[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 48 (Thursday, April 11, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H1933-H1939]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REGARDING NATIONAL MEDIA COVERAGE OF PHILADELPHIA MURDER TRIAL
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pittenger). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr.
Smith) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority
leader.
General Leave
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that
all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend
their remarks on the subject of my Special Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from New Jersey?
There was no objection.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, will the decades-long national
news media cover-up of the brutality and the violence of abortion
methods ever end?
Will Americans ever be told of the horrifying details as to how and
how often abortionists dismember, decapitate, and chemically poison
innocent babies?
Will Americans ever be informed by a conscientious, unbiased national
news media that in the past 40 years over 55 million child victims have
been brutally killed by abortion, a staggering loss of children's lives
that equates to the entire population of England, and that many women
have been hurt physically, emotionally, and psychologically? And
according to the Center for Disease Control--and this is a very
conservative estimate from CDC--over 400 women have actually died from
legal abortions.
Will Americans ever be told that of the 55 million children, Planned
Parenthood alone claims responsibility for destroying 6 million babies
and that just 2 weeks ago a Planned Parenthood leader in Florida
testified at a legislative hearing at a State initiative to protect
born-alive infants that even when a child survives an abortion, the
decision to assist or kill the born-alive infant should be ``up to the
woman, her family and her physician''? In other words, if a child
intended to be aborted survives the assault, the choice to kill
remains--so-called ``after-birth abortion.''
{time} 1430
Isn't that extreme child abuse?
Murdering newborns in the abortion clinic, it seems to me, is
indistinguishable from any other child predator wielding a knife or a
gun. Why isn't the child also seen as a patient in need of medical
care, warmth, nutrition, and--dare I say--love?
Now another national media coverup--in this case, even when a Jeffrey
Dahmer-like murder trial of an abortionist named Kermit Gosnell, who
ran the benign-sounding Women's Medical Society unfolds in a
Philadelphia courtroom, replete with shocking testimony of beheadings,
unfathomable abuse, death, and body parts in jars. To this day, the
national news media remains uninterested, woefully indifferent--AWOL.
Why the censorship? Why does Gosnell's house of horrors--his trial--
fail to this day to attract any serious and meaningful national news
reporting?
Dr. Kermit Gosnell is on trial for eight counts of murder. One count
is for the death of a woman, a victim who
[[Page H1934]]
died during an abortion in his clinic. Seven counts are for babies who
survived their abortions and were born alive but then killed by
severing their spinal cords with a pair of scissors.
In the words of the grand jury report: ``Gosnell had a simple
solution for unwanted babies--he killed them.'' He didn't call it that.
He called it ``ensuring fetal demise''--a nice euphemism. The way he
ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors in the back of the baby's
neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that ``snipping.'' Over the
years, according to the grand jury report, there were hundreds of
snippings.
Indeed, the national news media has not only taken a pass and looked
the other way, but their stunning indifference has done a grave
disservice to Gosnell's victims: the woman killed, other women injured,
and children slaughtered by Gosnell. Because of the national news
media's indefensible silence and because of their failure to report,
other women and children at other abortion mills might also be at risk.
The grand jury report, again in January of 2011, pointedly pointed
out and noted that an absence of press coverage and gross negligence by
the health department in Pennsylvania enabled Gosnell to show a
``contemptuous disregard for the health, safety, and dignity of his
patients that continued for 40 years.''
Right from the beginning of Roe v. Wade, he was overlooked by a media
that was disinterested. Some media commentators, however, are beginning
to take note of the national news media blackout and the bias that
undergirds and is inherent in that blackout.
The title of an editorial yesterday in the Investors Business Daily
was ``Newtown in the Clinic: The Media Ignore the Gosnell Trial.'' It
begins in part:
Media bias: A basketball coach who shoves and curses at his
players merits constant coverage by a media also transfixed
by Newtown; but a Philadelphia doctor on trial for murdering
a woman and seven babies? It's ignored.
Those who get their news from the three major networks have
probably not heard of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, now on trial in
Philadelphia, charged with seven counts of first-degree
murder and one count of third-degree murder for killing seven
babies who survived abortions and a woman who died after a
botched painkiller injection.
The editorial points out that, according to the Media Research
Center, in 1 week, Rice--who is the coach from Rutgers--received 41
minutes, 26 seconds on ABC, CBS, and NBC in 36 separate news stories.
Gosnell received zero coverage.
The editorial points out:
If Dr. Gosnell had walked into a nursery and shot seven
infants with an AR-15, it would be national news and the
subject of Presidential hand-wringing.
In today's edition of USA Today, columnist Kirsten Powers writes:
Infant beheadings, severed baby feet in jars, a child
screaming after it was delivered during an abortion
procedure. Haven't heard about those sickening accusations?
It's not your fault. Since the murder trial of Pennsylvania
abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell began March 18, there has been
precious little coverage of the case that should be on every
news show and front page.
