[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 72 (Friday, June 5, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5694-S5697]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire (for himself, Mr. Helms, and Mr. 
        Ashcroft):
  S. 2135. A bill to amend title 42, United States Code, to protect 
human life; to the Committee on the Judiciary.


                   LEGISLATION TO PROTECT HUMAN LIFE

      By Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire (for himself, Mr. Helms, and Mr. 
        Ashcroft):
  S.J. Res. 49. A joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment 
to protect human life; to the Committee on the Judiciary.


             CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO PROTECT HUMAN LIFE

  Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, our Nation's founding 
document, the Declaration of Independence, ultimately proclaimed that 
the right to life comes from God and that it is unalienable. Life 
itself, the declaration

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held, is the fundamental right without which the rights of liberty and 
the pursuit of happiness have no meaning. As the author of the 
declaration, Thomas Jefferson, wrote, ``The care of human life and not 
its destruction . . . is the first and only object of good 
government.''
  It is important and I think proper to note that without that basic 
right of life, there is no liberty, there is no opportunity to pursue 
happiness in any way, shape, or form.
  One hundred ninety-seven years after that Declaration of 
Independence, in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court violated this most sacred 
principle of the declaration. In Roe versus Wade, the Supreme Court 
held that the entire class of unborn children--from fertilization to 
birth--have no right to life and may be destroyed at will. As we know, 
the statistics are pretty dramatic. Thirty-five million children since 
Roe versus Wade were denied the opportunity to be born. Without getting 
into the reasons or the explanations or the rationale, the result is 
that 35 million children were denied that right.
  In subsequent cases, the Court has zealously guarded the right to 
abortion that the Court created. The Court has repeatedly rejected all 
meaningful attempts by the States to protect the unalienable right to 
life of unborn children since that decision in 1973.
  Mr. President, those of us who support the pro-life cause must never 
lose sight of our ultimate goal. Our objective is very simple. It is 
not complicated. It is to keep the promise of the Declaration of 
Independence. There is only one way to do that, Mr. President, and that 
is to overturn Roe versus Wade and restore to unborn children their 
God-given right to life, a God-given right that our Constitution. I 
believe, and certainly the declaration, gave them. And the Court took 
it away--a court, by the way, that is sworn to uphold the Constitution.
  In order to keep that hope alive in the Senate today, Mr. President, 
I am introducing two legislative proposals, and I am pleased and 
honored that the distinguished Senator from North Carolina, Mr. Helms, 
and the distinguished Senator from Missouri, Mr. Ashcroft, are joining 
me as original cosponsors of both measures.
  Senator Helms for many, many years--long before my time in the 
Senate--had the courage to stand here on the Senate floor day after 
day, week after week, taking insult after insult but supporting the 
lives of unborn children. I believe history will judge Senator Helms 
very prominently in this regard. And Senator Ashcroft, with less time 
in the Senate, is certainly a strong proponent and advocate of the 
right to life of unborn children.
  Let me talk specifically about the bills--first, a bill, the Human 
Life Act of 1998. The human life bill sets forth the findings of 
Congress that ``the right to life is the paramount and most fundamental 
right of a person'' and that ``the life of each human being begins at 
fertilization.'' Based on these findings, and in the exercise of the 
power of Congress under section 5 of the 14th amendment, my bill 
establishes that the word ``person,'' as used in the Constitution, 
applies to all human beings, including unborn children, because, Mr. 
President, an unborn child is a human being.
  I have never been able to understand the rationale, as many times as 
it has been debated here on the floor, how one can say that an unborn 
child is not a human being. Remember, if it is a human being, it 
deserves the right of protection under the Constitution of the United 
States.
  As one Senator, I will freely admit that when fertilization occurred, 
I was created. There was a sequence of time that occurred after that 
caused me to be here today, standing on the floor of the U.S. Senate. 
If it had been interrupted at any stage from that moment of 
