[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 164 (Thursday, November 5, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H12435-H12442]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               ABORTION AND THE DEMOCRAT HEALTH CARE BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, even though reputable polls 
consistently show that public funding of abortion is opposed by a 
supermajority of Americans, some 67 percent, the multibillion-dollar 
abortion industry, its lobbyists and friends in Congress are today 
demanding that the two massive new government programs created by the 
Democratic leadership's so-called ``health care reform'' bill force 
Americans to facilitate and fund the killing of unborn children by 
abortion.
  Anyone who tells you otherwise--and I appreciate the gentleman from 
Texas pointing out the text. It clearly states it. Anyone who tells you 
otherwise that public funding for abortion on demand is not in the 
pending legislation is either seriously misinformed or simply not 
telling the truth.
  Americans do want to know up front what's in this bill. No games. No 
brinksmanship. Americans want and the public deserves total 
transparency and truth in legislating.
  Madam Speaker, despite the fact that in 2009 we know more and 
understand more about the magnificent world of unborn children than 
ever before--the fact that these babies move inside the womb and 
stretch and do somersaults and kick, they wake and sleep, believe it or 
not--and it is true, they have a waking and sleeping cycle. The fact 
that beneficial prenatal health care interventions, including 
microsurgery, can be performed in utero, inside the womb, blood 
transfusions inside the womb, the fact that these children can feel 
excruciating physical pain before birth, including the pain 
deliberately inflicted by abortionists--I would note, parenthetically, 
that I authored the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, which got 250 
votes in a bipartisan vote a couple of years ago. And we know for a 
fact that at least at 20 weeks gestation, unborn children feel 
excruciating pain up to four times what everyone else after birth feels 
because the pain receptors are very close to the skin. And we do 
believe that these children feel pain even earlier than the 20th week. 
Despite all of this, President Obama and the Democratic leadership are 
on a fast track to compel, force, mandate, and coerce public funding 
for abortions.
  Madam Speaker, pro-life Americans want no role or complicity in this 
assault on the weakest and the most vulnerable. Frankly, Madam Speaker, 
it is time to face an inconvenient truth--abortion is violence against 
children, and it exploits and harms women.
  There has been study after study that shows that women who procure 
abortions experience immediate relief followed by very serious 
psychological and deleterious consequences to them. And the younger 
they are, it appears, based on the empirical data, the more egregious 
the pain and suffering and the agony endured by these young women.
  New Zealand did a study in 2006, a very comprehensive study, and 
found that 78.6 percent of the 15- to 18-year-old girls who had 
abortions displayed symptoms of major depression compared to 31 percent 
of their peers. Twenty-seven percent of the 21- to 25-year-old women 
who had abortions had suicidal idealization compared to 8 percent of 
those who did not have abortions. Abortion hurts women.
  I would remind my colleagues that organizations like the Silent No 
More Campaign, run so admirably and courageously by people like Dr. 
Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, a woman who had two 
abortions and had profound, profound psychological problems from that 
but now knows reconciliation and hope again, Silent No More is made up 
exclusively of women who have had abortions. Dr. King has said that her 
uncle's dream, how does it survive if we murder the children? And then 
she went on to say the other victim is and always will be the woman.
  Time magazine, and others, has finally reported on another little 
known fact--abortion adversely affects subsequent children born to 
women who abort. Recent studies have indicated that the risks of 
preterm birth goes up 36 percent after one abortion, and a staggering 
93 percent after two or more abortions. Similarly, the risk of 
subsequent children being born with low birth weight increases by 36 
percent after one abortion and 72 percent after two or more.
  The health consequences to subsequent children born to women who 
abort is deeply troubling and largely unrecognized and underreported 
upon. Thus, abortion not only kills babies and wounds women, it 
directly injures subsequent children. And as we all know, prematurity 
is one of the leading causes of disabilities in children.
  As you know better than I, Madam Speaker, Congress will vote as early 
as Saturday on the health care restructuring bill, H.R. 3962, and it 
includes highly deceptive policy language that will massively increase 
the number of

[[Page H12436]]

children killed and mothers wounded by abortion. Let's be clear and 
unambiguous, both the public option and the program establishing 
affordability credits authorize public funding and facilitation of 
abortion on demand, which means, of course, that the number of children 
who will be forced to suffer unspeakable agony of abortion methods 
including dismemberment, decapitation, starvation--people say, How does 
RU46 work? First it starves the baby to death, and then the other 
chemical in RU46 just simply causes that dead baby to be expelled from 
the uterus. Then there are also chemicals that are providing for or 
forcing early expulsion from the womb and other types of chemical 
poisoning. All of this will skyrocket.
  The empirical evidence that public funding of abortions means more 
abortions is both logical and compelling. Even the Goodmacher 
Institute, formerly the research arm of Planned Parenthood, says that 
prohibiting Federal funds under the Hyde Amendment prevents abortions 
that otherwise would have been procured by a stunning 25 percent. That 
means that since enactment of the funding ban in the late seventies and 
early eighties, millions of children who would have otherwise been 
brutally killed by abortionists if public funding had facilitated their 
demise today, live and go to school, play sports, perhaps watched the 
World Series last night. Some of those spared are today raising their 
own kids, perhaps even serving as staff or Members of Congress. So 
whether we publicly fund abortion or not literally means life or death 
for countless individuals, going forward.
  The Democratic health bill, Madam Speaker, discriminates against the 
most vulnerable minority in America today, unborn babies, and is the 
quintessential example of the politics of exclusion--in this case 
because of the child's age, condition of dependency, and vulnerability.
  There is nothing whatsoever benign, compassionate, or nurturing about 
abortion. Abortion is a serious lethal violation of human rights. And 
now we are on the verge of being compelled to massively subsidize this 
violence against children.
  Madam Speaker, no one is really fooled by the multiple attempts to 
craft language that funds abortions but uses surface appeal text to 
suggest otherwise. I'm afraid the rule will likely contain self-
enacting text that further misleads and obfuscates. Thus, the only 
policy language that honestly and transparently precludes public 
funding for abortion is the Stupak-Pitts amendment. The Capps amendment 
that is already in the bill, as I said, explicitly authorizes Federal 
funding for abortion in the public option. And again, I urge Members to 
just read it. With abortion covered under the public option, we will 
see more abortions. It also allows the government subsidies, the other 
program, to pay for insurance plans that cover abortion. As a matter of 
fact, every region will have to have a plan that provides for abortion.