She goes on to write in her column:
A LexisNexis search shows none of the news shows on the
three major national television networks has mentioned the
Gosnell trial in the last 3 months. The exception is when
Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan hijacked a segment
on ``Meet the Press.''
Again, I ask my colleagues, and I ask the news media: Why the
blackout?
Will America ever be told the brutality of abortion and the violence
that is commonplace inside the abortion industry; or will the media,
the national media especially, continue to censor and censor and, in
this case, censor a trial--a trial of the century--that exposes all of
the all too inconvenient truth: that not only are unborn children
destroyed in these killing centers by being decapitated and dismembered
but that even babies who survive the abortions can't escape the deadly
hand of these child predators?
I would like to yield to my good friend and colleague, Vicky
Hartzler.
Mrs. HARTZLER. Thank you so much. I appreciate this opportunity to
share today, as we look at the national media coverup of this very,
very horrific act.
As we gather today to bring awareness to the trial of Kermit Gosnell
and to the horrific actions he has been charged with, we remember the
many who were murdered at the Women's Medical Society clinic and denied
the chance to be our siblings, playmates, our friends, our peers. We
mourn their losses, and we mourn the deep pain and confusion that
abortion has inflicted upon women, men, and their families.
This trial provides revealing insights into the abortion industry,
and it specifically highlights the reality that abortion involves
taking a human life. These killings expose the very gruesome nature of
what happens in abortion clinics all across this country where over 1.2
million unborn children die in abortions every year.
As a legislator, I will continue to speak in defense of the most
basic human right--life. I will continue to support legislation that
would stop the Federal funding for abortion providers, and I will
continue to champion the inherent human dignity of every life born and
unborn.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I thank my good friend and colleague Mrs.
Hartzler for her very eloquent statement, for her championing the
rights of the unborn and their mothers, and for joining us in this
Special Order today.
I'd like to now yield to a medical doctor who has been the leader on
conscience rights in the House of Representatives, in the Congress, Dr.
Fleming.
Mr. FLEMING. I certainly want to thank my good friend from New Jersey
for all the great work that you've done on this and the work you
continue to do.
I have to say, Mr. Speaker, that just hearing about this trial--and
quite frankly, I haven't heard about it on TV. If I weren't informed
about it in leading up to this Special Order, I wouldn't know about the
Gosnell trial--one in which, I think, it is really sickening just to
hear the facts.
It's interesting. This country has reached a point in which we have
focused so much on the humane treatment of animals--that is, to treat
animals like humans. Then that leaves the question: Why do we not treat
people like people? Why don't we treat humans humanely? I think that is
an important question. What do people say who themselves have survived
abortion?
I was at a meeting several months ago, and I met two fantastic
mothers, mothers of children today. As to one of them, her mom, while
she was still pregnant with her, attempted to have an abortion, but for
whatever reason, she never could get around to it. She couldn't get it
lined up or whatever, and eventually, she just ended up not having the
abortion. Of course, this beautiful lady was eventually born, and now
she has grown up to be an adult, and is very productive and very
beautiful and herself has children. Of course, if you asked her, Well,
what do you think about your mother's attempt to have an abortion of
you while you were still in the womb? she would say--speaking, I think,
for millions of unborn today and unborn in the past--Let me live. Give
me an opportunity--I, the innocent unborn--to live. Give me a chance to
live in society.
{time} 1440
I met another beautiful lady at this meeting. Her mother, while still
pregnant with her, late term, actually attempted to have a saline
abortion. It was a botched abortion. It didn't work. By that I mean she
was born alive and remained alive. And, fortunately for her, the health
care workers decided to go ahead and revive and resuscitate her. And,
of course, we know that saline abortions, if you have a child that
survives, it scalds the skin. It creates injury to that baby. But she
was treated, and she grew up to be a beautiful woman who married and
who had children. If you asked her today, she would tell you she speaks
for the millions of the unborn, both in the past and those who are
killed in the womb today: Yes, let me live. Give me a chance to live.
Well, what about the question of infanticide? That's really what
we're talking about in the Gosnell case. These babies, for whatever
reason, he certainly wasn't a good enough doctor to accomplish the
abortion while the babies were still in the womb, and then has to go on
and do something I think most Americans would consider murder, and that
is infanticide. In most
[[Page H1935]]
places, perhaps all places in America today, infanticide is murder.
But the question is: Do you realize there are two bioethicists in
Australia who have recently proposed a concept called ``post-delivery
abortion?'' Of course, we know that to be infanticide. Once the baby is
born, if you kill the baby, that's infanticide. But they want to do a
little wordsmithing and call it something else--post-delivery abortion.