fertilization until today, I wouldn't be here.
  The effect of this legislative determination that the unborn child is 
a human being and, therefore, a ``person'' would be to place unborn 
children under constitutional shield of due process and equal 
protection clauses of the 14th amendment. Thus, the right to life of 
every unborn person would be protected to the same extent that the 
right to life of all born persons is guaranteed by our Constitution.
  Mr. President, today we have seen in this day and this age a number 
of violent acts: School shootings, violence of children upon children, 
of children upon parents, terrible violence. I think we have a cultural 
problem. Most Americans would not deny that.
  I think it is fair to say that we need to set an example as adults--
those who are supposedly leaders of our country not only here in the 
Senate, or in the White House, or in the Congress, but also at the head 
of our communities, our families, whatever else. Whatever the role we 
may play as parents, as citizens, or husbands, or wives. I think we 
have a role to set an example. I would ask here on the floor of the 
Senate my colleagues: Are we setting an example for young people to 
follow when, at the will of any individual at any time after 
fertilization occurs, we say or we tolerate that that unborn child's 
life may be ended? It is an innocent life. It is a life who can't speak 
here on the floor of U.S. Senate. No child who is unborn has the 
opportunity to stand up on the floor and say, ``I'd like to live; I'd 
like to have the opportunity to raise a family, to be a leader, to be a 
preacher, be a Senator, be a doctor, to cure cancer, to be a teacher, 
be a good mom, a good dad. I would like to have that opportunity.'' I 
think they would say if they could speak that they do not have that 
opportunity.
  I think of those 35 million children, I say to my colleagues, since 
1973 whose lives have been ended. How many of those children may have 
lived to find that cure for cancer or may have lived to have made a 
difference in a life--perhaps one of those lives of those children who 
took the lives of others? Perhaps one of these children who died may 
have been a counselor, may have been somebody on the spot who may have 
made a difference. We will never know, because those 35 million lives 
are gone--never had the opportunity to be happy, never had the 
opportunity to be successful, never had the opportunity to live--gone. 
And we did it. We did it because of that Supreme Court decision. It is 
wrong.
  I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln--a totally different issue but very 
similar in terms of its scope. Abraham Lincoln didn't take polls when 
he stood up in the United States of America in the 1860s and said: 
Slavery is wrong. It is wrong to enslave an American, or any 
individual, because of the color of their skin. And he spoke out 
against it. He spoke out eloquently against it, and he didn't take 
polls. He didn't stand up at a press conference and say to his aide, 
``I am going to examine the feelings of my constituents on this. Would 
you please take a poll and find out whether the majority of the 
American people favor slavery or oppose slavery?''
  I am reminded of what Lincoln said. I don't have the exact quote in 
front of me. I am going to paraphrase it from memory. He said: They 
tell me not to oppose slavery in the slave States, because they have 
left the country, so it is not our concern. They tell me not to oppose 
slavery in the free States, because we don't need to because they are 
free. They tell me not to oppose slavery from the pulpit, because it is 
not religion. And they tell me not to oppose slavery in politics, 
because it causes too much of a fuss.
  Substitute abortion for slavery in each of those four examples and 
you have the same situation. If we can't oppose it in any of the 50 
States, if we can't oppose it in politics, if we can't oppose it in 
religion, where does that leave the unborn children who will never have 
the opportunity to stand up here and debate this issue?
  The right to life of every unborn person should be protected to the 
same extent as the right to life of all born persons. How can anybody 
in America, any Christian in the Judeo-Christian culture of America, 
not believe that?
  I know the insults. I have been the victim of them. I know the 
taunts. I know the recriminations that come from standing up here and 
making these comments. But it is nothing--nothing--compared to what 
those unborn children endure because they have been denied after they 
have been created by God himself. Man denies them the right to life, 
that life.
  I am reminded of Gianna Jesson, a young woman, perhaps 23 or 24 now, 
who was aborted. She was aborted. I saw her sing ``Amazing Grace''in 
front of 1,000 people a couple of years ago in which she said ``I am 
thankful to my

