[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 21 (Wednesday, February 25, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H604-H609]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 UNBORN VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE ACT OF 2003

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, the topic that I would like to take a look at 
this evening is the passing of a very important piece of legislation 
which is scheduled for this week, and that is the Unborn Victims of 
Violence Act.
  But I would like to approach this standing back just a minute from a 
piece of legislation and try to put what we are trying to accomplish 
this week into context, in fact, into the American context. So I would 
challenge those, particularly those who are Americans, to answer a 
question, a very basic question, and that is let us say that someone 
from another country, and there were a television camera running, were 
to ask how would they define in a condensed sentence the uniqueness or 
the essence of what America is. What is it that has made America 
unique? What has created a Nation that people have come from all over 
the world to immigrate here? What has created a Nation where we have to 
have border guards to try to keep people out whereas other nations put 
minefields and machine gun nests to try to keep people in?

                              {time}  1700

  What is it that made America unique, and how would you say that in 
one simple sentence?
  I suppose one of the rules that people who have been involved in 
politics for some period of time know is that you are not supposed to 
ask a question unless you have an answer to the same question. So if I 
were asked to try to summarize what America is about, I would go to our 
birthday document, to the document that separated America into an 
independent and unique Nation, and that is the Declaration of 
Independence, our birthday document.
  In that document you find a long and somewhat complicated sentence, 
but a very important sentence in terms of defining who we are and what 
has made us so unique. It is the sentence that says, ``We hold these 
Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they 
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that 
among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.''
  Now, the sentence does not end with ``pursuit of happiness.'' It goes 
on to say that governments are instituted among men for the particular 
purpose of securing those rights, that is life, liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness.
  Let us say we take this long sentence, and, as a former engineer 
myself, we put it into a formula. The formula is pretty 
straightforward. It has three parts. The first thing is there is a God; 
the second thing is God grants to mankind, to all people, and in 
particular our Founders were talking about Americans, certain 
unalienable rights; and chief among these are life, liberty and the 
pursuit of happiness.
  And so it was based on this document, this simple three-point 
statement in a sense, that our forefathers declared this a free and 
independent Nation, and it is by this formula that we believe that all 
men everywhere are granted with certain unalienable rights, which has 
to a large degree motivated much of our behavior and defined America. 
It has also created in America, although it was there for the 170 years 
before, a culture of respect for life.
  Now, how then does the piece of legislation that we are looking at 
connect to this culture of life in America? I think it is easy when you 
are discussing legislation to, first of all, talk about that there is 
some problem, and then you have a bill which is designed to solve the 
particular problem. So in order to help define the problem that we have 
in America legislatively, I have a copy here now of a testimony that 
was given by Tracy Marciniak before a committee, and I would like to 
read part of her testimony to help define what is going on and the 
need, the tremendous and important need, that we pass the Unborn 
Victims of Violence Act.
  ``I carried Zachariah in my womb for almost 9 full months. He was 
killed in my womb only 5 days from his delivery date. The first time I 
ever held him in my arms he was already dead.''
  The letter goes on. She is pointing to a photograph of her with this 
child in her arms.
  ``There is no way that I can really tell you about the pain I feel 
when I visit my son's gravesite in Milwaukee, and at other times, 
thinking of all that we missed together. But that pain was greater 
because the man who killed Zachariah got away with murder. Please don't 
tell me that my son was not a real victim of a real crime. We were both 
victims, but only I survived.
  ``Zachariah's delivery date was to be February 13, 1992, but on the 
night of February 8, my own husband brutally attacked me at my home in 
Milwaukee. He held me against a couch by my hair. He knew that I very 
much wanted my son. He punched me very hard twice in the abdomen. Then 
he refused to call for help, and prevented me from calling.
  ``About after 15 minutes of my screaming in pain that I needed help, 
he finally went to a bar and from there called for help. I and 
Zachariah were rushed by ambulance to the hospital, where Zachariah was 
delivered by