What they mean is this: if the baby is born and there's something about
the baby that you're dissatisfied with, maybe it has an abnormality of
some sort, maybe it's going to cost some money for a heart deformity or
a facial deformity, maybe it's born with a genetic defect, that you
should have, as a mother, the option of killing that baby even outside
of the womb. There has even been a hint that perhaps taking a baby's
life, even up to the age of conscious life, which can be, I don't know,
a year or even more, would be still incongruent with the concept of
post-delivery abortion.
So you see, Mr. Speaker, this is a slippery slope. Once you get past
the fact that life begins at conception, and of course with today's
technology, infants born as early as age 22 weeks, certainly 24 weeks,
often survive at a time when they couldn't in the past. This has become
an extremely slippery slope to the point where there are many out there
who would actually turn their backs on life even after the point of
delivery.
Well, Mr. Speaker, what about the lives of the women themselves? I'm
a physician, and I've seen women after they've had an abortion. I can
even think of a couple of cases in my practice when of course I would
never send a lady for an abortion, but I was forced to treat a lady
after an abortion because she was treated by an itinerant physician who
comes into town, does a bunch of abortions, leaves town, and says if
you have any complications, go see your family doctor. Well, of course,
that is sickening for me. That means I am involuntarily participating,
at least tacitly, in treating a lady who has had complications from an
abortion.
This really goes to show you to the point with Dr. Gosnell just how
unfeeling and inhumane the whole consideration is.
But what drives people to do this? Well, we know if you look at
studies, it's about money. It's all about money, Mr. Speaker. They make
millions of dollars. I think in the case of Dr. Gosnell, he became a
multimillionaire because of all of the many abortions he provided over
the years.
But, again, back to the women. What happens to the women who have
abortions? Well, these are some things that we know. Once a woman has
an abortion, her chance of having a future miscarriage goes up. And so
now we're talking about miscarriages, stillborn, and the issue of
infertility. Rate of suicides, they're higher in women who have had
abortions. What about the rate of other complications, rates of
depression and other things? We know they're all higher. The outcomes
in the future lives of young women, and even not-so-young women who
undergo abortions, Mr. Speaker, are really not very positive. So why
would we encourage this? And certainly we know that a woman who gets an
abortion a first time is far more likely to get a second and a third
abortion, and oftentimes it really becomes a form of birth control.
So, in summary, Mr. Speaker, I stand up with my colleagues today to
speak out against the fact that not only are we seeing abortion
continue, the taking of innocent life through this Nation, but even the
mere consideration of ending the life of an infant after birth, either
because of a botched abortion or even deliberately just because there
is some dissatisfaction with the outcome. I think is really horrible
and something we should be ashamed of. Certainly, Mr. Speaker, if we
can give consideration and humane treatment to animals, should we not
do this for our own as well?
So, again, I rise in support of my colleagues on this very important
issue. I do think that if we can't do it on a Federal level, we need to
move forward in our States, such as my own State of Louisiana, where we
have developed certain requirements, elevated requirements of
accountability for doctors who provide abortions so that they can't
just fly in and fly out and leave a mess. They have to have certain
credentials and maintain hospital privileges perhaps; create
limitations after so many weeks can an abortion actually be done. Let's
do away with late-term abortions, again, an abominable act. We know
through studies that the unborn feel pain at least as early as 20 weeks
gestation, and maybe earlier.
Certain States, such as Arkansas, recently passed laws against late-
term abortions. And, again, in my home State of Louisiana, we have a
cooling-off period where you have to think about this. Think one more
time, just think for 24 hours, maybe even pray about it: Is this
something I really want to go forward with, end the life of my progeny?
And certainly the requirement of an ultrasound, at least a requirement
of the option of seeing your baby before you terminate its poor life.
Once again, I thank my colleagues. It is certainly a privilege and an
honor to speak on what is, I think, one of the most important issues
that we have in America.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I thank you, Dr. Fleming, so much for your
leadership and for that very concise statement. And now I would like to
yield to my good friend and colleague, the gentleman from New Jersey
(Mr. Garrett).
Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for arranging today's
Special Order. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey also for his
leadership on this very important issue, not just today, not just
yesterday, but over years, year after year after year, coming to this
floor, speaking around our State, speaking around the Nation as well,
speaking for those who do not have a voice, speaking for the weak, the
unborn. We thank you for your leadership in this area. We recognize
that you have done a profound thing for this Nation, and we thank you
for that.
I, too, come from New Jersey; and tonight I would like to speak
briefly, and I will reference a woman who lived in New Jersey, who
lived in Bergen County, who actually lived in Tenafly, up in my neck of
the woods. And maybe some of you have heard her name before, and you
would if you've walked about this Capitol, because she is commemorated
in a sculpture located in the rotunda of this building, and I'm talking
about Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She was a suffragette. She was a women's
rights activist. She was someone who fought long and hard to ensure the
equality of women before the law in this country. And also she fought
for the important issue of the sanctity of life. Way back over 100
years ago in 1873, she wrote a letter to Julia Ward Howe, a prominent
abolitionist and also a suffragette, and in it she wrote the following:
When we consider that women are treated as property, it is
degrading to women that we should treat our own children as
property to be disposed of as we see fit.
