[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 12 (Wednesday, January 21, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H432-H433]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  THE INALIENABLE RIGHTS OF THE UNBORN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SOUDER. First, I want to thank Mr. Ellison who has been waiting 
for some time to do his Special Order and has agreed in effect to cut 
the line here. People say that we don't do things in a bipartisan way, 
but we try to accommodate. And he has been very gracious, and I 
appreciate that.
  I would like to yield 1 minute to Mr. Fortenberry from Nebraska.
  Mr. FORTENBERRY. I thank the gentleman from Indiana for yielding as 
well. I was watching the conversation back in the office and felt 
compelled to come down and speak as well. I wanted to commend my 
colleague, Congressman Smith, for all of his leadership through the 
years on this essential American issue.
  And Congressman Smith, I wanted to relay a story to you of something 
that happened to me a few years ago. I was at our State fair. And there 
is a group of people there who actually hand out little plastic 
replicas of unborn children just as a positive reminder to all of us 
about what an unborn child looks like. And I took one and brought it 
home. And somehow it ended up on the floor in one of my children's room 
or the toy room. And our youngest child actually picked that little 
replica of an unborn child up and was carrying it around. And before 
she could hardly speak a word, she was saying the word ``baby, baby.'' 
This little child herself recognized an immutable truth that the wisest 
of us on the Supreme Court and the legislatures here and throughout the 
land don't seem to be able to grasp. And I think this point is 
essential in the sense that I think we are entering a new phase in 
society where we have to confront this issue head on.
  The pain, the trauma, the personal conflict, the psychological 
damage, the tearing apart of hearts that has occurred because of 
abortion I think could potentially lead us to a new day because America 
is built on a fundamental premise namely that all persons have inherent 
dignity and therefore rights. We have lived that imperfectly as a 
country because we had to fight a civil war and have a 100-year civil 
rights struggle because we didn't believe that at first if you were 
black. We didn't believe that at first if you were a woman, because at 
the beginning of last century women didn't have

[[Page H433]]

the right to vote. And we have not matured yet I think to this point. 
But I certainly believe we have the capacity to, because our 
philosophical premise is to accept the fact that the new civil rights 
struggle is for the unborn because women deserve better than abortion.
  So Mr. Smith, thank you so much for your leadership on this issue. 
And I'm very grateful to be a partner and colleague with you as we 
build toward a new way forward, a new day for America, and we can 
celebrate the beautiful gift of life and confront circumstances no 
matter how hard and difficult they are with a loving community response 
that helps get people through it. Thank you so much.
  Mr. SOUDER. I wanted to share a few thoughts. Many years ago, I was a 
student at Indiana Purdue University in Fort Wayne. I'm old now. But in 
the late 1960s and 1970s, prior to Roe v. Wade, many of us were 
concerned about the liberalization of abortion laws in California and 
New York. And I was then a graduate student at the University of Notre 
Dame on January 22, 1973 when the Supreme Court decision on abortion 
came through. Therese Willke, the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Willke from 
Cincinnati, who founded the National Right To Life and came up with the 
little feet, and I formed an organization called Student Coalition for 
the Human Life Amendment with Dr. Charles Rice who wrote the original 
human life amendment who was a law professor at Notre Dame and was our 
faculty adviser. We worked for many years trying to overturn the 
decision. But it has been interesting to watch both my pattern at the 
personal level and to watch the pro-life movement evolve. When I was a 
young male student, quite frankly, I didn't know much about babies, 
didn't really care a whole lot about babies, thought that maybe when 
they became college age I would be able to relate well, so I can't say 
I was initially motivated by love. I was motivated by horror. Who would 
take the life of these innocent babies?
  Probably my first eye-opening experience was in the Lamaze baby 
course as I was watching my own daughter, Brooke, develop in the womb, 
feeling the attachment of a parent, and then all of a sudden the love 
side comes in.
  The pro-life movement started mostly as a frustration to overturn a 
law. But as the pro-life movement evolved, we still have many people 
trying to be a symbol to the Nation, a conscience in the march here 
tomorrow and marches all over the country, like in Fort Wayne on 
Saturday. But my wife now works at the Hope Center. We support women's 
care centers. Tonight she is on a hotline trying to deal with young 
mothers. Because for too long, all we were concerned about was stopping 
abortion and not helping the mothers involved. What do they do? All of 
a sudden, they're in a disastrous situation. They don't know how they 
are going to deal with school. They don't know how they are going to 
deal with their finances.
  And what you see in the pro-life movement is not only a love for the 
baby, but increasingly a love for the parents. And that is part of our 
responsibility. We can't just point a finger. The question is how do we 
address poverty? How do we address it on an individual basis, not just 
conceptually? Are we open that when somebody is in need that will 
answer the phone, that will provide the food, that will provide the 
shelter, that will provide the clothing. And it is just amazing to 
watch these centers all over the country who aren't just talking the 
talk but are walking the walk.
  Tomorrow we will see many of them here in Washington. And I want to 
thank all those millions of volunteers around the country for showing 
the true love that comes in the pro-life movement. We need to have 
political action. But we also need to have this personal action.
  I want to again thank Mr. Ellison for yielding. And I yield back the 
remainder of my time.

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