[[Page H605]]

emergency cesarean section. My son was dead. The physician said that he 
had bled to death inside me because of blunt force trauma.
  ``My own injuries were life-threatening. I nearly died. I spent 3 
weeks in the hospital.
  ``During the time I was struggling to survive, the legal authorities 
came and they spoke to my sister. They told her something that she 
found incredible. They told her that in the eyes of Wisconsin law, 
nobody had died on the night of February 8th. Later, this information 
was passed on to me. I was told that in the eyes of the law, no murder 
had occurred. I was devastated.
  ``My life already seemed destroyed by the loss of my son, but there 
was so much additional pain because the law was blind to what had 
really happened. The law which I had been raised to believe was based 
on justice was telling me that Zachariah had not really been murdered.
  ``It took over 3 years for this case to go to trial. The State 
prosecuted my attacker for first degree reckless injury and for false 
imprisonment, and he was convicted of those counts. They also 
prosecuted him under a 1955 abortion law, but they failed to win a 
conviction on the abortion count because that law required that they 
prove a specific intent to destroy the life of my unborn child. I do 
not fault the State authorities or the jurors. They simply did not have 
the legal right or tool for this type of case. The law simply failed to 
recognize that anybody who looks at the photo should be able to see 
that Zachariah was robbed of his life.''
  That, my friends, is the problem with our laws that we are attempting 
to fix, that we are attempting to remedy here, with the Unborn Victims 
of Violence Act. What the act does is it recognizes the fact that when 
there is a crime of this nature, it recognizes both people who were 
victims to that particular crime.
  Now, there is talk that this law is unnecessary. There are some 
people who say, no, we do not really need to recognize the second 
person that is involved. But I would suggest that if one were to talk 
to the people who have lost their child, women who have been violently 
attacked in this way, and particularly those who have been attacked in 
this way close to the time when they are about to deliver, that they 
would suggest otherwise, that there are indeed two victims. When you 
talk to the grandparents, they would suggest that there are two 
victims.
  I am 56 years old. I recently, just a matter of a month or so ago, 
received some very exciting news. I have six children. One of them just 
this last summer got married. In fact, he got married to a young lady 
who was working in my congressional office. They have gone off, he is 
in the Marines, and you can imagine what the news was. We heard that 
she was expecting her first child, which meant that I was expecting to 
be, for the first time in my life, a grandfather.
  I would suggest that if someone were to attack her and to end the 
life that is inside her, that it would be a very difficult thing to try 
to convince me that there was not a person involved, that I did not 
need to be concerned about the fact that, oh, maybe you are a 
grandfather, or something like that. I think most of us see that in the 
most common-sense way.
  So that is what is involved with this piece of legislation, to be 
able to recognize that when a crime, a violent crime, is committed 
against an innocent, pregnant woman, that there are two victims 
involved.
  At this point, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to one of my 
colleagues for whom I have a great deal of respect, the gentleman from 
Indiana (Mr. Pence).
  (Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege for me to join my colleague from 
Missouri as he leads this critical Special Order among my colleagues on 
legislation that this Congress will take up tomorrow, the Unborn 
Victims of Violence Act. We heard much debate today, Mr. Speaker, on 
the subject of this legislation, and, for all the world, it seemed as 
though we were talking about a bill that had something to do with the 
debate over abortion.
  This bill most certainly emanates around a respect for the life of a 
mother and the nascent life within her, but this is not a debate over 
abortion or the right to life, but rather this is a debate about 
justice. It is about the institution of Congress in Federal law 
recognizing, as 29 other States have recognized, the demands of justice 
when a woman and her unborn child are both the victims of a crime.
  The Unborn Victims of Violence Act is simply legislation authored by 
the distinguished gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart) which 
recognizes that when a criminal attacks a pregnant woman and injures or 
kills her unborn child, that he has claimed two human victims.
  The bill would establish that if an unborn child is injured or killed 
during the commission of an already-defined Federal crime of violence, 
then the assailant may be charged with a second offense on behalf of 
the second victim, the unborn child. The exact charge, of course, would 
depend on which Federal law was involved.
  It may astonish many of those that look in on our debates and 
proceedings, Mr. Speaker, to know that under current Federal criminal 
law, an unborn child is not recognized as a victim with respect to 
violent crimes. For example, if a criminal beats a woman on a military 
base and kills her unborn child, he would be charged only with battery 
against that woman, because the unborn child's loss of life is not at 
the present moment even recognized as a crime under Federal law.
  Therefore, as we engage in this critical debate on the House floor 
tonight, and as we move this legislation, I believe, with broad 
bipartisan support tomorrow, it is my hope that our intentions will be 
laid bare that this is not about the debate over the sanctity of life 
or some debate over the fault lines of the culture war, but, rather, 
this is simply a debate about justice and about the demands of justice.
  To those, Mr. Speaker, who say that this is somehow an idea on the 
fringe of the American political debate, I offer as case in point this 
chart, which points to the fact that there are at the present moment, 
with the recent addition of Kentucky, 29 States in the Union, even, 
using my mathematical skills, nearly 60 percent of the United States of 
America in their various State laws, including my home State of 
Indiana, that recognize fetal homicide for all or part of prenatal 
development.