{time} 1450
So she classified abortion as a form of infanticide.
Today, Mrs. Stanton, I believe, would be horrified. I believe she
would be disgusted, as my colleagues are as well, with what millions of
Americans are watching going on in Philadelphia right now.
Kermit Gosnell is on trial in a city that gave birth to America, in a
city that gave birth to the Declaration of Independence, a city that
gave birth to the idea, the promise of life and liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. He's there on trial for the callous murder of eight
Americans, one woman, she who died from a botched abortion, and seven
innocent, defenseless children who were born alive and healthy but then
were killed by the abortionist.
These are only the murders that Gosnell is being charged with. His
clinic, it is recorded, has carried out literally hundreds, thousands
of abortions over the years using the doctor's own gruesome techniques
on children, who were often over the Pennsylvania legal limit of 24
weeks.
Now, as was pointed out, news reports on the trial are nonexistent.
Reports of testimony in the grand jury are basically nonexistent in the
media. But if you dig down and you get a copy of the grand jury's
report, you see what we're talking about and how gruesome it is.
According to the grand jury's report, ``Gosnell had a simple
solution''--this
[[Page H1936]]
is from the grand jury's report. ``Gosnell had a simple solution for
unwanted babies; he killed them.'' He didn't call it that. He called
it, ensuring fetal demise. He called it, then, ``snipping.'' Over the
years there were literally hundreds of snippings. This we find from the
grand jury's report.
Snipping? This is not a medical procedure. This is murder, and we
should call it for what it is.
Where, then, is the protection of life? Where, then, is the
protection of liberty? Where is the protection of the pursuit of
happiness?
Where is the outrage at what is going on there? Where is the outrage
that nothing of this is being reported in any of the major newspapers
across this country, on any of the major radio stations, on any of the
major TV or cable channels across this country?
You have to dig, as I did, to find it in the back pages. The media
and the pro-abortion movement are more concerned about things like Rush
Limbaugh's comments on contraception, or ensuring that girls under 18,
kids, have easy access to the morning after pill than they are with
this trial, the gruesome acts in the trial, they allege, of Dr.
Gosnell, or for the 1.2 million unborn Americans who die in America
every year.
So, Mr. Speaker I join the rest of my colleagues tonight in
expressing my disgust with this case and the failure also, the disgust
also with the media to cover these actions.
Every child is precious. Every child is a gift. We must continue,
then, this fight to protect this most fundamental right for the unborn,
and each of us, the right to life. And we must also make sure that when
it is destroyed, that it is exposed.
Again, with that, I conclude, and I thank the gentleman from New
Jersey for his actions tonight.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I want to thank Mr. Garrett for his
eloquence, but also for his faithfulness in defending the powerless and
the people who need voices, unborn children and their mothers, all
those who are similarly situated, the vulnerable and the weak. He is
always there, and I want to thank you so much, Scott.
I'd like to now yield to the chairman of the Health Subcommittee for
the Energy and Commerce Committee for the House of Representatives, Joe
Pitts, and note that Congressman Pitts, Chairman Pitts, is the author
of the Abortion Control Act of 1980, the legislation that established,
within the framework of Roe v. Wade, a very aggressive attempt to
protect, to the maximum extent possible, pursuant to that onerous
decision by the Supreme Court, and it was upheld by the Supreme Court,
to do investigations of clinics and to just hold to a higher standard
so that, to the greatest extent possible, life would be protected.
Congressman Pitts has been leading the charge on life for his entire
career, both in the State legislature and in the U.S. House of
Representatives, so it is a distinct honor to yield to my good friend.
Mr. PITTS. Thank you, Congressman Smith, for your leadership on this
issue here in Congress, very, very wonderful, inspiring leadership to
all of us who've been engaged in this, on this issue for years in State
legislatures like Pennsylvania and across the other parts of the
country.
But U.S. Route 30 runs through the heart of my district, in Lancaster
County and Chester County, in Pennsylvania. You follow that road all
the way into Philadelphia, you'll pass a nondescript, triangle-shaped
brick building at 38th Street. And for years, Dr. Kermit Gosnell
operated a factory of death in this location, just across the street
from a church.
This week, Gosnell is on trial for multiple homicides that
demonstrate just how thin the line between abortion and murder is in
this country.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell spent years taking advantage of vulnerable women,
offering illegal and dangerous abortions in exchange for cash. He also
operated a pill mill, selling prescription drugs to anyone in the
neighborhood with enough cash.
He sold death to the poor, and he lived handsomely for years. State
authorities never darkened the door of what he called a ``clinic''
until a mother died of an overdose during one of Gosnell's procedures.
