol. In
the rotunda, there is a statute that bears the likeness of the three
great heroes of the suffrage movement. Two of them I would like to speak
about tonight as we talk about great American women and abortion, but
then also talking about what women of America today face in the struggle
over the sanctity of human life.

One of the faces on that statute is Susan B. Anthony, a name that is
almost like mom and apple pie for most Americans. Susan B. Anthony was
born February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts. She was brought up in a
Quaker family that had long activist traditions. Early in life, she
developed a deep sense, historians tell us, of justice and what could
only be described as moral zeal.

After teaching for 15 years, Susan B. Anthony became active in the
temperance movement. Because she was a woman, she was not allowed to
speak at rallies, and this experience, as well as her acquaintance with
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, led her to help form what became the Women´s
Movement in 1852. Soon afterwards, she would dedicate her entire life to
winning women not only the right to vote, Mr. Speaker, but Susan B.
Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were about winning women a seat at
the civic table; the opportunity not to be viewed, as women were in some
aspects of common law, as the property of their husbands, but rather to
be seen as coequal heirs of everything that freedom offers.

Ignoring opposition and abuse, Susan B. Anthony traveled, lectured, and
canvassed across the Nation for the vote. She also campaigned for the
abolition of slavery, women´s rights to their own property and earnings,
and even women´s labor organizations. In 1900, she achieved a major
victory in convincing the University of Rochester to admit women for the
first time in their storied history.

Susan B. Anthony, who had never married, and was remembered as an
aggressive and compassionate person with a keen mind and the ability to
inspire, she remained active in the movement that she began until her
death in March of 1906.

And Susan B. Anthony was pro-life. Let me read, if I may, from her
publication, "The Revolution," on this topic, published July 8, 1869.
Susan B. Anthony wrote: "No matter what the motive, love or ease or a
desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully
guilty who commits the deed." Referring to abortion. She went on to
write: "It will burden her conscience in life; it will burden her soul
in death. But, oh," she wrote, "oh thrice guilty is he who drove her to
the desperation which impelled her to the crime."

So wrote Susan B. Anthony, words that we will reflect on before I take
my seat tonight. Brokenhearted words of the suffering of the unborn
innocent and also of the suffering of the American woman who would
burden her conscience in life and burden her soul in death, but of the
guilt of the man who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to
perform the abortion.

Susan B. Anthony, memorialized in marble in the rotunda of the United
States Capitol, a woman whose name is synonymous with the voting rights
and the equal status that women of 21st century America enjoy, was
pro-life and understood the moral consequences of the act on an American
woman and the deplorable position of a man that would force the outcome.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton also appears on the monument in the rotunda. And
she, like Susan B. Anthony, her friend and colleague and colaborer for
women´s issues in America, was pro-life. Elizabeth Cady, the daughter of
Daniel Cady, a lawyer and a politician, was born in Jonestown, New York,
12 November 1815. She studied law under her father, who became a New
York Supreme Court judge, and during that period of time she became a
very strong advocate for women´s rights.

In 1840, Elizabeth married the lawyer, Henry B. Stanton. The couple
became active in the American antislavery movement, and later that year
Stanton and Lucretia Mott traveled to London as delegates to the World
Antislavery Convention. Both women, history records, were furious when
they, like the British women at the convention, were refused the
permission to speak at the meeting to denounce slavery.

Stanton later recalled, "we Resolved to hold a convention as soon as we
returned home and form a society to advocate the rights of women." And
so she did. But it was not until 1848 that Stanton and Lucretia Mott
organized the Women´s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls. Stanton´s
resolution, that it was "The duty of the women of this country to secure
to themselves the sacred right to the elective franchise," was passed,
and this became the focus of the group´s campaign for years to come.

1800

In 1866, Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone
established the American Equal Rights Association. The following year,
the association became active in Kansas where Negro suffrage and women´s
suffrage were to be decided in a popular vote, although both ideas were
sadly rejected at the polls. Stanton was a historian, a scholar, and one
of the founders of the American Woman Suffrage Association formed in the
1880s and from which the suffragette movement was born that ultimately
resulted in the passage and adoption of the 19th amendment of the
Constitution of the United States of America.