                              {time}  1715

  Mr. Speaker, 29 States recognize a criminal act, when performed 
against a pregnant woman, that criminal charges can be rendered, not 
only against the woman who is assaulted, but against the unborn child. 
And here Congress is with regard to Federal law, in a very real sense, 
Mr. Speaker, trying to catch up with what 29 States have already 
understood in their State legislatures and assemblies to be the demands 
of justice.
  Now, as to the issue of whether or not this is by subterfuge a debate 
about abortion, I think it is important to point out, as pro-life as I 
am, and proud of it, this bill explicitly provides that it does not 
apply to any abortion to which a woman has consented, to any act of the 
mother herself, legal or illegal, or to any form of medical treatment, 
period. That is in the specific language of this legislation. 
Therefore, those who would argue that by subterfuge, somehow, in the 
language there is an effort to erode Roe v. Wade with a fetal homicide 
law on the Federal level, do so with a genuine lack either of 
understanding or lack of intellectual honesty.
  In fact, it is well established that unborn victims laws do not 
conflict with the Supreme Court's pro-abortion decrees beginning in Roe 
v. Wade. The 29 State laws mentioned above have had no effect on the 
practice of legal abortion in those States. Criminal defendants have 
brought many legal challenges to State unborn victims laws based on 
Roe, but all such challenges have been rejected by State and Federal 
courts. The jurisprudence on this issue is overwhelming and decisive.
  But as I close and prepare to yield back to the gentleman from 
Missouri who is leading us tonight in this debate, it would be wrong to 
spend the few moments that I have on this blue carpet tonight speaking 
of this issue as though it could simply be resolved in the cold 
confines of law schools and judicial chambers. When we talk about

[[Page H606]]

the demands of justice, I believe we are talking about the fundamental 
obligations of this institution to interpret the intangible obligations 
of the law. And as we come upon the very idea of a woman who is 
assaulted and as a function not only may have lost her life, but lost 
the life of her unborn child, and the wake and wash of grief that is 
left behind that, we cannot think of this in cold and sterile terms. So 
I close with two examples of the real world impact of crimes against 
unborn children.
  Carol Lyons' 18-year-old daughter, Ashley, is pictured here; a 
beautiful young woman who, along with her unborn child, was murdered in 
Scott County, Kentucky, on January 7 of this year. And her mother, 
Carol Lyons, speaking of the law about which we debate tonight, said, 
``Nobody can tell me that there were not two victims. I placed 
Landon,'' her grandson, ``in his mother's arms. I wrapped him in a baby 
blanket that I had sewn just before I kissed my daughter good-by for 
the last time and closed the casket.''
  Carol Lyons, whose 18-year-old daughter, Ashley, and unborn grandson, 
Landon, were killed just weeks ago, said, ``Nobody can tell me that 
there were not two victims.''
  And of the legislation that we will consider tomorrow, another voice. 
This legislation has even come to be known euphemistically as Laci and 
Conner's Law, and there is scarcely an American who does not know the 
story of Laci Peterson and her unborn baby, Conner, a woman who was 
abducted on Christmas day and vanished and was found brutally murdered, 
with her 8-month child a victim as well. Her mother said the following: 
``Of those who would have us think of this type of an act as only 
having one victim,'' Sharon Rocha, mother of Laci Peterson, said, 
``please understand how adoption of a single victim proposal would be a 
painful blow to those like me who are left to grieve after a two-victim 
crime, because Congress would be saying that Conner and other innocent 
victims like him are not really victims, indeed, that they never really 
existed at all. But our grandson did live,'' Sharon wrote. ``He had a 
name, he was loved, and his life was violently taken from him before he 
ever saw the sun.''
  This parent, and no parent within the sound of my voice, can fail to 
be moved by the tragic loss of both of these families or, in my 
judgment, fail to understand the opportunity we have as Congressmen and 
-women, Republicans and Democrats, in the next 24 hours to pass the 
Unborn Victims of Violence Act, not to engage ourselves in yet another 
tiresome debate on the fault lines of a woman's right to choose, but 
rather to engage ourselves in the expansion of justice, to look at the 
grief of these families and know what plain, commonsense Americans all 
know: that there are two victims and Federal law, as 29 other State 
laws have done, should recognize and address that with clarity.
  With that, I yield back to the gentleman from Missouri with gratitude 
for his leadership on this issue and for hosting this important debate 
tonight.
  Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his pointed and 
well-taken comments.