He used clinical terminology to pave over the fact that in many cases
he was killing a child who had already been born. While he is charged
with seven counts of murdering an infant and a single count of
murdering a mother, we don't really know how many children died after
they were born.
Just as he was careless with the lives of children, he was careless
with the lives of mothers, and he treated them in terrible conditions,
often sending them out of the clinic injured and still under the
influence of anesthesia.
We should always remember that abortion is the most violent form of
death known to humankind. And there are always two victims in every
abortion. One is the child, the unborn child. The other is the mother.
One is dead, one is wounded.
An abortion is violence against the unborn. It's also violence
against women.
But the facts of this case raise the disturbing question of just how
close legal abortion practices come to outright murder. Gosnell knew
that there was little real medical difference between killing the child
in-utero and killing them outside of the mother.
Like standard, legal abortion practice, he would use chemicals to
first poison the unborn child. And if he had waited until death to
remove their bodies, he would be within the law. Because he took the
children out of the mothers while they were still alive, he is guilty
of murder.
Gosnell only took a leap that certain intellectuals and so-called
medical ethicists have been talking about for decades. Just last year,
two researchers published a paper in the prestigious Journal of Medical
Ethics entitled ``After Birth Abortion.'' Their assertion was that a
fetus doesn't become a child until they are wanted.
Let us never say that these are unwanted children, not while there
are tens of thousands of married couples waiting to adopt, couples who
wait months or years to bring home a baby boy or a girl. Many Americans
even travel far abroad in order to adopt. In many cases, they go all
the way to China or Ethiopia.
Gosnell's victims, and the millions of other lives lost to abortion
are, by no means, unwanted.
The case of Dr. Gosnell is gruesome. The place that he ran was a
gruesome factory and disturbing, but only because it strips away the
clinical nature of most abortions.
{time} 1500
His carelessness exposed what the fetus actually was--a human that he
cruelly murdered. And yet the press will ignore, will remain silent on
what is happening in this very important trial in Philadelphia. We
ignore the tiniest human life at great peril because, as Gosnell
demonstrates, flippancy for life creeps from the infant to the adult.
We must protect all life, no matter how small or at what stage.
And so I commend Congressman Smith and my other colleagues who have
come to speak today about this important policy issue. It's about
people, it's about children, it's about women.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I want to thank Chairman Pitts for his very
eloquent statement. Even the grand jury report noted that if Mr. Pitts'
law had been followed faithfully, the whole Gosnell destruction of not
only women's lives but the death and murder of one woman and the
killing of these children might not have occurred.
I'd like to yield to Dr. Andy Harris, a Johns Hopkins physician and
also a Member of the U.S. House from Maryland.
Dr. Harris.
Mr. HARRIS. Thank you very much. I would like to thank the gentleman
from New Jersey for bringing this subject to the attention of the
American people because this is a subject that's not going away.
What we're talking about today, of course, is a trial going on in
Pennsylvania, little heard about in the press, but one that's very
significant. Because when it's coupled with what the gentleman from
Pennsylvania and the gentleman from Louisiana spoke about, the
overarching medical ethics question, it's something that we have to
come to deal with. Because, Mr. Speaker, it is true that apparently in
Dr. Gosnell's mind there was little difference between a late-term
abortion and killing a baby after birth. And make no mistake about it,
these children were killed. Because the trial
[[Page H1937]]
right now is for seven cases of murder on those newborns.
Interestingly, it was only discovered because of the death of the
mother. And to show how flippantly many States have dealt with the
issue of regulating clinics like that, we would never have known unless
this mother died.
In my home State of Maryland, two deaths have recently occurred; and
only as a result of those deaths has the Department of Health and
Mental Hygiene decided that, yes, maybe we actually should regulate
clinics where this kind of surgery is done. And, in fact, they have
closed four of those clinics until they can bring them up to standards
that we would consider modern medical practice.
But let's pay attention--because my specialty is anesthesiology--to
what was going on in that clinic in Pennsylvania. Dr. Gosnell hired a
surgical technician. This is someone he hired to clean instruments. He
had that person administer anesthesia to those poor women going to that
clinic thinking they were going to get good medical care. This is
someone whose training was in how to clean a metal instrument and now
administering life-threatening drugs. And, Mr. Speaker, we know they're
life threatening because the misuse of those drugs resulted in that
woman's death. In fact, three drugs administered--Demerol, a powerful
narcotic; Valium, a powerful sedative; and promethazine, another
sedative--administered by someone whose training was to clean medical
instruments. And that is what's considered acceptable practice in many
States in the country because many States choose not to regulate
clinics where these abortion procedures are done.
But let's make no mistake about it. It wasn't just the killing of the
mother that's at issue here. It's the grotesque procedure that was done
in that clinic by the doctor and the people he trained to end the lives
of those babies who were born alive. We might think this is a terrible
thing. In fact, that grand jury thought it was a terrible thing. They,
in fact, indicted on seven counts of murder. They called it ``murder.''