[Page H9802]

This great American woman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, is by all definitions
a hero of American women. Like Susan B. Anthony, her friend, who also
appears on that extraordinary monument in the Rotunda, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton was pro-life, and unapologetically so. Think about these two
women who appear on a miniature version of Mount Rushmore right here in
the Capitol. We have three women who essentially represent a life-size
smaller version of Mount Rushmore for women´s issues in America; and
they were women committed to equal rights, to the right to vote, and
they were women committed to the right to life.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton classified abortion as a form of infanticide. She
wrote in a letter to Julia Ward Howe, which is recorded in Howe´s diary
at Harvard University library on October 16, 1873, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton wrote, "When we consider that women are treated as property, it
is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to
be disposed of as we see fit."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton in essence saw a connection, Mr. Speaker, between
that vile reality that was part of American life that the woman herself
was property and the belief that an unborn child within the woman was
property as well. She saw them as equal evils, related together; and so
they are. On 12 March, 1868, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote, "There must
be a remedy even for such a crying evil as this," referring to abortion,
"but where shall it be found, at least where it begin, if not in the
complete enfranchisement and elevation of women."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton looked at abortion that was a reality in America
in 1868 and said the antidote to end this evil is to raise women up. She
saw abortion as a natural consequence of the subordination of women in
our society. It is an astounding historical fact and a dark irony, Mr.
Speaker, when one thinks of the extraordinary sacrifices and
advancements of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the
great American women that won women their equal status in our society,
that that same momentum would be used in 1973 to rejustify the practice
of abortion, which those same heroic American women loathed to the
depths of their being.

Think about those words, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the three heroes
of the women´s movement in America that is memorialized in this Capitol
building in stone. In the Rotunda where only Presidents, Alexander
Hamilton, and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., are memorialized,
there are also these three women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton saw a
relationship between reducing women to property and reducing the unborn
children growing within them to property.

Let me read these words again. She said, "There must be a remedy for
even such a crying evil as this, but where shall it be found, at least
where it begin, if not in the complete enfranchisement and elevation of
women." A powerful thought that the heroes of the suffragette movement
would look to future generations and say that the abortions that were
taking place in the middle 19th century would some day go away, we would
no longer treat unborn children as property if we could achieve the day
when women were not viewed as property.

Alice Paul is credited as one of the leading figures responsible for the
passage of the 19th amendment, which is the women´s suffragette
amendment extending to women the right to vote in the Constitution of
the United States of America. Alice Paul was raised as a Quaker,
attended Swarthmore College and worked at the New York College
Settlement while attending the New York School of Social Work. She left
for England in 1906 to work in a settlement house movement there for 3
years. She was Chair of a major committee of the National American Woman
Suffrage Association within a year, in her mid-twenties.

In England she had taken part in the women´s suffragette movement, even
participating in hunger strikes to make her point. She brought back this
sense, some would say, of militancy, I would say more generously of
urgency, to the women´s movement in America. It was that urgency that
characterized the life of Alice Paul.

Her emphasis on a Federal constitutional amendment for suffrage was at
times at odds even with some within the women´s movement; and after the
1920 victory for the Federal amendment, Alice Paul became involved in
the struggle to pass an Equal Rights Amendment, which actually passed
this Congress in the year 1970, was sent to the States, and it failed.
Paul died in 1977 in New Jersey with the heated battle of the Equal
Rights Amendment having brought her international acclaim.

Like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton before her, Alice Paul
was pro-life. Alice Paul said famously, and remember now, this is Alice
Paul, born January 1885, died 1977, essentially the author of the Equal
Rights Amendment, seen even as a young woman as one of the principal
driving forces behind the constitutional amendment which won women the
right to vote; Alice Paul was pro-life. It is an astonishing thing to
think about, that the author of the Equal Rights Amendment, which I
scarcely doubt I would have supported for a variety of cultural
arguments, but someone who undoubtedly would be a hero of feminists to
this day, and Alice Paul said, "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of
women."

Let me say again, hoping that somewhere in America those words land with
a thud in the conscience of a feminist, that these women who are rightly
remembered as heroes of the women´s movement in America, a woman in
Alice Paul who even in her twenties was seen as a driving force behind
the constitutional amendment that won women the right to vote, seen as
instrumental in the passage of the 19th amendment, and then would go on,
however I might disagree with her, to be the author of the Equal Rights
Amendment which passed this Congress in 1970, some 33 years ago.