[[Page S5696]]

God to be where I am today, and I forgive my mother.'' Well, I say that 
is powerful, Mr. President. I have never seen anything to equal it. Not 
from the lips of any politician or any pastor have I ever seen 
testimony stronger or more powerful than that young woman crippled by 
abortion standing up before 1,000 people and singing ``Amazing Grace.'' 
There was not a dry eye in the place. That woman deserved the right to 
live. So did every one of those other 35 million children who have been 
denied.

  There is only one way to stop this. We can preach about it. We can 
talk about it. We can debate it in politics. We can sing, or be quiet 
and be silent. But there is only way to stop it. We have to change the 
Court. The Supreme Court is wrong. In 1857, the Supreme Court said in 
the Dred Scott decision that a slave could not sue in federal court 
because he was property and not human. Chief Justice Roger Taney made 
that decision. The Supreme Court is not omnipotent. Roger Taney was 
wrong in that decision. He was wrong. And Roe v. Wade was wrong. And we 
need to change it.
  My bill provides that nothing--nothing--in it ``shall prohibit a law 
allowing justification to be shown for only those medical procedures 
required to prevent the death of either the pregnant woman or her 
unborn offspring as long as such a law requires every reasonable effort 
be made to preserve the lives of both of them.''
  I am also introducing a joint resolution that would submit the human 
life amendment to the States for ratification as part of the 
Constitution of the United States. Specifically and more directly, I am 
introducing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to 
protect the lives of unborn children. It has been done before. It has 
been introduced before, and it has gone nowhere. It doesn't mean that 
it should not be introduced again and again and again and again until 
somehow, someway the message is received in this country that we have 
to protect the lives of these innocent children.
  Let me explain why I am proposing a human life amendment in addition 
to the human life bill. If the human life bill were to be enacted into 
law and its constitutionality upheld by the Supreme Court, it could be 
weakened or repealed by some Congress of the future. But a human life 
amendment to the Constitution could not be altered or repealed except 
by another constitutional amendment. Thus, my human life amendment 
would provide more durable protection to the fundamental right to life 
of unborn children.
  Like the human life bill, the human life amendment restores the word 
``person'' in the Constitution to its original and natural meaning by 
making clear that it includes all human beings--all human beings--born 
and unborn.
  I have witnessed the birth of three of my children. It is a privilege 
that I am glad I had. I will tell you something. There is no difference 
between the 15 or 20 minutes before the child was born, when it was in 
the womb and I could not see it, and 15 or 20 minutes after the child 
was born when I saw my daughter and my two sons for the first time. 
There is no difference. Why is it right and proper under the law to 
kill that child 20 minutes or 20 days or 20 months before that 
wonderful time when the child comes into the world? Why is it right to 
do that and wrong to do it 20 minutes or 20 months or 20 years after? 
It is wrong in both cases. It is wrong in both cases.

  So the human life amendment includes the same language as the bill 
regarding medical procedures required to prevent the death of either 
the pregnant woman or her unborn offspring.
  I introduce these two legislative proposals and I realize as I stand 
here today that there is not sufficient support in the Congress to 
restore legal protection of the right to life of unborn children in 
this country, but I believe ultimately we will prevail. When the 
abolitionists stood in this Chamber in the 1820s and the 1830s and the 
1840s and they said that slavery was wrong, they did not prevail 
either, but ultimately they did because they were right. And we are 
right. It is wrong to take the lives of unborn children, and someday, 
someway, somehow, the American people are going to come to realize 
this, and they are going to throw everybody out of here who will not 
support the changing of that court. That is what they are going to do.
  One of our Nation's greatest Presidents, in my estimation, Ronald 
Reagan, had the same confidence that the right-to-life cause someday 
will prevail. He believed it deep into his being. I can remember 
meeting personally with President Reagan and discussing this issue with 
him. I know how deeply he felt about it, and I also know the attacks he 
had, but I would ask my colleagues who somehow are a bit timid to stand 
up; when this issue comes up, they hide, many of them. They are worried 
about the political repercussions. Well, those repercussions of 
politics are not as bad as what Gianna Jesson went through when she was 
aborted. Here is what Reagan said 14 years ago in a book called 
``Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation.''

       Despite the formidable obstacles before us, we must not 
     lose heart. This is not the first time our country has been 
     divided by a Supreme Court decision that denied the value of 
     certain human lives.

  This is a reference to what I talked about earlier.

       The Dred Scott decision of 1857 was not overturned in a 
     day, or a year, or even a decade. At first, only a minority 
     of Americans recognized and deplored the moral crisis brought 
     about by denying the full humanity of our black brothers and 
     sisters; but that minority persisted in their vision and 
     finally prevailed. They did it by appealing to the hearts and 
     to the minds of their countrymen, to the truth of human 
     dignity under God. From their example, we know that respect 
     for the sacred value of human life is too deeply ingrained in 
     the hearts of our people to remain forever suppressed.

  Mr. President, I close by addressing my colleagues in the Senate. 
Each one of us, every one of us, started out in life as an unborn 
child. We were once, all of us, very small human beings living in our 
mother's wombs. As President Reagan wrote, ``Abortion concerns not just 
the unborn child, it concerns every one of us,'' because we would not 
be here if our parents had made that awful decision.
  The English poet, John Donne said, ``Any man's death diminishes me, 
because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for 
whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.''
  ``It tolls for thee.''
  My colleagues, regardless of where you have stood on abortion in the 
past, regardless of the acrimonious debate, regardless of the hard 
feelings, regardless of the political pressures, the contributions, the 
political attacks, I urge you to search your conscience and to search 
your soul and ask yourself, is it right, is it really right to kill an 
unborn child?