But the gentleman from Pennsylvania and the gentleman from Louisiana
bring up an article published just last year in the Journal of Medical
Ethics by professors from Italy and Australia. These are fairly
civilized countries. The title of the article is fascinating. If the
gentleman doesn't mind, I'm going to go through some of this because
America has to understand what this moral discussion going on worldwide
is. I will tell you I'm shocked because 10 years ago--I'm shocked now
that this article is published, and 10 years ago, it wouldn't even be
thinkable. The title is, ``After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby
Live?'' And it's about committing what this author calls after-birth
abortion, which is currently called euthanasia or murder, or
infanticide in our current speech. But these authors propose a new
term: after-birth abortion. We're going to make this sound better
because we know abortion is legal so we're just going to call this
after-birth abortion. What it is is justification for killing a child
after birth when no abortion was intended.
Mr. Speaker, this is just the next step to what Dr. Gosnell did. Dr.
Gosnell killed a child after an abortion was intended. We think that's
bad. A grand jury thought it was bad. There's seven indictments for
murder in Pennsylvania. These medical ethicists propose that even if it
wasn't an intentional abortion, that mother went and had her baby and
decided that her daughter just wasn't going to fit in with the family,
literally, and that it was okay to kill that baby. And if you don't
believe me, ladies and gentlemen, just go and Google it. Read the
article yourself. It's chilling.
Some people say, Well, maybe the child is born disabled or born with
some terrible illness or something that's very painful and maybe we're
just doing a good thing for the child. But the authors say these
include cases where the newborn is not disabled. And I'm going to read
from these word-for-word because I want to get this right and, Mr.
Speaker, I want America to understand what's at stake here.
They make the argument that the fact that a fetus or a newborn has
the potential to become a person who will have an acceptable life is no
reason for prohibiting an abortion, or in this case, killing that child
after birth. They argue that--and I'm going to quote:
When circumstances occur after birth such that they would
have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion
should be permissible.
Mr. Speaker, let me remind you that in the United States, sex-
selection abortion is legal in many States, in China. And if we don't
think this is a slippery slope, remember what's happened in China over
the past decade. They've decided under their one-child policy that if
you have a live birth of a second child, it's legal to kill that child
for the sole purpose of it being a second child. And, Mr. Speaker, as
we know, occasionally the girls were killed, if they were the first
child, knowing that you can only have one child and the family wanted a
boy. So in China it's gone past sex-selection abortion to sex-selection
infanticide. But that's exactly what this article speaks about.
This article, again, was written by professors from Italy and
Australia, published in a prestigious journal that ethically justifies
killing a child after birth because, well, Mr. Speaker, for any reason.
Because they argue that child has no right to grow up. And if you don't
believe me, they go on to say that this is not an actual person. It's a
potential person. It's not an actual person.
So they say if a potential person like a fetus or a newborn does not
become an actual person because you don't allow it to grow up like you
or I, then there is neither an actual nor a future person who can be
harmed--I'm not sure I understand that--which means there is no harm at
all. So killing the fetus or the child, there's no harm at all.
But they go on to say this, which is amazing and this is why people
have to understand how foreign a thought this is to many of us, ``So if
you ask one of us if we would have been harmed had our parents decided
to kill us when we were fetuses or newborns, our answer is no.''
{time} 1510
What, Mr. Speaker? They're suggesting that if someone came up to me
and said, would I have been harmed if my parents had decided to kill me
when I was a newborn, my answer should be no? How many people do they
really think you can go up to and ask, if your parents had killed you
as a newborn, would you have been harmed? Do they really think people
are ready to say, no, no harm, no foul; I wasn't a person, that's all
right, that's totally ethical.
They create an ethical framework completely consistent with abortion
policy throughout most of the United States, and that is, that a late-
term, third-trimester fetus has no rights as a person, and only merely
extend that logic to the period after birth. That's all they're doing.
So although this may sound grotesque and shocking that they suggest
that there is no moral problem with killing a newborn, it's merely an
ethical, logical extension of the way we have been treating fetuses
since 1973.
It gets worse. Because the gentleman from Pennsylvania suggested,
well, there are plenty of people who would adopt this child. They go on
to say that it's actually better in many cases to kill the child than
to put it up for adoption. This is stunning. The reason they say that
is that we need to consider the interests of the mother, who might
suffer psychological distress for giving her child up for adoption.
They suggest there would be no psychological distress for that woman to
have carried that child for 9 months, given birth to a normal baby,
decided they don't want it, and agree to have someone kill it? It's
stunning. It's striking.
Let me tell you, and I'll close on this, because we're shocked by
this. But let me tell you something, we can't argue with nature. We
can't argue with what nature tells us. It answers the question: Why in
the world is the younger generation more pro-life than my generation?