Alice Paul would say, "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women."

Like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul knew and
spoke the truth. And so it ever was of women who achieved great
distinction in the cause of women´s rights in America from the 19th
century through the 20th century, until 1973 when women´s issues became
simply another way of speaking about the right to have an abortion.

It is an extraordinary irony of history, Mr. Speaker, to think that a
women´s movement that was born on names like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, that was born on the moral consciousness of
women, who said I am not property to be owned by a man, and who
understood that that unborn child within them likewise should never be
seen as property, that that same women´s movement in 1973 would be
hijacked by those whose moral view of the sanctity of human life is
diametrically opposed to those that founded the women´s movement in
America.

Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women, so said Alice Paul,
author of the Equal Rights Amendment, and I agree. It is an exploitation
of women for physical and emotional reasons. Let me speak to those
tonight as I conclude this portion of the case for life, abortion, and
American women.

There are many who believe that abortion is safe in America. But
truthfully, despite the use of local anesthesia, a full 97 percent of
women that have abortions report experiencing pain during the procedure,
which more than a third describe as intense, according to medical
studies, severe, or very severe. Compared to other pains, researchers
have rated the pain from abortion as more painful than a bone fracture,
about the same as a cancer pain, although not as painful as amputation,
according to medical experts.

There are some, including former President Bill Clinton, who used to
repeat the mantra that it was his goal that abortion would be safe,
legal and rare; but abortion is not safe for women, Mr. Speaker.
Complications are common. According to medical experts, bleeding,
hemorrhaging, laceration of the cervix, menstrual disturbance,
inflammation of reproductive organs, bowel and bladder perforation, and
serious infection are commonplace in the aftermath of the most routine
abortions in America. Even more harmful than the short-term pain, which
women describe as severe, are the potential long-term physical
complications that we never talk about in America.

[Page H9803]

1815

And when I say "we," I mean those who support the right to an abortion
and even those of us in the pro-life movement. I will never forget
President Clinton´s Surgeon General saying, so thoughtfully, that one
particular denomination of Christianity needed to get over their "love
affair with the fetus." So said Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders. Despite
the horrific aspects of her comment, the truth is that even we, in the
pro-life movement, have not thought enough about the other victim of
abortion as well, for there are, as I said at the opening of this Case
for Life, two victims. We grieve the loss of unborn life, but we need to
speak more boldly about the impact on American women, physical and
emotional, that abortion extracts.

Among those long-term physical complications, Mr. Speaker, for example,
overzealous curettage, a medical procedure, can damage the lining of the
uterus and lead to permanent infertility. Overall, women who have
abortions face an increased risk of tubal pregnancy and more than double
the risk of future sterility. Perhaps the most important are that all
the risks of these sorts of complications, along with the risk of future
miscarriage, increases with each subsequent abortion. I am not
altogether sure that women that make their way into clinics know that,
that with each abortion they risk infertility, sterility or when the
time comes that they decide to say yes to life, that they may be greeted
with the heartbreak of miscarriage in increasing measure. More
controversially, according to the Journal of the National Cancer
Institute, there is strong evidence that abortion increases the risk of
breast cancer. A study by the Institute of more than 1,800 women in
1994, which was published in the Journal of the National Cancer
Institute, found that overall women having abortions increased their
risk of getting breast cancer before the age of 45 by 50 percent. For
women under 18 with no previous pregnancies, having an abortion after
the eighth week increased the risk of breast cancer, according to this
medical study, by 800 percent. Women with a family history of breast
cancer fared even worse. All 12 women participating in the study who had
abortions before 18 and had a family history of breast cancer themselves
contracted breast cancer before the age of 45. I say this as someone who
has consistently supported research with the National Institutes of
Health to confront breast cancer. I have had dear friends beset by this
scourge and disease and I do not mean to speak in any way insensitively
about it or in any way to associate breast cancer with abortion, that
one fits the other, but rather simply to cite the research, that we can
hear the truth echoing perhaps from this place tonight that according to
the medical community and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute,
there is strong evidence that abortion increases the risk of breast
cancer and women should know that.