  It is now my honor to be able to yield the floor to the gentleman 
from Florida (Mr. Weldon), a doctor, and my esteemed colleague and good 
friend.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding me this time. Let me just commend my good friend and 
colleague, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), for the outstanding 
job I think he just did laying out many of the issues that have 
surrounded this debate. I agree with the gentleman, it is high time 
that we adopt the position that exists in 29 States; and I believe 
ultimately that most States will adopt this statute.
  I also want to commend the gentleman from Indiana for his advocacy 
regarding the fence in Israel. I think that is a very, very important 
issue. The gentleman's resolution that he is trying to bring forward I 
think is very timely and very important. The fence in Israel is 
preventing hundreds of these suicide bombers from getting into Israel 
and killing people; and I think it is a tragedy, as the gentleman from 
Indiana does, that that case is before that court in Europe, and the 
Israelis are doing the right thing.
  Getting back to the issue at hand here, I want to really commend my 
colleague, the gentleman from Missouri, for bringing this very 
important issue up. I am just going to speak as a doctor. We are going 
to hear from attorneys. We will hear, perhaps, from philosophers 
tonight on this issue. I practiced medicine before I came to this body. 
It was a joy; it was a pleasure practicing medicine. But there were 
some things that were unpleasant that I had to do. I will not mention 
them all; but one of them was, of course, the sad business of 
pronouncing people dead. We would frequently be called in to a hospital 
room by the staff, by the nurses and asked to assess the patient. The 
nurse was calling us to make a pronouncement of death. What do we do? 
Well, we check for a heartbeat; and, in cases where people are brain 
dead, we check for brain waves.
  Well, science tells us that babies have brain waves and beating 
hearts very early in development. You can detect a beating heart at 17 
days and brain waves at 40 days. Now, of course, with new modern 
technology, we have this new technology called 4-dimensional ultrasound 
where we can get a 3-D image on tape of a baby in the womb actually 
moving, and you can actually see them moving their face, opening their 
eyes, sucking their thumbs, moving around. They have the appearance of 
a human being, because they are a human being. And obviously, many of 
us understand that.
  When we have one of the tragedies like we have seen and talked about 
tonight, Laci Peterson and this case in Kentucky is very, very heart-
wrenching, and to say there is not a second victim to me defies logic. 
We desperately need this in Federal law. There have been cases that we 
have been unable to bring of double murders because we do not have a 
statute where punishments would have been meted out more significantly 
if we were able to bring the second murder case. So I think this is 
very timely legislation. It is very, very important.
  I certainly not only commend my colleague, the gentleman from 
Missouri, for bringing this debate forward tonight, but I want to 
additionally commend the author of the legislation, the gentlewoman 
from Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart), a great member who sits on the Committee 
on the Judiciary, and who has really been an outspoken advocate on this 
issue and, in particular, she is very knowledgeable about the law. So I 
am very, very pleased to support the legislation. I thank my good 
friend. I also want to thank the gentleman for standing up for the 
principles of our Constitution and seeing to it that the Constitution 
is properly interpreted in today's context of today's law.
  Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments. It is 
an honor to work with him and serve with him. I appreciate his 
leadership on this and many other issues.
  It is now my honor to yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Franks), who it is just an honor to serve with and someone who, though 
he has been here just merely a small number of months, considering how 
long some Congressmen have been here, one who has immediately been 
respected for his thoughtfulness and his articulate understanding of 
some of these questions. So I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Franks).
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding to me.
  Mr. Speaker, I think that sometimes when we begin to debate an issue 
that is before us, it is always important to ask ourselves why we are 
really here. And if there is any foundational purpose for this 
Congress, it is to protect the innocent in humanity. Sometimes we 
complicate that greatly. Perhaps one of our greatest abilities as human 
beings is to hide from something that we would rather not face, and I 
think that that is indeed the situation that we face today.
  The Unborn Victims of Violence Act has been distorted in the minds of 
many people. It has been distorted in the speeches that have been made 
from this well to a great degree. I find that people on both sides of 
the aisle, on my side of the aisle, they try to say, well, this has 
nothing to do with abortion; and that is true. On the other side of the 
aisle they try to say, well, this is just a disguised pro-life bill. In 
a sense, both of those things are true, and I think it is time for us 
to face it directly.