  One of the great successes of the Right to Life movement is 
increasingly calling out to those so-called providers, abortionists, 
and inviting them to leave that grizzly business. And most of the 
hospitals in the country and most of the counties in the country no 
longer have abortionists. This legislation provides economic incentives 
and the force of law to ensure that every one of these localities has 
abortionists and abortions provided in a plan.
  Madam Speaker, I urge Members to vote for the Bart Stupak-Joe Pitts 
amendment if it is given an opportunity to be voted on. And if not, 
this whole bill--because you know what Hippocrates said, ``Do no 
harm.'' What did the great leaders and nurturers and health care 
leaders say in the past? Never do harm to an innocent. This is not 
health care. Abortion is not health care. It is the deliberate and 
willful killing of an unborn child, the wounding of their mothers, and 
the hurting, the serious destruction in terms of disabilities and the 
like to subsequent children.
  I would like to yield Congresswoman Schmidt such time as she might 
consume. And I want to thank her for her leadership on behalf of the 
unborn through these many years in service to Congress and before that.

                              {time}  1915

  Mrs. SCHMIDT. Thank you so much, my good friend from New Jersey. I'm 
having a display brought up.
  I would like to talk a minute about something that happened to me 
over the weekend, and I would like to go back 35 years ago because, 
well, in the exact same environment, a similar situation occurred.
  I'm Catholic and I go to mass. Every weekend, I go to mass. In fact, 
I go everyday, but 35 years ago when I went to mass, it was right 
before election, and I remember my Catholic priest, Francis Buttlemyer, 
said something that really shocked me.
  He said, when we went to the polls that Tuesday, we had a choice to 
make for a Member of Congress--and yeah, we had a Catholic running and 
we had a non-Catholic running, but the Catholic was pro-choice and the 
non-Catholic was pro-life. He said that you have to vote for the person 
who will protect the unborn. I remember coming home and saying to my 
mother how surprised I was that this priest had been so bold.
  Well, last Saturday night, I didn't go to my Catholic church. I went 
to a different one in my community. During our litany of prayers, they 
mentioned the fact that Congress would be voting on a bill, the health 
care bill, and that, in the bill, there were some issues that the 
Catholic church had with it--abortion, our elderly and the conscience 
clause for our health care professionals--and that we must pray that 
they resolve these before we vote on this legislation. I was blown away 
by that, but what came next stunned me more.
  The priest stood up and said, Look, I've got to talk about this for a 
minute. He did. Then he said, There will be an insert in the bulletin. 
This was the insert: ``Health care reform is about saving lives, not 
destroying them.'' The second part of it is a letter from the Catholic 
conference of bishops: ``Tell Congress: Remove abortion funding and 
mandates from needed health care reform.''
  So they're in favor of health care reform but not of this health care 
reform. In fact, I want to put these two things into the public record. 
I was stunned because I hadn't in 35 years heard from the pulpit this 
strong of a message.
  So, when I got in the car, I started to make some phone calls to some 
of my relatives around the city. What had they heard? The same thing. 
The priest had said something, and yes, it was in the bulletin. In my 
own home parish, yep, our priest said something, and yep, it was in the 
bulletin. It made me think that, if this moved the Catholic church 
after 35 years in my district to speak again publicly about abortion, 
this is something that is truly serious because, Madam Speaker, it is a 
game changer.
  So, today, when I read the Roll Call, Madam Speaker, I read: 
Activists gear up for fight.
  I thought, Ooh, what's this about? I'd like to read it.
  It reads: Lately, Donna Crane hasn't been making it home early. The 
policy director of NARAL Pro-Choice America has been lobbying nonstop 
to ensure that the House does not slip antiabortion language into its 
health care legislation, which the Chamber is expected to vote on this 
weekend.
  We're working a lot of late nights, Crane said.
  Then it goes on to talk about how various lobbyists are trying to 
have input into this, but it ends by saying that NARAL and the other 
pro-choice groups are comfortable with the Capps language and are 
comfortable with the Ellsworth language. The reason they are is that it 
really doesn't prohibit the funding of abortion. It's a ruse--it's a 
game--because what it says is that at least one plan has to have it, 
but we're going to have this little magical thing over here that's 
going to allow it to be funded in a different way before it comes 
through the public fund system.
  Madam Speaker, the language in this bill, either the Capps amendment 
or the Ellsworth amendment, will not only allow the public funding of 
abortion for the first time with Federal dollars since the Hyde 
amendment in 1976, but it will also expand it, and that's the dirty, 
little secret in this bill.
  This Saturday, we are to vote on this bill at right about the same 
time that I was in church last Saturday night, at right about this same 
time that the

[[Page H12437]]

priest stood up and said, Tell your Member of Congress.
  Let me tell you, Madam Speaker, that it made me a little nervous 
because they kind of were looking at me, and I wanted to put up a sign 
and say, I get it, but I couldn't.
  At right about this same time, we're going to be making a decision, 
not just on the health care for Americans and on the game changer that 
that is, but on a point that for the last 35 years has been protected, 
and that is not allowing the public funding of abortion.
  Madam Speaker, we cannot allow the public funding of abortion to 
occur in any way in this bill. It is truly a game changer, and until it 
is corrected, no one should even contemplate anything but a ``no'' on 
this bill.

