[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 105 (Wednesday, September 8, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H6876]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  COURT RULING UPHOLDS BARBARIC AND BRUTAL PRACTICE OF PARTIAL-BIRTH 
                                ABORTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I come to the House floor tonight on a 
very sad occasion, a day that marks a third Federal district court 
ruling upholding the barbaric and brutal practice of partial-birth 
abortion. Once again, the ethics and morality of the American people 
and Congress have been trumped by an activist Federal judge. As a 
result of this judicial arrogance, more innocent children will be 
gruesomely and barbarically killed by partial-birth abortions.
  The practice of inducing birth for the sole purpose of brutally 
murdering an innocent child has absolutely no place in civilized 
society, and it is an outrage to let a handful of lifetime-appointed 
judges overrule the will of the American people and essentially 
sentence these babies to death.
  Today's court opinion especially drips with contempt for Congress and 
the people who elected their Representatives. Congress passed the 
partial-birth abortion ban with overwhelming support. These courts have 
displayed utter contempt for the factual findings of Congress, which 
proved that the legislation was constitutional. Congress decided, based 
on years of testimony by countless medical experts, that partial-birth 
abortion is never medically necessary. These three Federal district 
courts have now simply brushed aside this finding, those courts being 
in California, New York, and now today's ruling from Nebraska.
  Both the California and Nebraska courts based their rulings on the 
idea that an expert witness must actually perform partial-birth 
abortions in order to be a credible expert. This is ludicrous. These 
witnesses, the good witnesses on our side, do not perform partial-birth 
abortions because, as they testified, they are never medically 
necessary, and the procedure endangers women. It would be malpractice 
for physicians to perform a procedure that they know to be unnecessary 
and injurious to their patients.
  Both judges also said that those witnesses who supported the ban 
because they were prolife could not be objective about the procedures. 
These judges cannot seriously claim that the plaintiffs' trial experts 
for whom abortion is a business were not biased in favor of abortion.
  Judge Kopf, the author of today's decision and also the decision in 
Stenberg v. Carhart, the infamous decision from Nebraska's State ban, 
did not even attempt to hide his support for the practice of abortion, 
and this is a quote from his opinion: ``I do not use the term 
`abortionist' pejoratively. So long as abortion is legal, doctors who 
perform abortions and who properly concentrate on the health of the 
female patients will be treated in this court with the same high degree 
of respect as fetal and maternal specialists who do not perform 
abortions and who properly divide their loyalties between the health of 
the fetus and the health of its mother.''
  That, Mr. Speaker, is a modern-day equivalent of the Nazi prison 
guard saying ``I was just following orders.'' It was all legal in Nazi 
Germany at the time.
  These three judges have overruled the will of the people, expressed 
through their elected representatives, by declaring the partial-birth 
abortion ban unconstitutional. They stepped outside the bounds of their 
judicial roles delineated by the Constitution and are vetoing 
legislation from the bench.
  No cover provided by inferior courts will shield the Supreme Court 
from the ire of the public or this Congress if the Court rules against 
the will of the people and the highest standard of fact-finding 
conducted by Congress in passing this ban.
  Our Founders assigned the legislative role to Congress because, among 
other reasons, we are accountable to the people. If Americans do not 
agree with the partial-birth abortion ban, they can vote against the 
elected officials who supported it. Unelected lifetime-appointed judges 
are not accountable to the people unless impeachment proceedings are 
brought in the House of Representatives. That is the only way. We must 
rein in the runaway judiciary, even if that means bringing impeachment 
procedures. We as Members of the constitutionally established 
legislative branch must stand up for our Constitution against judges 
who ignore it.

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