[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 64 (Wednesday, May 8, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3239-S3240]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUESTS

  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 133 submitted earlier today. I 
further ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the 
preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be made and laid 
upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Reserving the right to object, I will have a request 
with another resolution momentarily, but I understand the resolution of 
my friend from Utah. I believe this problem is broader than the one 
cited in his resolution. In fact, looking to the conduct of the 
Philadelphia instance, I would prosecute that case to the fullest 
extent of the law. I think the conduct--or, more correctly, 
misconduct--in that instance was absolutely despicable and abhorrent.
  I am concerned about patient safety in a variety of areas. They may 
be a small fraction of the total number of health care cases in this 
country, but anytime, anywhere patients are endangered or threatened by 
criminal conduct or malpractice, people should be prosecuted and 
disciplined to the full extent of the law. These cases shock and 
horrify our sense of decency and we understand the responsibility of 
health care practitioners anywhere, anytime.
  My resolution, which I intend to offer after the Senator from Utah 
concludes his, will call upon our colleagues to condemn these actions 
in all health care settings, whether clinics, hospitals, nursing homes, 
or dental offices across the country.
  So with that, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, this week in Philadelphia, a jury is 
deliberating the case of Kermit Gosnell. That doctor has been charged 
and tried for some of the most gruesome atrocities ever encountered by 
the American justice system.
  As the grand jury opened its harrowing report:

       This case is about a doctor who killed babies and 
     endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and 
     illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third 
     trimester of pregnancy--and then murdered these newborns by 
     severing their spinal cords with scissors.

  Yet according to defense attorneys, Dr. Gosnell is not a monster, not 
a serial killer, not a predator of vulnerable mothers and their 
helpless children. He is just an abortionist.
  Mr. President, let me suspend my speech momentarily. I understand my 
friend, the Senator from Connecticut, wishes to make a motion.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I wish to offer the resolution that I 
and Senator Boxer, who is a long-time champion of better health care 
for the citizens of our country, and Senator Shaheen, expressing the 
sense of the Senate that these practices will not be tolerated in any 
setting, regardless of personal beliefs about the type of health care 
being offered.
  This resolution is broader than the resolution of the Senator from 
Utah. I understand and sympathize with the basic objectives which, as I 
understand it, are to improve health care generally and to make sure 
the kinds of abuses being prosecuted in Philadelphia will not occur 
anywhere in this country.
  I offer my resolution calling on the Senate to condemn such practices 
in all health care settings, be they clinics or hospitals, dental 
offices, anywhere in this country. They may be a small fraction and, 
hopefully, are a very small fraction, of the kinds of cases we would 
want to condemn. But we should condemn them wherever they occur, not 
just in one instance, not just singling out one case, but everywhere, 
anytime.
  I might add as a former U.S. attorney that while this case is before 
the jury, I think we need to be very careful about what we say in a 
public forum as respected as this one about the facts of that case and 
about potentially prejudging the result. My understanding is the jury 
has not yet come back. If the allegations are true--if the jury 
concludes they have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt--then the 
punishment should certainly be sufficiently severe and serious to fit 
those circumstances and well deserving of our condemnation. But equally 
deserving of our condemnation are any circumstances where health care 
patients are put in danger, where safety is in peril, where the 
consequences do damage, or threaten damage, to the recipients of health 
care. Whatever the kind of health care, whatever we may think of it 
personally in terms of the merits and the type of care provided, we 
ought to condemn it, and that is the purpose and sense of the 
resolution I am offering.
  So if I may, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the 
consideration of a Senate resolution expressing the sense of the Senate 
regarding all incidents of abusive, unsanitary, or illegal health care 
practices be condemned--the text is at the desk; and I ask that the 
resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to 
reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Reserving the right to object, as my friend, the Senator 
from Connecticut, is aware, we have only just received the language of 
this resolution in the last few minutes. Without having to read it 
closely, I am reluctant to grant consent at this time. But I will say I 
am heartened, and I think all Americans should be heartened, and the 
entire pro-life movement should be heartened by the clear implication 
that health regulations should be equitably applied and enforced on 
abortion clinics as they are on other health care facilities.