    United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Nationwide Bulletin

       Tell Congress: Remove abortion funding and mandates from 
     needed health care reform.
       Congress is preparing to debate health care reform 
     legislation on the House and Senate floors. Genuine health 
     care reform should protect the life and dignity of all people 
     from the moment of conception until natural death. The U.S. 
     bishops' conference has concluded that all committee-approved 
     bills are seriously deficient on the issues of abortion and 
     conscience, and do not provide adequate access to health care 
     for immigrants and the poor. The bills will have to change or 
     the bishops have pledged to oppose them.
       Our nation is at a crossroads. Policies adopted in health 
     care reform will have an impact for good or ill for years to 
     come. None of the bills retains longstanding current policies 
     against abortion funding or abortion coverage mandates, and 
     none fully protects conscience rights in health care.
       As the U.S. bishops' letter of October 8 states: ``No one 
     should be required to pay for or participate in abortion. It 
     is essential that the legislation clearly apply to this new 
     program longstanding and widely supported federal 
     restrictions on abortion funding and mandates, and 
     protections for rights of conscience. No current bill meets 
     this test. . . . If acceptable language in these areas cannot 
     be found, we will have to oppose the health care bill 
     vigorously.''
       For the full text of this letter and more information on 
     proposed legislation and the bishops' advocacy for authentic 
     health care reform, visit: www.usccb.org/healthcare.
       Congressional leaders are attempting to put together final 
     bills for floor consideration. Please contact your 
     Representative and Senators today and urge them to fix these 
     bills with the pro-life amendments noted below. Otherwise 
     much needed health care reform will have to be opposed. 
     Health care reform should be about saving lives, not 
     destroying them.
       Action: Contact Members through e-mail, phone calls or FAX 
     letters. To send a pre-written, instant e-mail to Congress go 
     to www.usccb.org/action. Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard 
     at: 202-224-3121, or call your Members' local offices. Full 
     contact info can be found on Members' web sites at 
     www.house.gov and www.senate.gov.
 Message to Senate: ``During floor debate on the health care 
     reform bill, please support an amendment to incorporate 
     longstanding policies against abortion funding and in favor 
     of conscience rights. If these serious concerns are not 
     addressed, the final bill should be opposed.''
       Message to House: ``Please support the Stupak Amendment 
     that addresses essential pro-life concerns on abortion 
     funding and conscience rights in the health care reform bill. 
     Help ensure that the Rule for the bill allows a vote on this 
     amendment. If these serious concerns are not addressed, the 
     final bill should be opposed.''
       When: Both House and Senate are preparing for floor votes 
     now. Act today! Thank you!
                                  ____


     Health Care Reform Is About Saving Lives, Not Destroying Them

       Abortion is not health care because killing is not healing.
       For over 30 years, the Hyde Amendment and other 
     longstanding and widely supported laws have prevented federal 
     funding of elective abortions.
       Yet health care reform bills advancing in Congress violate 
     this policy.
       Americans would be forced to subsidize abortions through 
     their taxes and health insurance premiums.
       We need genuine health care reform--reform that helps save 
     lives, not destroy them.
       Tell Congress: ``Remove Abortion Funding and Mandates from 
     Needed Health Care Reform!''
       Visit www.usccb.org/action to send your e-mails today.
       For more information on the U.S. bishops' advocacy for 
     authentic Health Care Reform, visit www.usccb.org/healthcare.

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, I yield to Mr. Cao, the 
distinguished gentleman from Louisiana.
  I thank him for his leadership, the first Vietnamese American Member 
of Congress and a staunch fighter for human rights. I've known him in 
the refugee battles, especially for the boat people, and in so many 
other human rights' issues.
  So I yield to my friend.
  Mr. CAO. Thank you, my friend from New Jersey, Christopher Smith, for 
yielding me time.
  I just want to say that you have been my mentor, and you have been my 
friend, and I have been very honored to be part of your life and to 
have known you all of these years. So thank you very much.
  Madam Speaker, abortion is a destructive perversion of our society. 
It is a distorted emphasis on rights to the disregard of individual 
responsibilities.
  Our country was founded on fundamental human rights, and rightly so. 
``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.''
  These rights were reinforced and more succinctly elaborated in the 
first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution. These 10 amendments, more 
commonly known as the Bill of Rights, have served as the heart and soul 
of our legal tradition and as the foundation upon which we have built 
the most powerful democracy in the history of the world.
  But life is ``short and brutish,'' said Sir Thomas Hobbes, and if 
left to our devise, absolute right will lead to anarchy and chaos. 
Rousseau, Hobbes, and other thinkers of The Enlightenment saw the 
dangers of absolute rights, and proposed a social contract upon which 
to build a civil society where mutual obligations are imposed on all 
parties to the agreement.
  The balance between rights and responsibilities has served as a basis 
for an ethical context, but our society has disrupted this delicate 
balance between rights and responsibilities by accentuating rights, and 
it has contrived an anthropology detached from the moral conscience and 
has called it ``social progress.'' The result is a skewed social 
politic devoid of moral coherency.
  In his encyclical ``Caritas in Veritate,'' Pope Benedict XVI loudly 
proclaimed, ``Individual rights detached from a framework of duties can 
run wild.'' This is what we have seen in our society today.
  We provide rights to convicted murderers, but at the same time, 
sanction the slaughter of the innocent. We protest in rage at the 
slaying of dogs, but barely blink an eye at the murder of millions of 
innocent children. Traditional principles of social ethics, like 
transparency, honesty and responsibility, have been ignored or 
attenuated. As a result, our moral tenor does not respect the right to 
life and the dignity of a natural death.
  To protect individual rights, we have distorted the continuity of 
human development to portray the human fetus as something less than 
human and, therefore, as something that can be disposed of.
  What happened to personal responsibility--the responsibility to 
respect and nurture a human life who happens to be one's own child?
  Our children cry out for life, for justice, and until the U.S. 
Supreme Court can garner enough courage to overturn Roe v. Wade, it is 
up to the voices of the Christopher Smiths, of the Bart Stupaks, of the 
Jean Schmidts, of the Marsha Blackburns, and of others like myself to 
fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.
  Yes, health care reform is important, and I support responsible 
reform; but, Madam Speaker, as my friend Christopher Smith so 
eloquently articulated, abortion is wrong, and I can never support a 
reform bill that seeks to fund abortion with the tax dollars of 
hardworking Americans.
  Thank you.
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I want to thank my friend and colleague for 
his eloquent and very passionate statement. Knowing of his work on 
behalf of human rights and of his standing as a human rights advocate 
globally, thank you so very much, And, for that very powerful 
statement.
  I would like to yield to my good friend and colleague from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert), and want to, again, thank him for his leadership for so many 
years in the defense of life.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I so much appreciate my friend, Mr. Smith from New 
Jersey. Earlier, he was talking about RU-486, and I couldn't help but 
reflect.
  You know, we see people who are so concerned, properly, about our 
environment, about this wonderful garden