  I am not interested in hearing about all of the social conditions of 
the person who is having the child. That is another issue. I am not 
asking you to comment about the plight of that child when it is born. 
That is another issue. I am asking you to think, reach down in your 
souls like you would have if you stood on this floor in 1840 talking 
about slavery, if you were an abolitionist. I am asking you to search 
your soul and I am asking you to say, Is it right; is it right? And if 
it is not right, then you have an obligation to support this amendment 
and to help me to right a wrong.
  I am pledging here today in this Chamber that as long as I am a 
Senator, and as long as I am alive, I am going to work for the passage 
of this amendment. I have two cosponsors this morning. That is all I 
have. But I know there are more people who agree with me in both 
political parties. Frankly, I am going to be talking to them, every one 
of them. It is not an in-your-face situation. This is an in-your-heart 
situation--not the face, the heart. Is it right or is it wrong? If you 
can look me in the eye and tell me it is right to take the life of an 
unborn, innocent child, then I will not bother you anymore. But if you 
don't tell me that, then I am going to keep on bothering you and try to 
get your support.
  I hope you will decide to join me in cosponsoring both of these 
measures and place the lives of the unborn children of our Nation once 
again under the protection of our great Constitution. The only way to 
do that, in my opinion, is through the amendment.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, in America today, a great debate--a 
great division--exists over the issue of abortion. For some, abortion 
is about the so-called ``right to choose.'' For others, it is 
ultimately about control. For me, it is about something completely 
different. It is about life.

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  Abortion is, at its core, about the destruction of an innocent human 
life; a life that is unique in the history of the world--formed and 
shaped in the image of God; a life that has never been and will never 
be again.
  ``Abortion,'' said the late Mother Teresa, ``is the great 
destroyer.'' And so it is. More than thirty-five million lives have 
been lost in the terrible years since Roe versus Wade became the law of 
the land. It is a tragedy unmatched in modern times. For mother, for 
father, for child, abortion is never a real resolution. It is but a 
temporary answer that inflicts a permanent pain. It is a wound that 
does not heal; a wound, alas, that cannot heal.
  Senator Smith and I come to the floor this morning to stand against 
abortion and to stand for life. For we believe that the Fifth and 
Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution protect every 
person's ``life.'' The protection designed by James Madison and adopted 
by the People is universal in scope. Its protection is unequivocal. It 
admits of no exception. ``No Person shall . . . be deprived of life.''
  As this is the Constitution's ``plain meaning,'' I believe our 
proposed Human Life Act is a legitimate exercise of Congressional power 
under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, while I 
support a statutory approach, I would, as I said before Senator East's 
Judiciary Subcommittee in 1981, go farther. For I also believe it 
necessary to amend the United States Constitution to restore its 
original meaning.
  Mr. President, the Supreme Court's efforts to create an abortion 
jurisprudence from whole cloth demonstrate the difficulty of deviating 
from the view that life begins at conception. Every judicial effort to 
establish a time when constitutional protections magically kick in has 
been undermined by medical reality.
  Earlier this year, I held a Constitution Subcommittee hearing to mark 
a profoundly sad occasion--the 25th anniversary of Roe versus Wade. At 
that hearing, we heard testimony about the relentless progress of 
medical technology in pushing forward the date of viability.
  More recently, we have learned how judges in striking down bans on 
partial birth abortions have undermined birth as a clear line for when 
the constitutional protection for life begins--effectively legalizing 
infanticide.
  Clearly, the Supreme Court, unguided by any constitutional text, has 
written themselves into a position that is legally, medically and 
morally incoherent. The experience of the past twenty-five years 
confirms the desperate need for the legislation and the proposed 
amendment we introduce today.
  In thinking about this morning, I was reminded of my first run for 
Congress. I supported a Human Life Amendment in 1972--fully a year 
before Roe versus Wade was handed down. In 1981, as Missouri Attorney 
General, I argued before the United States Supreme Court on behalf of 
the unborn in Planned Parenthood versus Ashcroft. As Governor, I signed 
the pro-life law which became the basis for the Webster decision. And 
so, like Senator Smith and Senator Helms, I am not a newcomer to this 
debate.
  But I stand before the Senate this morning not to discuss my past, 
but to talk about our future--about the kind of America we want to have 
in the next century.
  Abortion makes a statement not only about the life of the unborn 
child, it makes a statement about the life it leaves behind. Sadly, it 
sends a message that life is expendable: life that is too young, too 
old, ailing, or tenuous. It says, ``You are worthless.'' It says, ``You 
are not important.''
  To all who might hear my voice, I say, ``That is not the kind of 
statement America wants to make.'' It is not the message American wants 
to send. It is not the kind of America we want to be. Recall 
Deuteronomy, ``I have set before thee this day, life and death, 
blessing and cursing; therefore, choose life that both thou and thy 
seed may live.'' That both thou and thy seed may live, Mr. President. 
For an America that can be again--America the beautiful.
                                 ______