[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 175 (Tuesday, November 7, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2123]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION BAN ACT OF 1995

                                 ______


                               speech of

                          HON. EVA M. CLAYTON

                           of north carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, November 1, 1995

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 1833) to 
     amend title 18, United States Code, to ban partial-birth 
     abortions:

  Mrs. CLAYTON. Mr. Chairman, I come before this House today to protect 
the intent of this legislation. In this country, we have a democracy, 
not a police state--so why are we in government legislating medicine as 
well as morality?
  It is not the right of this House to govern, to micromanage how 
American physicians practice medicine. Who are we, without the benefit 
of the knowledge and specialized training, to dictate what procedures 
may or may not be performed by physicians. A weighty decision such as 
this should be left up to the mother, the father, their faith, and 
their physician--not controlled by government edict that is inflexible 
and ignores the specific and individual tragic circumstances. H.R. 1833 
is a perilous infringement on the right of an individual physician to 
determine appropriate and necessary medicine treatment for each of 
their patients.
  The legislative language of H.R. 1833 is extremely vague, without 
definitions of key phrases such as ``partial-birth abortion'' or 
``living fetus''. With bills such as this, it is critical to have a 
concretely and tightly delineated definition for these terms of art. 
Without such definitions, this act of Congress would be ineffectual and 
unenforceable since no physician would be able to meet the burden of 
proof required for justification and defense of their actions.
  Unfortunate circumstances, such as fatal fetal abnormalities and the 
fragility of the mother's life, call for sometimes unpleasant but 
necessary actions to sustain. This procedure is performed rarely and 
only as a last resort in order to preserve the life and the 
reproductive health of the mother. In tragic cases such as these, the 
families and the physicians have been through enough--especially faced 
with possibility that the mother will die as well as the child. Why 
turn them into criminals?
  Mr. Speaker, I call on my colleagues to defeat this nebulous 
legislation that places physicians, who are charged by the Hippocratic 
Oath to save lives, at risk for criminal penalties as they strive to 
accomplish that goal.