[[Page H12438]]

with which we've been blessed, and they fight against the use of 
chemicals that may affect this wonderful garden. They go to organic 
food stores so they can buy food that has never had chemicals used. 
They exercise. They go to health clubs, you know, to stay in good shape 
because they're so concerned about living clean, wholesome lives. Then 
they would think about taking a poison into their bodies, and they know 
at the time they take the poison that it's not good for them, for sure. 
They know that the very reason for taking it is to kill a life within.
  How could we get to this point that such a caring society--one that 
cares about the environment, that cares so much about the world around 
us and about the people around us, one that will walk up and just chew 
out anybody who is smoking because of what it does to their bodies and 
because of what the secondhand smoke does to them, and one that will 
protect any others around them from someone's smoking--would take a 
poison into their own bodies for the very purpose of killing? I mean 
how does that make sense? How did we get to this point?
  Then you realize, well, the reason you do that--take a poison to kill 
a child, a life within--is you're wanting to avoid the consequences of 
your conduct. That's the bottom line.
  Then you come to realize, if you live in a society that goes on, say, 
35 or 36 years where it becomes completely legal and acceptable to even 
poison or to kill or to decapitate for the sole purpose of avoiding the 
consequences of what we do, then you get to a point where people would 
want to avoid any tough decisions, any consequences. So you would get 
to the point where we are today where, perhaps, 40 percent or so would 
be willing to say, You know what? I'm willing to give up my freedoms 
just so I don't have to worry about consequences anymore. I'm going to 
give up my liberties, give up my freedoms so that my government will 
take care of all of my health care decisions from now on.

                              {time}  1930

  Isn't that wonderful. The government will make our health care 
decisions. They'll decide which things will be funded and which things 
will not, and I won't have to think about it anymore. I won't have to 
worry about it anymore. Just like when I got involved when I shouldn't 
have and the consequence was a life within me. I didn't have to worry 
about them because I could just kill that life with no consequences.
  There is a woman named Abby Johnson who's self-described as 
``extremely pro-choice,'' who said she knew it was time to quit in 
September when she watched an unborn child ``crumble'' as the baby was 
vacuumed, dismembered, and destroyed.
  I appreciate my friend Chris Smith's bringing this to my attention. 
Abby Johnson is from Texas. She said, ``The clinic was pushing 
employees to strive for abortion quotas to boost profits.'' In former 
clinic director Abby Johnson's words, ``There are definitely client 
goals. We'd have a goal for every month for abortion clients.'' The 
article continued, ``The Bryan Texas Planned Parenthood clinic expanded 
access to abortion to increase earnings.'' They reported that Johnson 
said, `` `One of the ways they were able to up the number of patients 
they saw was they started doing the RU-486 chemical abortions all 
throughout the week.' ''
  Yes, that's the ticket. Just give people poison and let them not only 
kill a life, but poison their own systems. People that wouldn't dream 
of smoking, it's okay, take this poison, can kill a life, and hurt 
yourself.
  Well, World Net Daily did an article and they explained that ``RU-486 
chemical abortions kill the lining of the uterus, cutting off oxygen 
and nutrients, resulting in the death of an unborn baby.''
  Just like Chris Smith was talking about, you're starving a child.
  Johnson said the chemical abortion cost the same as an early first-
trimester abortion: between $505 and $695 for each procedure. And 
Johnson's words were ``Abortion is the most lucrative part of Planned 
Parenthood's operations . . . they really wanted to increase the number 
of abortions so they could increase their income.''
  Folks, it is wrong. And if you didn't believe abortion was going to 