There are also psychological consequences to American women for
abortion. It seems to me that this may have been in the mind of Alice
Paul, the author of the Equal Rights Amendment, when she said, "Abortion
is the ultimate exploitation of women." Because it seems to me it is
altogether convenient for men for a woman to have an abortion. Men have
a rather unlimited capacity to compartmentalize and move on, but what
the medical community is finding out is what most men have known
throughout the eons, that women by and large have better hearts than we
do, have a greater moral sensitivity than we do, and it is reflected in
the research of what has come to be known as postabortion syndrome,
which is rising to epidemic levels in America. Clinical research
provides a growing body of scientific evidence that having an abortion
can cause psychological harm to some women. Psychologist Wanda Franz,
Ph.D., in the March 1989 congressional hearings on the impact of
abortion said, quote, women who report negative aftereffects from
abortion know exactly what their problem is. They report horrible
nightmares of children calling to them. When they are reminded of the
abortion, Franz testified the women reexperience it with terrible
psychological pain. They feel worthless and victimized because they
failed at the most natural of human activities, the role of being a
mother.

I think in my own heart of conversations with women of my generation who
have become active in the pro-life movement but who have found in their
faith the grace and the healing to move beyond that choice. And I think
of a woman who said in my presence once, some 20 years after having an
abortion, that not a day went by that she did not think how old that
child would be. They do not tell you that in the lobby at the abortion
clinic, Mr. Speaker, but they should. The exploding incidence of
postabortion syndrome has even caused major medical associations in this
country to recognize it. Women suffering postabortion stress may
experience drug and alcohol abuse, personal relationship disorders,
sexual dysfunction, communication difficulties and even in some cases
attempt suicide. Postabortion syndrome appears to be a type of pattern
of denial which may last for 5 to 10 years before emotional difficulties
surface.

Now that clinicians have established that there is an identifiable
pattern to PAS, postabortion syndrome, they face a new challenge. What
is still unknown is how widespread psychological problems are among
women who have had abortions. The LA Times did a survey in 1989 and
found that 56 percent of women who had abortions felt guilty about it.
And 26 percent, quote, mostly regretted the abortion, in a poll done by
the LA Times. Clinicians´ current goal now is to conduct extensive
national research studies to obtain data on the size and scope of
postabortion syndrome.

When one thinks, Mr. Speaker, of 1.5 million women undergoing abortions
every year since 1973, it is almost overwhelming to think of the
heartache that must grip the quiet moments of millions of women in our
land. And because I am not standing in my home church, Mr. Speaker, I
will not tonight explain to them that there is a way out under it, that
there is grace and there is forgiveness and there is healing, and in a
church near to them they can find it. It will always be my prayer as the
Case for Life series goes forward in this Chamber that any woman who has
experienced this under the sound of my voice would never in any way feel
judged by this sinner, but that they would know that there is healing
and there is grace in a God of mercy, and they would know there is a
Nation that urgently needs them to take a stand and to tell the truth to
the next generation of women about the cost of an abortion, not just the
ending of an innocent human life and every potential that it would ever
have but, Mr. Speaker, about the breaking of a heart.

Oftentimes, as I stand before groups of young women in the prime of
their life, I am asked about my position on abortion. My pro-life views
are fairly widely known in Indiana. I always make the point to offer
young women in the room a promise, and it is a good place for me to
close this installment of the Case for Life tonight as I think about
Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony who believed that abortion was the
ultimate exploitation of women. I will look at these young women,
oftentimes in a high school classroom, sometimes in a small church
group, and I will look around the room knowing just statistically
speaking that there may be some young women in that room who are faced
with an unwanted pregnancy and are faced with a choice between bringing
that unborn baby to term or ending its life in the womb. I always look
at those young women and I say, I want to make you a promise that the
other side can never make. I said, if you are faced with an unwanted
pregnancy and you make the decision, however difficult, with your
family´s assistance or a crisis pregnancy center near you to take that
baby to term and even if you turn that baby over to another family for
adoption, versus if you choose to end that life in the womb, if you
choose life, I will promise you from the moment they hand you that
wiggling little baby in the operating room, whether you raise it or you
give it up, there will never be a day in your life but that you know
that you did the right thing. And the other side cannot make that
promise.