[[Page H607]]

  The truth is, this bill is not about abortion. But the fact is, if it 
were not for abortion on demand, we would not even be debating this 
bill. We would not even be questioning whether or not this was 
important. Because most of the opposition to this bill comes from those 
who try very hard, and I understand their problem, I understand their 
difficulty; they try very hard to put this bill aside as a nonserious 
issue because it makes them face the reality of the humanness of this 
little unborn baby child. And that is a difficult thing to face, 
because, after all, when we consider America's history since Roe v. 
Wade, we have taken the lives of 10,000 times as many babies as people 
who died on 9/11.
  So I understand the hesitation to face the reality here; but 
sometimes, there has to come a point in all of our lives where we just 
put aside those things that we know in our hearts are not true and 
embrace what is obviously a self-evident truth.

                              {time}  1730

  The fact is that there really are two victims in this situation. When 
a mother is assaulted and her child is killed, there are two victims, 
and I speak to some degree from personal experience.
  I used to live in Albany, Kentucky, many years ago, and this is far 
before such a bill like this was even contemplated. There was a 
situation where a man had, with his bare hands, killed an unborn child 
of a mother on the streets of Monticello, Kentucky, and try as they 
might, the prosecutors had a great difficulty in being able to bring 
the right kind of charge against this person.
  They brought a charge of manslaughter, but again, Roe v. Wade was 
mentioned as a defense. They said, well, there is no child here. 
Everyone in the court, everyone connected to the case knew there was a 
child, and I would suggest to my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, that the 
mother knew there was a child, and perhaps as tragic as it was that 
this child died in the streets alone, I do not think anyone felt the 
reality and the horror and the tragedy more than that mother. For us 
here in Congress to say to her that her child was not real, that her 
grief was not real, is just beyond description, in my opinion.
  Mr. Speaker, it is time that we recognize the truth here. It is time 
we all asked the real question, and that is, is there really a baby 
here? Mr. Speaker, an honest look at the truth reflects the unavoidable 
reality that there is a child, and if there is a child, how can those 
of us in this body, whose primary, principal purpose for being here is 
to protect the innocent, how can we ignore that fact?
  I just hope, Mr. Speaker, that people on both sides of the aisle will 
simply recognize the reality of the humanness of the child and the 
great mourning of a mother that loses that child to someone that would 
deliberately take that child's life or take that child's life 
incidentally to trying to assault her. It is time we stood up and did 
what was right, Mr. Speaker, and I hope that we will do that.
  I just want to remind all of us that if we do not have the courage to 
protect the innocent, in the final analysis, no matter how erudite we 
are, we will never really find the true courage to protect that kind of 
liberty for anyone, and I pray that we respond in that manner.
  Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his 
appropriate comments and a challenge to all of us to recognize 
something that has been woven throughout America's past and her history 
over the years, a respect in the most basic sense, a respect for human 
life.
  On this question about what does a mother feel when she is attacked 
and her child is killed, we have a letter from Laci Peterson's mother 
that I would share with my colleagues now, and it starts:
  ``I am writing to thank you for your ongoing efforts to pass `Laci 
and Conner's Law,' the Unborn Victims of Violence Act,'' giving a bill 
number, ``and to encourage you to redouble those efforts.''
  ``On May 5, I and the other members of the family of Laci and Conner 
wrote to urge that this bill be passed as a tribute to Laci and Conner, 
and to allow true justice to be done in the future when such horrible 
crimes occur within the jurisdiction of Federal criminal law or 
military criminal law. I want you to know that I appreciate your 
efforts, all the more so because of some of the unfair attacks and 
criticisms to which you have been subjected in recent weeks by those 
who oppose the bill for misguided ideological reasons.
  ``I know that you have been working for years for this legislation, 
but I have only become aware of your efforts because of our recent 
tragic circumstances. I have been astonished and somewhat offended to 
see, in the news media, recent statements by some critics who say that 
those who have been working for years on this legislation are 
inappropriately `exploiting' the public interest in the murder of Laci 
and Conner. I assure you that we do not see it that way. On the 
contrary, we believe that our case does provide a powerful illustration 
of why this type of law is absolutely necessary, and we urge you to 
continue to point to that connection. I intend to do the same, for as 
long as necessary to achieve the needed reform in the law.
  ``When a criminal attacks a woman who carries a child, he claims two 
victims. I lost a daughter, but I also lost a grandson. Fortunately, 
California law allows a double homicide charge in such a case, but if 
Laci and Conner had been killed in a Federal jurisdiction, or during 
commission of a Federal crime of violence, Conner's death would not be 
recognized or charged. Now that so many people are becoming aware of 
this defect in Federal law, I hope that the Congress will move swiftly 
to approve the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. I was heartened to read 
the White House statement of April 25, stating, `The President does 
believe that when an unborn child is injured or killed during the 
commission of a crime of violence, the law should recognize what most 
people immediately recognize, and that is that such a crime has two 
victims.'
  ``Over the last several weeks I have heard the arguments of opponents 
of Laci and Conner's law, but they seem to me to miss the point. In the 
first place, they should stop trying to turn this into the abortion 
issue. California's unborn victim law has been on the books since 1970, 
and it does not affect the availability of legal abortion, nor have any 
of the similar laws in effect in more than half the States. The Unborn 
Victims of Violence Act explicitly says that it does not apply to 
abortion, or to any acts of the mother herself.
  ``Having said that, I have no difficulty understanding that any 
legislator or group opposed to abortion logically would also support 
this bill to protect the lives of unborn children like Conner from 
violent criminal actions, and I welcome their support.''
  But she goes on to say, ``What I find difficult to understand is why 
groups and legislators who champion the prochoice cause are blind to 
the fact that these two-victim crimes are the ultimate violation of 
choice.
  ``I have looked very carefully at the `substitute' legislation 
proposed by the opponents of Laci and Conner's law, which they call 
`The Motherhood Protection Act,' proposed in the House of 
Representatives,'' and, ``This proposal would provide that if the 
victim of a Federal crime happens to be a pregnant woman, and the crime 
somehow disrupts her pregnancy, a harsher sentence would be assessed 
than otherwise. But the Lofgren proposal would enshrine in law the 
offensive concept that such crimes have only a single victim, the 
pregnant woman. This would be a step in the wrong direction.