get funds under this bill, then you ought to believe it when you read 
the bill. You go to the trouble to read the bill. And when the subtitle 
is, and this is Page 110, ``Abortions for which Public Funding is 
Allowed'' and then read through there, gee, public funding must be 
allowed for abortion because it's in the bill if people will bother to 
read it.
  But we come back to this: We're living in a time when we have got to 
come back to educating our children that conduct has consequences. And 
when you make them believe for 35 years that their conduct has no 
consequences, then you get to the point where we are today. You have a 
Republican administration running up the deficit and then you have a 
Democratic administration raising it exponentially because there are no 
consequences to our conduct. We can break the Nation but we won't go 
broke. We can, in the face of terrible economic conditions, run up the 
deficit even more and have no consequences because we know, going back 
to Roe versus Wade, we have learned in this country you don't have to 
have consequences to conduct.
  We have got to come back to sanity while we have still got a country 
because we are in this country not because of what we did, what we 
deserve, but because people who came before us sacrificed, because they 
knew there were consequences to conduct. And we've got all we have 
today because of them. And the only way we will ever show we deserve 
what we have is if we can pass on a country with freedom and liberty, 
where, yes, there are consequences to conduct to those who come after 
us. And if we don't turn this thing around, they're not going to get 
the gift we were given.
  I thank my friend from New Jersey for taking this hour and 
concentrating his time on such a critical issue.
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I thank Mr. Gohmert for his, again, very 
eloquent statement and for his logic, which is so important and 
sometimes lacking in this august body.
  Let me also point out that we have a man who is going to speak next, 
Mark Souder. Truth in legislating is not a forgotten art, and when 
people say, as you pointed out, Mr. Gohmert, that the abortion funding 
in both the public option and in the program that establishes 
affordability credits couldn't be more clear, there's no ambiguity 
about it. There is some language that is very, very deceiving that 
leads people to think it's not in there. And then people say it. The 
President of the United States suggested that funding for abortion is 
not in his plan. And, frankly, assuming he was misled by perhaps staff, 
nothing could be further from the truth.
  I would like to yield to a man who offered airtight pro-life language 
in the committee on which he serves, Education and Labor Committee, to 
speak, Mr. Souder.
  Mr. SOUDER. I thank my friend from New Jersey for yielding.
  Before I get into a couple of specifics with that, this isn't the 
bill. This is the bill. Originally we had a bill with about 1,200. It 
was like this. Now it's gone to 1,900. And I want to make it clear that 
I definitely oppose this abortion funding in this bill, but this is an 
unconstitutional attack on capitalism, our freedoms, our health care. 
And even if they fix the abortion, this bill is an atrocity.
  But in addition to being a generally bad bill, it's a specifically 
bad bill in the protection of human life. I've worked with this issue 
for much of my life. Actually even before the Supreme Court decision on 
abortion, I was concerned about what California and New York had done. 
When I was a grad student at the University of Notre Dame, they did the 
original decision on Roe v. Wade, and we formed within 48 hours the 
student coalition to support a constitutional amendment. I've spent 
much of my life doing that.
  We now have our first grandchildren. And when you have grandchildren 
and your own children, you cannot possibly not want to defend that 
life.
  I worked with my friend and colleague from New Jersey. We did a 
hearing in my subcommittee when I was Chair on RU-486, the only hearing 
that was ever held here.
  It's not only a danger to the baby where they die, and it's a certain 
death to the baby, but it's a death threat to the mother. And they 
deliberately covered up these stats. We held a hearing