[Page H9804]

And if the statistics that we heard tonight, the physical cost and the
emotional cost of abortion, are not jarring, perhaps that challenge
would be, Mr. Speaker. My prayer is that as we think about the great
women of American history, the great women of the suffragette movement
that won women the right to vote, that wrestled equal status for women
in our society, people like Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul and others,
when I think about the tender and wonderful women of my family and of
America, I have hope for the cause of life, because I cannot help but
believe that women who could take American society from a medievalist
view of women as property and have the moral courage to win the right to
vote and to win equal standing in the public square because of their
courage and their conscience, that those same American women and their
daughters and their granddaughters will not someday lead us back to the
truth that life is sacred, to the truth that echoes through history in
those ancient words, "See, I set before you today life and death,
blessings and destruction. Now choose life, so that you and your
children may live."

It is my belief that it will be when that day comes, that abortion comes
to an end in America, it will be the women of America who lead us home,
just as it was the women of America who led us to a more just society
and to an equal station in our culture for women.

With that, I would conclude my part of this Case for Life series, Mr.
Speaker, and yield for whatever approach he would choose to make to this
issue to a man who while he has served in Congress for over 20 years,
his vibrancy and vitality is intimidating to most of us who serve with
him.

1830

The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) has been an advocate of the
cause of life since before Roe v. Wade, and he brings an energy and a
commitment to this cause like no other, and I am deeply humbled that he
would join me in this series of a case for life, and I yield gratefully
to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from
Indiana (Mr. Pence) for his leadership in realizing that we need to
accelerate our efforts to inform, to enlighten, and hopefully to
motivate America to stand up on behalf of life, to let women know that
there are alternatives. We spoke the other day, actually the gentleman
from Indiana (Mr. Pence) and I and a few others, the gentleman from
Arizona (Mr. Franks), and we cosponsored a forum on women who had had
abortions. As a matter of fact it was called Women Deserve Better, and
we were able to hear from four very brave women, including Jennifer
O´Neil and Melba Moore and others, who told their stories of having had
abortions and the horrific consequences to their emotions, to their
bodies, to their psychological health as a direct result of that
abortion.

And the abortion lobby would like to have us believe that this is
something that is benign, and it is anything but. It is an ugly, very
destructive act that is committed upon her unborn child, and women are
the co-victims of every abortion. We know that the baby is either
chemically poisoned, or he or she is dismembered as a result of the
abortion; but we also know that the woman carries with her a terrible
price that goes on year in and year out, and regrettably the abortion
lobby enables that and somehow suggests that she ought to be happy with
that decision.

And what we are trying to say is that there is reconciliation. The Women
Deserve Better campaign is trying to reach out to those women who are
suffering in carrying the burden of that abortion and to say that there
is hope, there is reconciliation, and there is life after an abortion;
but they need to come to terms with it. And I would encourage all those
women who are perhaps listening to be in contact with the Women Deserve
Better organization or to talk to some others who have direct
experience, have experienced an abortion themselves and can bring, like
I said, some reconciliation to them because, again, there needs to be
that, I think, individually and collectively in America if we are to go
forward.

Let me also point out, as my good friend and colleague I am sure pointed
out, today is truly a historic day having seen the Senate pass by a very
wide margin a ban on the gruesome act known as partial-birth abortion
where a baby is partially delivered only to have his or her head
punctured with scissors in the back of the head and the brains of that
tiny innocent baby snuffed out, vacuumed out to complete this horrific
procedure known as partial-birth abortion.

Partial-birth abortion, I would respectfully submit, is but the tip of
an ugly and unseemly iceberg. Just below the surface, the surface appeal
of choice, is a reality almost too horrific and cruel to contemplate,
let alone face. Yet we persist in our allusions and denial as a country
ever enabled by clever marketing, bias news reporting, and the cheap
sophistry of choice. Let us be clear, and I do not think we can say this
often enough, abortion is child abuse and it exploits women. Women
deserve better than having their babies stabbed or cut or decapitated or
poisoned. Women deserve nonviolent, life-affirming positive alternatives
to abortion.

Thirty years after Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the companion
decision, the national debate on partial-birth abortion has finally
pierced the multiple layers of euphemisms and collective denial to
reveal child battering in the extreme. The cover-up is over, and the
dirty secret concerning abortion methods is finally getting the scrutiny
that will usher in reform and protective statutes. I would say to my
colleagues that there is nothing compassionate, there is absolutely
nothing benign about stabbing babies in the head with scissors so that
their brains can be sucked out. That is child abuse. And yet over on the
Senate side today and previously here in the House, we had Members for
whom I have an enormous amount of respect defending the indefensible. We
reach out to them and say, look at what you are saying. If they did
this, if they were a young mother and they had a little baby girl, a
young child who took her doll and took a pair of scissors and stuck
those scissors into the back of the head of that baby, they would get
counseling. They would say no, my daughter should not be play-acting
that kind of activity. And yet there are Members of this Chamber who
embrace, enable, facilitate, and defend that indefensible act on a tiny
living baby girl or baby boy.