  ``I hope that every legislator will clearly understand that adoption 
of such a single-victim amendment would be a painful blow to those, 
like me, who are left alive after a two-victim crime, because the 
Congress would be saying that Conner and other innocent unborn victims 
like him are not really victims--indeed, that they never really existed 
at all. But our grandson did live. He had a name, he was loved, and his 
life was violently taken from him before he ever saw the sun.
  ``The application of a single-victim law,'' such as this particular 
amendment, ``would be even more offensive in the many cases that 
involved mothers who themselves survive criminal attacks, but who lose 
their babies in those crimes. I don't understand how any legislator can 
vote to force prosecutors to tell such a grieving mother

[[Page H608]]

that she didn't really lose a baby, when she knows in the depths of her 
soul that she did. A legislator who votes for the single-victim 
amendment, however well motivated, votes to add injury to injury.''
  I would, Mr. Speaker, now like to yield to the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Murphy), my colleague and respected Member of the 
House.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and, Mr. 
Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 1997, the Unborn 
Victims of Violence Act introduced by my fellow gentlewoman from 
Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart).
  When we reflect back, I must acknowledge there was a time in our 
history when sadly it was not considered a crime for a man to beat his 
wife, because she was not granted a protective legal status. That is, 
what we now see as both immoral and illegal at that time was not seen 
as illegal. Luckily, we now see how grievous and how cruel that error 
in legal definition was.
  Similarly, we cannot escape our bleak history when African Americans 
were not given rights, when Irish immigrants were seen as subhuman, and 
therefore, acts of violence against them went unpunished. As we 
recognized the value of human dignity, then we are compelled to do so 
again today.
  When we hear about an action of violence against a pregnant woman 
where the baby inside her is killed, in some States the act would be 
charged with murder, and in some States he would not.
  Fortunately, when I was a State senator in Pennsylvania, my State 
enacted a law that imposed criminal penalties on individuals who 
intentionally murder unborn children in acts of violence, and 29 other 
States have seen fit to enact laws protecting unborn children from 
violence. When a criminal in those States attacks a pregnant woman and 
kills her unborn child, he has killed two people. No doubt, no 
question, no room for argument.
  But the question before us today expands this issue to other States. 
When a man brutally beats a woman and in that process kills her unborn 
child, he has committed murder. What if that woman's baby was due the 
following day, had a nursery decorated and clothes folded neatly and 
arranged, a mobile swinging above the crib? In 21 States this is not 
murder; in 29 States it is.
  It is time we consider the morality of the baby's rights to be 
protected. We must protect them until they protect themselves, in the 
womb and during their young years. It is their right, and it is our 
duty.
  Think of this. If a man wants to end the pregnancy and the woman does 
not, and he beats her until the life within her, by whatever definition 
or stretch one might hold, if that life ends, do we tell the woman her 
desires mean nothing, her hopes mean nothing, her baby is a sacrifice 
at the altar of legalese, and she, as the mom, has no rights to her 
hopes and her dreams and her desires? Do we say to that mom her baby 
does not exist until someone defines it as so? Tell that to the mother. 
Tell that to the father. Tell them their baby was nothing.
  I know that there are those that feel this will infringe on someone's 
rights, that this is a woman's issue. Well, I speak to my colleagues 
tonight as a father first and as a legislator second. This is not a 
woman's issue or a man's issue; this is a child's issue. These are 
lives we are talking about. I know that there are those who feel that 
this will infringe upon someone's rights, that this is a woman's issue, 
but a violent act must be punished, a violent act that is maybe even 
more heinous when committed against an individual so helpless that it 
needs the protections of its mother's body.
  I think back on years when I used to work at McGee Hospital and Mercy 
Hospital in Pittsburgh, where I would see young babies born a month, 2 
months, 3 months premature, perhaps born at 24 weeks, tiny little 
lives, and sometimes they survived and went on. Now I see some of them 
have gone on to graduate high school and college and have families of 
their own, and some did not make it, but I know very well the waves of 
grief that flowed over the families because they considered those 
children alive.
  When a child is killed within the mother, by saying that is a child, 
by recognizing that as a murder, we are indeed protecting them. We are 
indeed saying something is right and something is moral, and we are 
attaching the right legal action upon that and protecting them.
  Thomas Jefferson once said, ``I tremble for my country when I reflect 
that God is just and his justice cannot sleep forever.''