  Part of the reason we fear that Dr. Gosnell's clinic, if, in fact, 
the allegations are proven true, was not a rare outlier is that 
abortion clinics are generally held to the same safety standards as 
hospitals, ambulatory, surgical facilities, et cetera. So on that 
basis, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, if I may continue my remarks which I started 
a few moments ago.
  According to his defense attorneys, then, Dr. Gosnell is not a 
monster, not a serial killer, not a predator of helpless mothers and 
their children. He is just an abortionist. In this context, Dr. 
Gosnell's alleged crimes were just abortions, and his facility, the so-
called Women's Medical Society--reportedly strewn about with animal 
waste, infectious instruments, and fetal remains--was not, as the grand 
jury alleged, ``a baby charnel house.'' No, it was just a clinic.
  His staff of allegedly unqualified, untrained frauds were not 
coconspirators in the contract killing of newborns. No, they were just 
health care providers. And the failure of local health inspectors and 
political officials to investigate repeated claims of Dr. Gosnell's 
barbarism was just a bureaucratic oversight--perhaps--or perhaps, as 
the

[[Page S3240]]

panicked abortion industry would have us believe, Dr. Gosnell is an 
outlier, an outcast, nothing like the professional, competent, law-
abiding late-term abortion providers around the country. But then again 
perhaps not.
  Just a few weeks ago, a Planned Parenthood representative testified 
before the Florida State legislature and suggested that infants born 
alive during botched abortions might not be entitled to medical 
attention--in clear violation of Federal law, to say nothing of 
fundamental human rights and dignity. Even since then, undercover 
videos have caught late-term abortion providers telling pregnant 
mothers that even if their babies are accidentally born alive during 
the procedure, even if the law requires them to treat the newborn as a 
patient and citizen of the United States, and also telling them that 
even if the baby is born somewhere other than their clinic, they will 
see to it that the child does not survive.
  So is the case of Dr. Gosnell an outlier or is the legitimacy of the 
late-term abortion industry merely a lie? The American people deserve 
to know.
  Yesterday I introduced legislation to end the practice of late-term 
abortion in Washington, DC, after 20 weeks, the point at which science 
tells us unborn children can feel pain, in light of the chilling 
details coming in from Pennsylvania, Maryland, the District of 
Columbia, and various abortion clinics around the country that late-
term abortions on pain-capable, unborn children are an important issue 
we need to debate.
  Opinions will obviously be divided, as they always are on abortion-
related issues. But we owe it to the American people to see if we can 
find common ground to protect innocent women and innocent children.
  But there should be no division or controversy surrounding the sense-
of-the-Senate resolution I called up a few minutes ago. The resolution 
has the support of every Republican Senator, pro-life and pro-choice 
Members alike.
  The resolution expresses the sense of the Senate, affirming: The duty 
of the State and Federal Government agencies to protect women and 
children from violent criminals posing as health care providers; the 
equal human and constitutional rights of fully born infant children; 
the need to prevent and punish abusive, unsanitary, and illegal 
abortion practices.
  One of the newborns Dr. Gosnell is accused of murdering, ``Baby Boy 
A,'' was born alive--breathing and moving--to an underage girl almost 
30 weeks pregnant. Witnesses describe Gosnell severing the baby's 
spine, discarding the child in a shoebox, and joking that he was big 
enough ``to walk me to the bus stop.''
  Joking. Joking.
  A clinic employee estimated Baby Boy A's birth weight at about 6 
pounds, larger and heavier than two of my own children when they were 
born.
  If there are other Kermit Gosnells out there waging their own 
personal war on women, we need to know about it, and we need to stop 
them.
  I don't think I can make a stronger argument for this resolution than 
the one the grand jury in the Gosnell case made itself:

       Let us say right up front we realize this case will be used 
     by both sides of the abortion debate. We ourselves cover a 
     spectrum of personal beliefs about the morality of abortion. 
     For us as a criminal grand jury, however, the case is not 
     about that controversy; it is about disregard of the law and 
     disdain for the lives and health of mothers and infants. We 
     find common ground in exposing what happened here and in 
     recommending measures to prevent anything like this from ever 
     happening again.