As the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) knows and as my colleagues
know, the loss of human life to abortion in this country has been
staggering; 44.4 million babies have been killed by abortions since Roe
v. Wade. And, yes, there were tens of thousands killed even prior to it
in those States where abortion had been legalized like New York, like
Hawaii, like Oregon, but 44.4 million kids. That is one out of every
three of this generation missing. I say to my colleagues, the next time
they are in a classroom, look around at the desks, count one, two, then
the missing child; one, two, the missing child. This generation, perhaps
more than any other in our own history, perhaps any other´s history, is
missing children who by "choice" have been destroyed by an abortionist.

Let me just conclude. On the WorldNetDaily site, there was an article on
October 17, and I will just read part of it: "Attendees of a national
conference for abortion providers watched and listened with rapt
attention as the inventor of the partial-birth abortion procedure
narrated a video of the grizzly procedure, and then they burst into
applause when the act was over and the unborn child was destroyed. The
disturbing and eye-opening event featuring abortion doctor Martin
Haskell, addressing members of the National Abortion Federation, was
actually captured on audiotape, calmly and dispassionately describing
each step of the process up to and including the insertion of the
scissors into the base of the baby´s head, followed by the sound of the
suction machine sucking out the baby´s brain. Dr. Haskell walks his
audience through the procedure that opponents hope will finally be
banned," that is us, "during this congressional session. At the end of
the procedure," the article goes on to say, "after the late-term fully
developed unborn child´s life has been violently and painfully
terminated, the audience breaks into applause."

[Page H9805]

That is sick, I say to my colleagues. These are the providers of
abortion. These are the ones that our friends on the other side of this
issue will defend passionately. They broke into applause as that baby
met his death. That is what partial-birth abortion is all about. It is a
horrific, grisly procedure. We are all about life, life affirmation.
Thank God we have a President who respects the dignity and the value of
each and every life and will sign this legislation into law, unlike his
predecessor, Bill Clinton, who on two occasions vetoed this legislation.

And I want to thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), my friend,
for having these times on the floor so that we can begin the process of
educating America. Much work needs to be done, and for those people who
watch C-SPAN, know this: we care about life, the unborn, the newly born,
all of those who are weak and disenfranchised. Many of us are the
leaders on human rights, religious freedom, Trafficking Victims
Protection Act, and a whole host of other important legislation designed
to protect the innocent from the strong, the weak, and the vulnerable
from those who would do them harm. That is what it is all about.
Government is for the weakest and the most at risk. The unborn in our
society are the weakest and the most at risk. Again I thank the
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), and I yield back to my good friend
and colleague.

Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for his
passion, for his generous remarks, and for his dogged determination in
this issue.

We come to the close of this case for life much as we began, and it is
always remarkable to me how sometimes God bookends things in ways that
we could never have planned. Because we heard the gentleman from New
Jersey begin his remarks by simply using a phrase I heard him use many
times on floor, but I know he did not hear me use tonight. He said,
"Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women," which was precisely
the words of Alice Paul, who in her 20s was a driving force behind
winning women the right to vote in America; a woman who was the driving
force behind even another great signature item of the feminist movement
in America, the Equal Rights Amendment. She said, "Abortion is the
ultimate exploitation of women."

And I close with the words of Susan B. Anthony, who now every time I
walk through the Rotunda and I look at those heroes of the suffrage
movement carved in stone, I will think of it, if the Speaker will
forgive me, as much a memorial to their moral courage as to their
political accomplishment because these women were simultaneously about
the elevation of women to equal political status, but they were also
women committed to the sanctity of human life. Susan B. Anthony, and I
close, said of abortion: "No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a
desire to save the suffering of the unborn innocent, the woman is
awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in
life. It will burden her soul in death. But, oh, thrice guilty is he who
drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the deed."