                              {time}  1745

  What we face now is a time of bringing to justice those who try and 
kill those children, and we bring protection to those children too. It 
is a time when we must do all these things and recognize how within 
this vast world we can sometimes play with all the definitions we want; 
but it is still a life, and it is still worthy of our attention.
  Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania. We 
appreciate his perspective and the challenge to each of us that we need 
to be about the business that is the fundamental business of our 
government, and that is to protect. To protect that fundamental right 
to life, which is so much the heartbeat and the central theme of our 
country from our very beginning, from our birth day.
  I would make reference now just briefly to some polling data which 
may be of interest to some of my colleagues. Here is a poll that was 
taken, and I will read it specifically: ``If a violent physical attack 
on a pregnant woman leads to the death of her unborn child, do you 
think prosecutors should be able to charge the attacker with killing 
the fetus?'' The response to this was 79 percent of the American voters 
who were asked this question, 79 percent said, yes, that we should. The 
polling data indicates that there is a strong and simple understanding 
of the fact that such a violent attack as this is really an attack on 
two individuals.
  We have, of course, voted this bill in the House in the past. In the 
107th Congress, my first Congress, it was passed by 252 to only 172. It 
was passed in the previous Congress, the 106th Congress, by 254 to 172. 
So we have a record of having passed this before. I believe that it is 
time for us to get on with our business and move ahead with this bill 
and continue in our tradition of a deep-seated respect for life in 
America.
  Now, when I started my comments not so long ago, I asked if we were 
to define America in one sentence, if we had to get the essence, the 
core, of what makes us who we are and we had to try to simplify that 
and put it into something that would be understood to someone from a 
foreign country that asked, what is the secret, why is America 
different, I believe the answer to that question is found in our 
birthday document, the Declaration of Independence, which is that great 
sentence, ``We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are 
created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable 
rights; that among these is life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness.''
  That document goes on to say that it is the job of government to 
protect those basic rights. And so if we as Members of the Government 
of the United States fail to protect that basic right to life, that 
God-given unalienable right to life, if we fail to take this action, 
then we fail in our most fundamental purpose as a Nation. We, in fact, 
are almost turning our back on the organizing principle, our birthday 
document, and everything that Americans have held dear.
  Now, this respect for life was not just reflected in one document 
years ago, but it has been part of our culture for years. Our founders 
bled and died and fought a great war for our independence to defend 
this basic principle. We have seen throughout our history challenges in 
the courts which have threatened the essence of personhood. There was, 
of course, the Supreme Court decision where the Supreme Court decided 
to stop looking at the Constitution and just started to get into the 
legislative business in Dred Scott, resulting in, or is at least partly 
responsible for, the great scourge of the Civil War, where we said that 
people really were not going to acknowledge this personhood.
  We have seen this culture carried even forward to our own day. I 
think some of the most vivid imagery that perhaps many of us can recall 
came on September 11. It was not a matter of people saying words; it 
was the way that they lived their lives before everybody watching that 
showed this respect

