[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 5 (Tuesday, January 25, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H175-H176]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ABORTION CLINICS: NOT ONLY KILLING MILLS BUT TORTURE CENTERS AS WELL
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, 100,000 human rights
advocates endured the numbing cold and snow in a great witness for life
here in our Nation's Capital. Their presence on behalf of those who
have no voice of their own was truly inspiring. It was gratifying
beyond words to see so many teenagers full of idealism and full of
compassion and love for their littlest brothers and sisters and for all
human life that is at risk.
Indeed, Mr. Speaker, the pro-life movement is the greatest human
rights movement on Earth.
{time} 1945
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. It is a struggle based on unconditional
love, even for the proabortionists, unconditional empathy for the
victims, both the child and his or her mother, and unconditional
courage.
We are a movement with deep hope and expectation, that with God's
all-powerful grace, and through that all-powerful grace, the culture of
death will soon be vanquished by the culture of life, where all human
life is cherished and respected. We pray for the day when branding an
unborn child as unwanted will no longer mean a death sentence in
America.
Mr. Speaker, I have always found the term ``unwanted child''
dehumanizing, for it relegates a child to the status of a commodity, an
object, a thing, something that can be chosen or unchosen at will, not
unlike any other consumer product.
Mr. Speaker, with each passing year, the horrific toll of abortion on
women's lives becomes more evident, and it is time the media especially
stopped censoring the truth. Women deserve better than abortion, and
the compelling stories of the brave women, the postabortive women who
are silent no more need to be heard. These very special women bear
witness not only to the agony and the trauma of their own abortions,
but to the hope of healing, reconciliation and inner peace as well.
Wounded women like Dr. Alveda King, the niece of the late Dr. Martin
Luther King, who has had an abortion, Jennifer O'Neill, singer Melba
Moore, civil rights activist, like I said, Dr. King, and so many
others, and cofounder of this group called Silent No More Awareness
Campaign, Georgette Forney, have all called on us to listen to their
heart-wrenching stories and take seriously our moral duty to protect
women and children from the predators who ply their lethal trade in
abortion mills throughout the land.
These brave women are the new champions of life. They have refused to
be silent any longer. They care too deeply about other women and their
children, and they want others to be spared the anguish that they
themselves have endured. And to the millions of women who have aborted,
they are uniquely equipped to convey the breathtaking love and healing
and reconciliation that God provides to those who ask. They do have a
connection, the silentnomoreawareness.org, if those who might want to
contact them just go on the Web and check them out. They are
unbelievably full of compassion.
Mr. Speaker, let me also point out that with each passing year, the
child body count from abortion in America grows. Since the infamous
decision in 1973, more than 46 million babies have been killed by
dismemberment or chemical poisoning, a number fast approaching the
total worldwide deaths attributable to World War II; that is civilian
and military deaths.
And as we have feared, Mr. Speaker, the much touted baby pesticide,
RU-486, rushed to approval by a very biased
[[Page H176]]
FDA, is poison not only to the baby, but women are dying from it as
well.
And now we learn, Mr. Speaker, from science and medicine that due to
nerve cell development, unborn children from at least 20 weeks onward,
and most likely even earlier, feel excruciating pain, two to four times
more painful than you or I would feel from the same assault.
Today, along with 75 cosponsors, I have reintroduced legislation, the
Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, to require in part that women seeking
abortions at this stage of development be informed of this gruesome
reality. These kids feel pain, and we need to make that known to those
women who are procuring abortions at that gestational period.
The bill would also require that women be given the option of having
anesthesia administered directly to the unborn child, because indirect
administration does not cross the placenta to numb the pain that the
child feels as they are being slowly dismembered by these later-term
abortion methods. One of those methods, the D and E, takes about 30
minutes as the arms and the legs and the body and the torso are all
hacked off. And the baby feels pain during this hideous procedure.
Interestingly, Mr. Speaker, the partial-birth abortion legal trials
in various courts around the country drew new attention to the pain
that unborn children feel during an abortion. In expert testimony
during these trials, Dr. Sunny Anand, Director of the Pain Neurobiology
Lab at Arkansas Children's Hospital, said, and I quote him, ``The human
fetus possesses the ability to experience pain from 20 weeks of
gestation, if not earlier, and the pain that is perceived by a fetus is
more intense than that perceived by newborns or older children.''
He went on to explain that the pain inhibitory mechanisms, in other
words the fibers that dampen and modulate the experience of pain, do
not begin to develop until 32 to 34 weeks of gestation. Thus these
children feel pain, and they feel it excruciatingly so.
Abortion is violence against children, Mr. Speaker, and these kids
feel that pain.
Abortion clinics, if we look at them as what they really are, are not
only killing centers, they are torture chambers as well. I hope that we
all can move on this legislation as quickly as possible.
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