[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 117 (Friday, August 2, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H9906-H9907]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   TO BE PRO-CHOICE MEANS TO RECOGNIZE THE INDIVIDUAL AND INDIVIDUAL 
                             RESPONSIBILITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Campbell] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CAMPBELL. Mr. Speaker, I would like to read into the Record the 
words of Governor Pete Wilson of the State of California from the Los 
Angeles Times of yesterday:
  ``How do we reverse 50 years of growing out-of-wedlock births and 
deteriorating families?
  ``We must begin by recasting our culture. That will not happen by 
advocating an anti-abortion constitutional amendment that has no hope 
of being enacted because it is overwhelming opposed by the majority of 
Americans.
  ``What we must do is say to every teenage girl that it is morally 
wrong for her to get pregnant and to bring a child into the world 
unless she has a father for her child. Both parents must be prepared--
emotionally and financially--to raise that child. Their child is their 
responsibility, not the taxpayers'. . . . We must also focus on the men 
who are making them welfare mothers. If young men who impregnate women 
lack the basic decency to send love to their children, then they must 
at least send money. If they do not, in California we track them down 
and dock their pay. We lift their license to drive a car or to practice 
law.
  ``We also prosecute the older men who victimize young girls. More 
than half the babies born to teenage girls are fathered by adult men, 
not by boys.
  ``Government must never decide who can have children, but society 
does have a responsibility to discourage from having children those who 
cannot or will not accept the responsibility of parenthood. We are 
using mass media to teach abstinence to our children. For those who 
choose to have sex but reject the burden of parenthood, we must make 
contraception the available choice and the moral obligation to prevent 
unwanted pregnancies.''
  ``The objections to even the modest tolerance language Bob Dole has 
proposed in the abortion plank of the GOP platform is further evidence 
that many of my fellow delegates to the Republican National Convention 
later this month will be absorbed by the debate on the rights of the 
unborn child. Though I am pro-choice, I share with them the desire to 
greatly reduce the number of abortions performed in America. It is a 
shocking 1.6 million per year.

  ``But with all respect to their concern for the unborn child, they 
and others on both sides of this issue are ignoring the even greater 
and more urgent challenge to America: How we deal with all the children 
born to parents who are either unwilling or unable to accept the 
responsibility of being parents.
  ``In 1945, the incidence of out-of-wedlock births was 1 in 25. Today, 
it is 1 in 3. In our inner cities it rises to more than 3 out of 4. 
Children born into fatherless homes are five times more likely to live 
in poverty, twice as likely to drop out of high school. Fatherless 
girls are three times more likely to end up as unwed teen mothers. 
Fatherless boys are overwhelmingly more likely to end up behind bars.

[[Page H9907]]

  ``We are forced to build too many prisons instead of libraries and 
laboratories because absent fathers have defaulted on their fundamental 
responsibility to their sons. At the same time, we have witnessed an 
explosion in the number of single women on welfare because women 
without education, marketable skills, or self-esteem can earn little 
money and less respect.''
  Nothing will have a more profound impact on the future of this Nation 
than successfully reversing the irresponsible behavior that sentence 
children to lives of wasted opportunity and despair. The best answer 
for curbing the social pathology of fatherless America is abstinence, 
contraception, and mentors. This will have a far greater impact on the 
number of abortions performed in America than any party platform can 
ever hope to have.''
  Mr. Speaker, Governor Pete Wilson has received more votes than any 
other political figure in the country on the Republican side, with the 
exception of our retired Presidents. Governor Wilson is pro-choice. Mr. 
Speaker, so am I. To be pro-choice is not to be pro-abortion. To be 
pro-choice is to recognize the individual and the responsibility of the 
individual.
  I think Governor Wilson says, in words that should echo to every 
delegate to our convention, that it is individual responsibility that 
is the hallmark of our party, individual responsibility which is the 
solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancies, unloved and uncared 
for children in our country.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge our colleagues at the convention to heed with 
care the words of the Governor of California, Pete Wilson.

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