[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.
____________________