  I hope the Senate too, whose Members cover a similar spectrum of 
views on abortion, can follow the grand jury's lead to find common 
ground in the pursuit of truth and justice for American women and 
children.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Again, Mr. President, I accept and sympathize with 
the goals of the resolution offered by my friend from Utah. What I am 
suggesting is a resolution that includes those criminals who may be 
posing as health care practitioners in one field of practice but 
extends the condemnation to all areas of practice.
  I hope Senator Lee, my friend from Utah, will share my outrage at 
reprehensible and illegal actions that occur, unfortunately and 
tragically, in other areas of practice. Let me mention a few.
  We ought to speak about the tragedy at the Pennsylvania clinic, where 
these incidents occurred, but we also should talk about the Oklahoma 
dentist who exposed as many as 7,000 patients to HIV and hepatitis B 
and C through unsanitary practices. Thousands of his patients are being 
tested to see if they have been infected. So far 60 of his patients 
have tested positive for these viruses. That is 60 people who trusted 
their dentist, a health care provider in a position of trust and 
responsibility, relying on him to respect and care for them safely and 
responsibly, and, instead they are now facing potentially life-
threatening diseases that are as abhorrent and despicable in the lack 
of responsibility and care as what happened in Pennsylvania. We ought 
to talk about that incident with the same outrage that we talk about 
what happened, allegedly, in Pennsylvania.
  We ought to speak about the health care practitioners at the 
Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada who exposed 40,000 patients to 
hepatitis C through unsanitary practices. These unsanitary practices 
went on for years, and that is why this clinic may have hurt as many as 
40,000 people. We are talking about 40,000 people, again, exposed to 
unnecessary danger because of the lack of trust and responsibility on 
the part of their health care provider.
  We also ought to talk about the nursing director at Kern Valley 
nursing home in California who inappropriately medicated patients using 
antipsychotic drugs for her own convenience, resulting in the death of 
at least one patient.
  We should be talking about the compounding pharmacies in 
Massachusetts and elsewhere in this country that provided products that 
killed and harmed thousands of people.
  These incidents, as alleged, are willful violations of law, 
violations of human dignity and decency, that ought to shock the 
conscience of the Nation every bit to its core as much as the alleged 
misconduct and potential criminal activity in Pennsylvania.
  These standards of care--or more appropriately and correctly, the 
violation of them--are simply unacceptable and intolerable, which is 
why my resolution would take as common ground the alleged Pennsylvania 
misconduct and include many other instances where standards of care--
basic standards of decency and trust--are violated. I ask my friend 
from Utah to join me in espousing a resolution that establishes this 
kind of common ground.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah is recognized.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I appreciate the insight and the concern 
shared by my friend and colleague from Connecticut. These are all 
things we all ought to be thinking about, be concerned about, and be 
debating from time to time. To reiterate one of the points we need to 
make here: As with all health-care-providing institutions, all clinics, 
all hospitals need to be subjected to the scrutiny of some outside 
regulator. They need to have some accountability to those who will 
ensure that conditions there are safe, that the treatments being 
provided are effective, and that they are not going to result in more 
injury, in more disease, in life-threatening conditions, in emergency 
responders who show up not being able to access the patient in time 
because the hallways are too narrow, the exits are blocked or the 
hallways are crowded.
  I appreciate the insight from my colleague from Connecticut and thank 
him for his remarks.
  Thank you, Mr. President.

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