[[Page H12439]]

showing that RU-486 was supposed to be the safe thing, the way to do it 
behind doors; then you're not cutting up the baby and having to take 
the pieces out. You're not burning the skin off the baby. You're not 
exploding the baby into pieces. It's supposed to be more humane. It 
kills the baby. It destroys it at its early stages.
  But this they don't report. They don't separate out the facts. We had 
over a hundred that even years ago were near-death experiences, a 
number of deaths. We pull drugs off the market if they're risky. We 
document this. And all of a sudden, they're on the nonscientist side. 
They don't want to see the science on RU-486. On top of that it appears 
they're prescribing it even outside of FDA guidelines. And by the time 
that the mothers learn they're pregnant, by the time they go into 
Planned Parenthood, even RU-486 says it's unsafe to the mother after a 
certain date, and they're getting away with this at Planned Parenthood.

  Some say there's no abortion in the bill. Let me ask you, from 
personal experience, then why did Planned Parenthood fund ads against 
me after I offered the two amendments? They funded ads in my district 
in August, along with ACORN and the government unions, to try to ``make 
an example,'' was their words, for my offering two amendments in the Ed 
and Labor Committee to make it clear that it didn't fund abortion. Why 
were those amendments defeated?
  Well, part of the frustration of the general public with a bill like 
this, and you've heard different parts, but in the section on abortion 
services, I love the section before: ``Nothing in this act shall be 
construed as preventing the public health insurance option from 
providing for or prohibiting coverage of services described in (4)(A). 
``
  Well, what's (4)(A)?
  (4)(A) says, ``The services described in this subparagraph are 
abortions for which the expenditure of Federal funds appropriated for 
the Department of Health and Human Services is not permitted.''
  Excuse me? It says that it's prohibited, but the thing before says 
nothing in the next section applies. What kind of double-talk is this? 
I just do not understand. Do they think that with all the information 
systems today, with the posting of this, with all of us out there that 
somebody isn't going to read this? I mean how stupid.
  ``Nothing in this act shall be construed as preventing the public 
health insurance option from providing for or prohibiting coverage of 
services described in (4)(A).''
  (4)(A) says, right off the bat, ``The services described in this 
subparagraph are abortions for which the expenditure of Federal funds 
appropriated for the Department of Health and Human Services is not 
permitted.'' A, reverse A, and you think we're going to buy that?
  Furthermore, the Capps amendment, which is what this is basically 
trying to do, is trying to bypass the Hyde that doesn't cover elective 
abortion. They say this bill will put a Planned Parenthood clinic in 
every county in the United States, that it mandates multiple types of 
things in the public health option.
  Congressman Andrews very eloquently responded to my amendment and 
said if there's a public option, there has to be public payment of 
abortion. He said if it's a constitutional right, you have a 
constitutional right to have it paid for.
  I have a constitutional right to have a Shelby Cobra and I'm hoping 
to get one soon from the government.
  Just because it's a constitutional right does not mean you have a 
constitutional right to have it paid for, but that's the language 
behind this.
  Then they came up this week with the so-called Ellsworth compromise, 
a friend of mine from Indiana. This Ellsworth language, however, merely 
channels the funding through another entity. This is like saying, well, 
if SBA gives you a direct loan, it's a government loan, but if the SBA 
runs through a bank and you get it through the bank, well, that's not 
an SBA loan, that's a bank loan. Now, the government put all the money 
in, the guarantee. The government's standing behind it. It's an SBA 
loan. But it's not really an SBA loan because now we're going through a 
fig leaf.
  The American people are getting sick of the misleading nature and the 
double-talking of Congress. You have double-talk straight in the bill. 
Then you have another compromise that double-talks the double-talk. And 
they wonder why the confidence in government is down? They wonder why 
people don't trust American politicians as much anymore and American 
political leaders?
  There is a fix for this. There was a fix in committee. There's a fix 
on the floor. But if we come out with this type of thing and people who 
claim they're pro-life vote for this, hold them accountable.
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Thank you, Mr. Souder. And I do want to 
thank you again for offering that amendment and for that very 
illuminating and incisive hearing on RU-486.
  Again, we know that the trials that led to approval by the FDA, when 
Kessler was the head of the FDA under President Clinton, he on bended 
knee asked the company that manufactures RU-486 to bring it here. Sham 
trials were conducted where women who were seriously hurt were not 
reported. And we know for a fact, women are actually dying from RU-486. 
Probably because they had the best reporting of any other State, those 
women have surfaced in California from those deaths attributable to RU-
486. And it's baby pesticide that has serious consequences for women, 
including death.
  Again, no pharmaceutical company in America would take up RU-486, the 
abortion drug, simply because it was so dangerous. So they found the 
Population Council Company. Try suing them when you have egregious harm 
done to a woman or a death, a fatality. It's an organization. It's not 
like Merck or some other because all of them took a pass because it is 
so dangerous.
  And you held the only hearing, as you so well pointed out, and I 
commend the gentleman for them.
  I would like to yield to Mr. Fortenberry, a good friend and great 
champion of human rights as well.
  Mr. FORTENBERRY. I thank my colleague Mr. Smith from New Jersey, whom 
I learned a great deal from primarily about being passionate for those 
who are least among us, for being passionate in the belief that women 
deserve better than abortion. So I thank you for your leadership, sir.
  I would like to point out what is becoming increasingly clear, Madam 
Speaker, that the health care plan under consideration would authorize 
Federal funding for elective abortion, even though the majority of 
Americans do not want their government funding that procedure.
  Several amendments, as has been discussed, introduced in the 
committees of jurisdiction to make sure abortion funding was explicitly 
excluded from the bill all failed. Now it is reported that there is a 
so-called abortion funding compromise that I fear is put in place to 
draw the support of pro-life House Members who otherwise, in good 
conscience, would not vote for this particular bill.

                              {time}  1945

  This move should not mislead the American people. However clearly, 
cleverly worded the proposal might be, this plan would authorize a 
government-run option to fund elective abortion and subsidize private 
plans that cover elected abortion. This language creates a smokescreen 
by appearing to offer a restriction on the use of Federal funds for 
abortion while leaving in place the key legal authority which says, 
``Nothing in the act'' should be interpreted to ``prevent the public 
health insurance option from providing for coverage of elective 
abortion.''
  The abortion language requires the public option to hire contractors 
to ensure that money paid into the government option could potentially 
be used to pay for elective abortions. For example, Medicare contracts 
with private business to handle claims, but no one in their right mind 
would say that Medicare payments are private payments. They're 
government payments. So this new compromise language is a hoax.
  So, Madam Speaker, I don't believe my colleagues should be misled. I 
also believe that we should have the opportunity for more dialogue, 
debate, and consideration of potential amendments that could actually 
strengthen the opportunity for good health care reform

[[Page H12440]]