It comes up in poll after poll after poll. How in the world can that
be? We have an enlightened younger generation? Isn't it enlightened to
think about this ethical framework? How can this be?
Mr. Speaker, let me suggest how this can be. This is the first
generation where two things hold true: They fully
[[Page H1938]]
understand what makes a human a human because they learned genetics and
chromosomes, and they know that every single person is unique from
every other person ever, based on science.
There's one other thing they know, Mr. Speaker. This is the first
generation where they know that they could have been aborted legally.
The first generation where they actually answer those ethicist
questions: Would harm have been done to me if I would have been killed
as a fetus? Their answer, resoundingly--because that's why the polling
shows this--is they know the answer is yes. We are harming a human in
the decision to take its life. That is true whether it is at 3 months,
6 months, 8 months. Because they know that was them as an embryo and a
fetus at 3 months, and that was them at 6 months, and that was them at
9 months. And if they were in Philadelphia, in Dr. Gosnell's clinics,
that would have been them 1 minute after birth or 5 minutes after
birth. They know that under that construct of ethics by those
professors in Italy and Australia, published in Journal of Medical
Ethics, they're proposing that could have been them at 1 day, 1 week.
Because those professors actually go on to say we can't really set what
the deadline is for how long it's ethical. Mr. Speaker, that younger
generation is smarter than my generation on this issue.
I want to thank again the gentleman from New Jersey for bringing this
issue up. This is something that is so troubling, we have to come to
grips with this. We have to understand the slope we are on when we
neglect to treat every human being as one worthy of protection.
I thank the organizer of this Special Order.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Dr. Harris, thank you for that very
insightful--and I would say brilliant--defense of not just the unborn,
but the newly born, and your very logical argument as to how this is
already being extended in what is euphemistically called after-birth
abortion to those, like Dr. Gosnell's victims, who have been born and
then are killed.
I would point to my colleagues, before going to Mr. Stutzman, that
one of the clinic individuals who was actually killing these children--
this came out in testimony at the trial--said that when he heard the
child crying, it was like an alien.
Children cry when they're being killed--and in this case, a very
painful--as you pointed out, pain-capable children are at least 20
weeks gestational age. Many of these kids were 23, 24, 25, even higher.
As we've learned from the grand jury, as well as from these
proceedings, some of these children were as old as 30 weeks gestational
age--very, very large children, very mature children, but no different
than the child who just a few weeks and even months before, same child,
just a little more mature and, as you said, worthy of protection
always.
I'd like to yield to Mr. Stutzman.
Mr. STUTZMAN. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding, and
I appreciate his efforts to bring this particular matter to the
attention of the American people.
I also want to thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Harris), who
just spoke so eloquently and factually and knowledgeably about this
particular issue as a doctor.
My heart is torn, as I stand here on the floor of the U.S. House of
Representatives as we're discussing a matter that's happened right here
in our own country. I tell the gentleman from New Jersey that I was
just meeting with a doctor in my office within the last couple of hours
who worked in one of the neonatal clinics in northeastern Indiana. The
work and the technology, the ability and the effort that doctors in a
neonatal facility go through to save the life of a baby that is wanted
is amazing and is heart-touching. And to then come to this particular
matter and to hear the details of this tragic location in Philadelphia
that was performing abortions like this is just heart-wrenching.
Mr. Speaker, I would just share with this body that certain places
are permanent reminders that evil men will do evil things, whether it's
in Auschwitz's ovens, Cambodia's killing fields, and now a run-down
brick building on the corner of 38th and Lancaster in west
Philadelphia.
In that building--crawling with animals, reeking with urine, and
filled with blood-stained furniture--Kermit Gosnell was running a
slaughterhouse. On a regular basis, he used a pair of scissors to sever
the spinal cords of helpless babies who were born alive during illegal,
late-term abortions.
The loss of these lives should scar the conscience of civilized
people everywhere. This is not a discussion about abstract concepts
like choice. We are talking about brutal deaths of newborn children.
Mr. Speaker, Kermit Gosnell is a predator who must be publicly
exposed and openly denounced. That's why I come to the floor, to bring
attention to this case, that the American people are informed of it,
aware of it, and realizing the acts that are happening within our own
country.
I have no doubt that in this life or the next he will be held
accountable for his crimes. However, right here and right now we ought
to take a serious look at our culture's careless disregard of this
story in particular, and innocent life in general.
How is it that in our age of constant news not a single major news
outlet has devoted serious attention to the atrocities that weren't
committed halfway around the world but in west Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania?
{time} 1520
Has our national conscience been irreversibly seared by the deaths of
more than 1.2 million unborn children every year in this country. I
believe this is something that the media should be talking about. They
talk about so many other issues that affect our country, and rightly
so. But I believe this is one of those that should be discussed and
reported on by the media.
I've only seen a brief report on this within the last week. Mr.