Susan B. Anthony, without whom American women would have not a fraction
of the status and the political power they have today, was a woman
committed to the sanctity of human life. And as we go forward and as
American women, in particular, listen in on our conversations on this
Capitol floor, it is my hope that another generation of courageous and
visionary American women of courage and conscience will lead us back to
that profound moral truth echoed through the ages to choose life.

With that I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Ferguson),
another of my colleagues in this series, a man who brings with him an
enormous pedigree in the right-to-life movement.

Mr. FERGUSON. Mr. Speaker, I am a little out of breath. I just got over
here from my office. I was watching the debate and the conversation in
my office, and I wanted to participate for a couple of different
reasons. Number one, I wanted to pay tribute to the gentleman from
Indiana (Mr. Pence), who really is showing tremendous leadership and
vision in helping to use this forum and use this opportunity to refocus
our Nation´s attention on an issue which is as fundamental to us and to
our lives and to our society as any that we take up in this House and in
these halls of Congress. I am proud to call him a friend, and I am so
pleased and proud of his leadership on this issue.

I also want to pay tribute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith),
who has been fighting these battles for almost 25 years. He has brought
passion and intelligence and commitment to an issue in trying to educate
people around the country and around the world about the value of human
life and this, unfortunately, very slippery slope which we have
proceeded down in the years since Row v. Wade and even since before
that.

1845

Earlier today I was here on the floor and we were debating Medicare and
talking about health care and talking about innovation and talking about
trying to provide new health opportunities for our seniors, for people
around this country. So much of the Medicare debate has been about
medicines, it has been about medical devices, it has been about
providing care to people who we care about.

One of the thoughts that I had as my friend the gentleman from New
Jersey was talking about the millions and millions and millions of
people who have been lost over the years to the terrible tragedy of
abortion, I am thinking about that one out of three desks in the
classroom. I used to be a teacher, and I was thinking back to those
classrooms, one out of three desks where a child has been lost to
abortion.

But it got me thinking about those who have been lost in another way.
Think about the cures and the innovations, all the good that could have
come from these millions and millions of human beings, these people who
would be with us today, who would be participating. Researchers and
scientists. They would be teachers, they would be moms, they would be
dads. Thinking about the enormous good that would come from these
individuals, these human beings who would be here to grow their hearts
in love, to show love to other people, and compassion; the incredible
insights they would be able to share with us. The philosophers, the
theologians, the priests, the ministers, the rabbis, those who would
seek to make our society better and stronger, more compassionate and
loving. All that has been lost. So much of that has been lost. Of
course, we are blessed with people today who are able to share these
things with us.

But think of what has been lost by those who have not been able to be
with us today and who we have lost over the years to the terrible
tragedy of abortion. It is sad, but I think it also should instill in us
a new commitment, a new understanding and perhaps a new perspective as
to how important this issue is.

It is not just important in the ways that we know it is, the fundamental
values that we all stand for as Americans, that we are fighting for
around the world, but it is important, too, because we could be so much
better, were it not for those who have been lost.

With that, I yield back to my friend the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr.
Ferguson), who, along with his wife, Maurine, has been a champion for
life in and out of the Congress for many years.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Aderholt), a
moral leader in the United States House of Representatives.

Mr. ADERHOLT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

First of all, let me say it is a great day in the House, it is a great
day in the United States Senate and it is a great day in the United
States of America. I say to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), as
we have said and talked about on many occasions, a lot of times we hear
the courts speak on different issues. Well, today we have had an
opportunity to hear the people speak, that this is an issue that we
should not put up with in this Nation.

I believe we will be judged by how we treat those who are the most
vulnerable in society. For that reason, it is especially exciting to be
here on the Floor of the United States House of Representatives in the
United States Capitol when this legislation has passed.

[Page H9806]

Certainly, I was pleased to join 161 of my house colleagues in
cosponsoring this legislation. This is the fifth Congress during which
this debate has taken place. I am thankful we have done the right thing
to outlaw this procedure once and for all, and look forward to President
Bush having a signing ceremony and inviting all the Members of Congress
that are very interested in this issue to be there, because I think this
will be a great day for America and I think it will be a great day for
not only this administration when he signs that, but also the United
States Congress.

Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues, the gentleman from New
Jersey (Mr. Ferguson), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) and the
gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Aderholt), for joining me in this case for
life.