in this country. I would personally like to offer an amendment that 
broadens a long-held American tradition that we call freedom of 
conscience. I would like to simply read a part of the amendment that I 
will potentially offer. It says, The Federal Government and any State 
or local government or health care entity that receives Federal health 
assistance shall not subject a health care entity to discrimination on 
the basis that the entity does not perform, participate in, or cover 
specific surgical or medical procedures or services or prescribe 
specific pharmaceuticals in violation of the moral or ethical or 
religious beliefs of such entities.
  This amendment goes on and actually protects the freedom of 
conscience of those who are actually in the health insurance coverage 
business by saying that the Federal Government, any State or local 
government that receives Federal health assistance shall not prevent 
the development, marketing, or offering of health insurance coverage or 
a health benefit plan which does not cover specific surgical or medical 
procedures or services or specific pharmaceuticals to which the issuer 
of the coverage or sponsor of the plan has an objection of conscience 
that is clearly articulated in its corporate or organizational policy.
  So, Madam Speaker, here is the issue. We should be allowed to amend 
this bill. We should be trying to work together to strengthen health 
care for all Americans by improving health care outcomes, reducing 
costs, and protecting our most vulnerable. The most vulnerable include 
people who find themselves in very difficult circumstances, those who 
call upon us--maybe not verbally because they're inside the womb, but 
those who are the least among us that need our protection and help.
  So, with that, I yield back to my colleague Chris Smith.
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I would like to yield to my good friend and 
colleague Dr. Roe, an OB/GYN who knows so much about this and has been 
a leader in this Congress on all life-related issues as well as other 
things.
  Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New 
Jersey. I am going to go back many years ago in my life to a time when 
I was a young physician trying to decide what I was going to be in 
life. I decided I was going to be an internist, which is a noble thing 
to do. But I realized one day when I was in the hospital that what I 
really had a passion for were for babies and children and delivering 
babies, and it was fun. And of the almost 5,000 babies I delivered, 
they were fun. I had a wonderful time doing it, bringing life onto this 
planet. The group I belong to in a small town in Tennessee, Johnson 
City, Tennessee, has delivered almost 25,000 babies since I joined the 
group. We're a pro-life group.
  I think back to the children I have delivered during the past 30 
years, and these young people have become musicians and attorneys and 
physicians and teachers and carpenters and pastors. I was at my college 
homecoming last week, and one of them was a 6-foot 7-inch, 300-pound 
football player. They become all kinds of things. To me, the thought of 
them not being here is heartwrenching and heartbreaking because you've 
snuffed out a life that could have otherwise been a Congressman, a 
teacher, anything.
  This bill that we're discussing should be a health care bill, and, 
distressingly, in my opinion, elective abortion is not health care. We 
should be doing, as the previous speaker said, everything we can to 
protect the unborn. Let me explain a little bit about that.
  When I first began practice, of the babies born before 32 weeks, half 
of them died. And we have used extraordinary means and technology. Now 
a child born at 32 weeks is a term baby, and I recall a child that we 
delivered at 24 weeks over 20 years ago, which even then would have 
almost been considered a miscarriage. This child got down to 14 ounces, 
that's how big, and that was over 20 years ago. That child is a fully 
grown adult today. If we had used the idea that this was, hey, an 
abortion or a miscarriage, that child would not be there with a mother 
and a father who are loving it and a family and a chance to have a 
family.
  We shouldn't disguise health care as abortion coverage. Madam 
Speaker, I think this is one of the most egregious things in this 
particular bill. There are a lot of things in this health care bill 
that are not related to health care, but this is one that should be 
done away with, and whether you are pro-life or you are pro-choice, the 
majority of people in this country don't want their tax dollars used 
for abortion. To me, it's a very emotional issue, a very personal 
issue, and I will continue to be a pro-life doctor until I'm not on 
this Earth.
  I yield back my time.
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. 
Roe) very much.
  I now yield to my good friend and colleague Mr. Jordan from Ohio.
  Mr. JORDAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, let me thank Representative Smith 
for his many years of leading the Pro-Life Caucus and fighting to 
protect the sanctity of human life. I especially want to thank him, 
along with Congressman Pitts and Congressman Stupak and a host of 
others, and you as well, Madam Speaker, for your efforts in working to 
get this language out of the bill which would take us to a point that 
would cross a line in this country that I believe is very, very scary.
  If you remember when the decision happened in 1973 and we started 
down this road, one of the arguments we heard from the pro-life 
community--and we, frankly, continue to hear--is the slippery slope 
argument, the fact that this slope is slippery, it is steep, and that 
if we begin to allow unborn life to be taken, it will lead to a whole 
host of things. Now, here we have a health care bill in front of us 
scheduled to be voted on this weekend, this Saturday, which would, in 
fact, permit taxpayer dollars, Federal dollars, government money to be 
used to end the life of an unborn child. That is just wrong. It is 
important that we tell the American people we do not want to go past 
this. The American people understand this. They do not want their tax 
dollars used in this way. I think it is critical that we just continue 
to fight.

  So again, I want to be brief tonight. I know we have a few more 
speakers in just the few minutes we have left, but it is so critical 
that we understand how sacred life is.
  There was a precedent here today in the Nation's Capital where 
thousands of people came. One of the things that concerned them--not 
just the price of this bill, not just other elements, not just a lack 
of empowerment for families and small business owners and taxpayers in 
this bill, but the fact that their tax dollars could, in fact, be used 
to end life, and they spoke out loud and clear.
  And one of the things that was said at that conference, we went back 
to the document that started it all--and I will finish with this. The 
document that started it all. I tell people, next to Scripture, the 
best words ever put on paper in the Declaration of Independence, where 
the folks who started this great country, this great experiment in 
freedom and liberty, they wrote these words: ``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.''
  We've all heard this before, but it's so interesting to go back to 
these fundamentals, to go back to these basic principles that started 
this grand place we call America. It's interesting the order the 
Founders placed the rights they chose to mention. Life, liberty, 
pursuit of happiness.
  Just ask yourself a question, Madam Speaker. Can you pursue 
happiness? Can you go after your goals, your dreams? Can you go after 
those things, pursue those things that have meaning and significance to 
you if you first don't have liberty, if you first don't have freedom? 
And do you ever truly have real liberty, true freedom if government 
doesn't protect your most fundamental right, the right to live? That's 
what's at stake here.
  We are on the verge of crossing a very dangerous line if we allow 
this health care bill with all its other problems, but the central 
focus in this bill of allowing taxpayer dollars, Federal money to be 
used to end the life of an unborn child. It's so critical that we stop 
this bill in general, but certainly to make sure that provision is not 
there and continue to be a country that respects the sanctity and 
sacredness of human life.

[[Page H12441]]

