[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 97 (Wednesday, July 17, 2002)]
[House]
[Page H4860]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION BAN ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, in the midst of important debates in the last 
48 hours over critical spending bills and the creation of our national 
budget, a very, very important piece of lawmaking has taken place that 
will find its way onto the blue carpet of this historic place next 
week. It is the issue of partial-birth abortion, H.R. 4965, the 
Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2001, which I am proud to say as a 
Member of the Committee on the Judiciary we marked up and reported out 
by an overwhelming vote earlier today.
  Mr. Speaker, I would offer that societies are rightly judged by how 
they deal with the most defenseless among their citizenry and how they 
confront those who exploit the most defenseless. This is best expressed 
in the proverb that ``Whatsoever you do for the least of these, you do 
also for me.''

                              {time}  2130

  Today, in the House Committee on the Judiciary, we took up what for 
some, at times, sounded like the debate over abortion and the woman's 
right to choose that has been settled law in this country since 1973. 
In fact, Mr. Speaker, what we brought up today was an issue altogether 
different. It is about a practice in this country described in our 
legislation that is barbarous, to say the least.
  In our legislation we describe the procedure that is banned, that the 
American Medical Association has said is never medically indicated. ``A 
partial-birth abortion under this law is an abortion in which a 
physician delivers an unborn child's body until only the head remains 
inside the womb, punctures the back of the child's skull with a sharp 
instrument and sucks the child's brains out before completing delivery 
of a dead infant.''
  I must tell my colleagues that as a Christian and as an American and 
as a father of three children, it is astonishing to me that this is 
even remotely legal in America today, but it is. And as we will no 
doubt hear on this floor next week, it is practiced all too often in 
this country.
  We will bring the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2002 to the floor 
again. We have changed the bill, adding findings of fact to overcome 
constitutional barriers, and I am confident that it will survive 
judicial review. The American people, Mr. Speaker, want this bill in 
overwhelming numbers, believing in their hearts that we are better than 
this. We are a better people.
  Lastly, Mr. Speaker, it is simply the right thing to do, to stand 
with newborn children, the most defenseless among us. The Good Book 
tells us, ``See I set before you today blessings and curses, life and 
death; now choose life so that you and your children may live.''
  It is my hope, and it will be my prayer, in the intervening days as I 
urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do as we have done in 
bipartisan fashion in the past in this institution, and send a 
deafening message into the laws of the United States that this heinous, 
barbarous practice of infanticide, which we call a procedure known as 
partial-birth abortion, has no place in the great and good Nation of 
the United States.

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