[[Page H609]]

that America has for life, when we saw the big, strong police and the 
firefighters taking people that were in wheelchairs that were hurt or 
helpless, risking their lives to try to protect the lives of fellow 
Americans. This was not something that was orchestrated. This was 
something that we just did. It was an outpouring of the very heart of 
America.
  Subsequently, as we started to go after those people who did not have 
the respect for life that we have in our culture developed through the 
years, these terrorists who make it their job of killing people, of 
taking life, how did we proceed? Did we do the very safest and simplest 
thing for us, which would have been to unleash a whole lot of nuclear 
devices on countries that were targets? Of course we did not. We took 
extra pains to make sure that we tried to minimize collateral damage. 
We tried to be very, very careful that nobody's life was taken except 
for people who were immediately responsible or culpable for these acts 
of terrorism. That has been done at a great risk to many of our own 
airmen and our own soldiers and all who are involved and even now 
defending us overseas as we discuss these important questions.

  Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, I would call my colleagues back to the 
things that America has always stood for; that our young men and women 
have sometimes come home underneath a flag defending this very basic 
concept, a concept that is bigger than America, a concept that is being 
taken by America to the entire world, the concept that there is a God, 
and that every single person in this world is an heir to these 
unalienable rights, particularly this right to life.
  So I close with this appeal that we must recognize this right to life 
in this situation where a little child is beaten to death. They must be 
recognized by law, and I urge my colleagues to pass the Unborn Victims 
of Violence Act.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield now to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. 
Hart), my respected colleague and the coauthor of this legislation.
  Ms. HART. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments and for 
his support for the legislation. I want to also emphasize the support 
we have heard today not only from our colleagues, but the support we 
have heard today from the Lyons family from Kentucky, the support that 
we have heard from a number of different families who have experienced 
this tragic loss of their daughter and their grandchild.
  It is a very sad situation that we are talking about with this 
legislation, but it is one that we obviously can try to help prevent 
through a criminal law, through recognition of the mother and the child 
both as victims, and one that I think we would be remiss in fact in our 
work if we do not pass this legislation.
  Recent polling shows that upwards of 80 percent of registered voters, 
and that includes 69 percent of registered voters who identify 
themselves as pro-choice, believe that prosecutors should be able to 
separately charge the attacker who attacks a pregnant woman and causes 
injury or death to her and/or her unborn child. Twenty-nine out of the 
50 States already have legislation that recognizes that crime, the 
crime against the mother and the crime against the unborn child.
  The language that we use, which has been somewhat controversial by 
those opponents of this bill, is where we describe a child in utero. 
This is actual language that this House has used before, and the House 
passed the bill unanimously. So that language was supported unanimously 
on a bipartisan basis in legislation that passed before I came to this 
Congress. I believe it was in the 106th Congress that they passed a 
bill called the Innocent Child Protection Act, which banned the Federal 
death penalty for a woman who is pregnant and they described the 
pregnancy as ``carrying a child in utero,'' and defined that child 
exactly to the word as we have defined that child in our legislation.
  Therefore, Mr. Speaker, it is obvious that this is not new. This 
language is well set and accepted by this House of Representatives, and 
anyone who tries to make a claim to the contrary is simply ignoring the 
truth. They are ignoring the facts.
  The most important part, though, Mr. Speaker, is that we recognize 
families. We recognize women who have made a choice to carry their 
child to term, a mother to carry her child to term. A woman who is 
attacked, who may be murdered or may just be seriously injured and 
survive the attack, will have to live the rest of her life with the 
knowledge that someone attacked her and took that choice away from her, 
killed her child. It is important for us to recognize and allow our law 
enforcement and prosecutors to recognize that child, recognize that 
family's loss, and allow a prosecution of that crime.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, I want to bring up a couple of points about 
domestic violence. We have seen statistics that show that unfortunately 
the cause of death among pregnant women in States that actually keep 
those statistics, Maryland, New York, Illinois, among the ones that we 
saw, showed us that upwards of a quarter of the pregnant women who die, 
die as a result of a homicide.
  Mr. Speaker, the recognition of that fact is important for us as 
well. It is a serious case of domestic violence when a woman is beaten 
to death, clearly. It is a serious case of domestic violence when both 
the woman and her child are beaten to death, her unborn child is beaten 
to death. It should be recognized by this Congress. It should be 
recognized by this Nation.
  I encourage my colleagues to support our two-victim bill, the Unborn 
Victims of Violence Act, named in honor and remembrance of Laci and 
Conner Peterson; and I thank the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin) for 
yielding to me.

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