  So again, I want to commend the Chair of the Pro-Life Caucus for his 
many years in doing just that and fighting this good fight. God bless 
you.
  With that, I will yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Thank you for your kind words, but more 
importantly, for your leadership on the behalf of innocent unborn 
children and the wounded mothers. I know you work very hard with 
pregnancy care centers and believe passionately that we need to love 
and affirm both. It's not about one or the other. It's both. So I thank 
the gentleman from Ohio for his leadership and consistency.
  I would like to yield to my good friend and colleague Mr. King from 
Iowa.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for heading 
up this Special Order tonight and for taking the lead on life in this 
Congress for years and years. Maybe we could start to count that in 
decades, it's been such a persistent and relentless effort that has 
been made.
  As I listen to the dialogue here tonight and I see the pro-life 
leaders that are here in this Congress, the core of the pro-life people 
that are on my side of the aisle and the help we have of some of the 
pro-life people that are on the other side of the aisle come to a head 
here in this Congress this week with the very idea that Congress might 
pass a national health care act, a socialized medicine act that would 
have in it the kind of language that would compel pro-life, God-loving, 
God-fearing, unborn baby-loving and protecting Americans with a 
conscience to fund abortions, and this would be the complete component 
of a socialized medicine piece of legislation that wouldn't just be 
cradle to grave, it would be conception to grave. We have long held 
this standard in this Congress, with the Hyde Amendment, with the 
Mexico City policy, that it is immoral to impose the costs of abortion 
on the people who strongly believe in this--it is a majority of the 
American people that strongly believe that innocent, unborn human life 
are human beings too.
  I simply ask two questions, and I will raise these questions in a 
high school auditorium or anywhere across this land. Madam Speaker, I 
especially make this point to the young people in America. I tell them, 
You will have a profound moral question to answer, and it will be very 
soon that you need to come to this conclusion. And when you make moral 
decisions, they need to be very well grounded. They need to be grounded 
in the fundamental principles.
  The first question that young people need to ask is, is human life 
sacred in all of its forms? Do you believe in the sanctity of human 
life? I ask them to look at the person who sits next to them. Is that 
person on your right, is their life sacred? The person on your left, is 
their life sacred? They will say yes. Is your life sacred? And, Madam 
Speaker, they will say yes. It's almost universal in America that we 
believe our lives are sacred, each one.
  And the law in America doesn't differentiate between someone who is 
101 or someone that's 1, whether they have a century of life ahead of 
them or a century of life behind them. All human life has the same 
value under the law in the United States of America with equal 
protection under the law. That's the principle. That's the belief.
  The late father of Senator Casey from Pennsylvania, Bob Casey, the 
former Governor of Pennsylvania, made this statement that I had put on 
the wall in my office at home in Iowa, and it's been there for years. 
Bob Casey, Democrat, denied the ability to speak before the National 
Convention, but his statement on life, Madam Speaker, was this: Human 
life cannot be measured. It is the measure itself against which all 
other things are weighed. Life is sacred.
  Question number one, do you believe in the sanctity of human life? 
Answer, yes, we all believe that. Then the only other question we have 
to ask, in what instant does life begin? I pick the instant at 
conception. It's the only instance we have. If there was a moment 
before that, we should examine that. The instant of fertilization/
conception. Those two questions ask, do you believe in the sanctity of 
human life? Yes. Does it begin in any other instant other than that of 
conception? No. Therefore, life begins at the instant of conception.
  It's immoral to ask the American people--to compel the American 
people to fund abortion.

                              {time}  2000

  Yet that's what this Speaker is prepared to do and that's what we are 
prepared to oppose.
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I thank my good friend. That was a very wise 
and eloquent statement.
  I would like to yield to Mr. Burton of Indiana.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I won't give my normal 20-minute speech, but I would just like to say 
that Chris Smith has been a leader on the right-to-life issue as long 
as I have been in Congress. He and Henry Hyde were the stalwarts that 
were always fighting for the unborn, and I am very happy to lend my 
support to their efforts.
  I would just like to say that in addition to the language that's in 
the bill that's going to allow the taxpayer to pay for abortions, this 
bill is really an abomination. The bill that is going to be before us 
Saturday costs $2.25 million per word and the bill is over 2,000 pages 
long. It's going to cost $1.3 or $1.4 trillion and maybe more than 
that. It's an absolute disaster waiting to happen. It's going to cause 
rationing; it's going to cause seniors to lose Medicare Advantage; it's 
going to cost $500 billion out of Medicare and Medicare Advantage. This 
is a disaster.
  And when I hear the President say that the doctors want this, my 
wife's a doctor. He says the AMA wants it. Doctors across this country 
don't want it. He says that the seniors want it because of AARP. 
Seniors don't want it. AARP is getting 61 percent of their money from 
kickbacks from insurance companies and commissions, and they are going 
to get more if Medicare Advantage goes down the tubes because they will 
sell more Medigap insurance.
  There are a lot of problems with this bill, but one of the most 
important things to me and to Chris and all those who are here tonight 
is the right-to-life issue. For that reason alone we should defeat 
this, but there are a lot of other problems with it as well.
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Burton, thank you very much for your 
leadership, longstanding, over these many decades. Thank you for being 
such a great defender of life.
  I would like to yield to Dr. Broun.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Thank you, Chris Smith. I greatly appreciate 
all your leadership on this.
  Madam Speaker, I'm a medical doctor. I've practiced medicine in 
Georgia for almost four decades. The very first bill I introduced in 
Congress, the first bill I will ever introduce in every Congress, as 
long as the Lord continues to send me up here, is one called the 
Sanctity of Human Life Act. It defines life beginning at fertilization.
  As a medical doctor, I know that that's when my life and all of our 
lives begin. Madam Speaker, God cannot continue to bless America while 
we are killing 4,000 babies every day through abortion. He just cannot 
and will not because He is a holy, righteous God.
  He tells us in Jeremiah that He knows us before we are ever knit 
together in our mother's womb. We have to stop abortion. We have to 
stop this bill that is going to continue to fund abortions with 
taxpayers' dollars. The future of our America depends upon it. Right to 
life is absolutely the central part of liberty and freedom in America.
  Madam Speaker, we cannot lose that right.
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Dr. Phil Gingrey.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding.
  We were on the floor last night and a gentleman on the Democratic 
side on the part of the majority in their hour, Mr. Grayson, talked 
about the number of lives that were lost or are being lost in every 
congressional district across this country because of the lack of 
health insurance.
  Last night I asked the gentleman to yield to a friendly question, and 
my question was going to be, Representative, are you pro-life or pro-
choice on the abortion issue? The gentleman chose not to yield to me. I 
don't really know the answer to that question to this day.
  But 4,000 babies are losing their lives every day. I hope the 
gentleman is pro-life, because he said, Stand for life.

[[Page H12442]]



                          ____________________