Speaker, I am confident that one day the era of abortion on demand will
close and we will restore a lasting respect for life. However, until
that day comes, each of us must take up the cause of those who cannot
speak for themselves.
I thank Congressman Smith for his unwavering commitment and his
leadership and his efforts to protect life, and especially to bring
this particular matter to the attention of the American people, so that
we as a country will stand up and do the right thing for those who
cannot speak for themselves.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from
Indiana for that very extraordinary and eloquent speech, bringing to
the American people an inconvenient truth that needs to be exposed, and
for, again, reminding us all that the major news media--NBC, CBS, ABC--
have all had a blackout, there's been a coverup. If this was any other
trial of a horrific bloodletting, a house of horrors, it would be front
page, it would be the lead story, maybe second or third on some nights
on the major networks.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, to its credit, a newspaper that is not
pro-life editorially, and I know that because I've talked to them over
the many years, they, nevertheless, have deployed reporters who have
done a very, very good job in covering this trial. But that's pretty
much where it ends. And, again, the major networks ought to be there.
I would point out that the reason why this clinic in this house of
horrors was allowed to do much of what it has done is because of the
chilling effect that the proabortion side has had on inspections of
clinics where children are routinely slaughtered.
The grand jury itself said: ``The politics in question were not
antiabortion, but proabortion. With the change of administrations from
Governor Casey,'' a Democrat pro-lifer, ``to Governor Tom Ridge,'' a
proabortion Republican, ``officials concluded that inspections would be
putting a barrier up to women seeking abortions. Better to leave the
clinics to do as they please,'' went on the grand jury report, ``even
though, as Gosnell proved, that meant both women and babies would
pay.'' That is found on page 9.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to my good friend and colleague
from Pennsylvania (Mr. Rothfus) for as much time as he may consume.
Mr. ROTHFUS. Thank you.
``Troubling'' is the word for what we see happening in Philadelphia.
I think if you look at what this trial is about, about 20 years ago we
had a decision
[[Page H1939]]
from our Supreme Court that basically said:
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own
concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the
mystery of the human life.
I suggest that at the heart of Dr. Gosnell's trial is this
understanding on the part of Dr. Gosnell that he had the liberty to
define his own concept of existence and of meaning and of the universe.
But that's to be juxtaposed with what our Founders described as self-
evident truths, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain
unalienable rights, that among them are the right to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness.
That concept was enshrined in our Constitution, where our Fifth
Amendment provides that no person is to be deprived of life without due
process of law; and, again, our 14th Amendment adds that no State shall
deprive a person of life without due process of law.
As we watch this trial unfold in Philadelphia and continue to hear
the daily testimony of what's happening, I think it's appropriate that
we reflect on those words of the Founders and how far we've come from
those days.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I thank my friend for coming from his markup
to be with us here today.
There was a report in the Philadelphia Inquirer--again, just tell the
truth, just tell the story about what's happening in the trial--and
they report that this week an ex-employee of Gosnell talked about how
she perceived the brutal snipping of the spines of newborns still alive
after abortion.
``Did you know it was murder?'' Assistant District Attorney Joanne
Pescatore asked ex-clinic worker Lynda Williams, referring to the
clinic's practice of snipping the spines of babies born alive during
abortion procedures.
``No, I didn't,'' said Williams, 44.
She goes on to say that one of her duties was to retrieve fetuses
from women who would sometimes spontaneously abort in the waiting room
after getting large doses of drugs. ``One day,'' she testified, ``a
women expelled a second trimester fetus and it was moving.'' Williams
said she took a pair of scissors and snipped the spine as Gosnell
showed her. ``I did it once,'' she said, ``and I didn't do it again
because it gave me the creeps.''
Mr. Speaker, let me conclude. Dr. Andy Harris a few moments ago
talked about the bioethicists who had made statements that after-birth
abortion is justified because the newborn, or children who have been
out of the womb for even weeks, have the same moral stature--and that
is none--as an unborn child. Those two bioethicists say: ``The
devaluation of newborn babies is inextricably linked to the devaluation
of the unborn.'' They said: ``We propose that this practice of after-
birth abortion be called that, rather than infanticide, in order to
emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed''--that is to
say the baby--``is comparable to that of the fetus.''
Whether she will exist is exactly what our choice is all about. So
the choice to kill extended to the point of snipping the spines of
children who were born and struggling and gasping for breath and for
some kind of outreach of hands that would save that child, but it
wasn't there. That is now being prosecuted, as it ought to be, as
murder.
Our hope is that the blackout of this trial of Kermit Gosnell will
end. It is ongoing. It's occurring today. It's occurring every day. I
don't know how long it will take. But to NBC, CBS, and ABC and to the
major news media, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and others,
just tell the story. Keep your editorials on the editorial page--you
are absolutely entitled to that--but don't let that creep onto and
bleed onto the other pages. Just tell the story. And the indifference,
again, and the lack of coverage suggests a coverup.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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