[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 114 (Tuesday, July 21, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H5325-H5328]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              CONDEMNING THE ACTIONS OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ratcliffe). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentleman 
from Arizona (Mr. Franks) for 30 minutes.


                             General Leave

  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all 
Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their 
remarks and insert extraneous material on the topic of my Special 
Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Arizona?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I would first count it a 
privilege to yield to the gentlewoman from South Dakota (Mrs. Noem).
  Mrs. NOEM. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, today I rise to speak on an issue that has weighed very 
heavy on my heart; in fact, it has kept me awake at night for many 
nights.
  Two videos have recently come out showing senior Planned Parenthood 
executives and doctors callously discussing abortion procedures and the 
costs of that fetal tissue from aborted babies.
  It has turned my stomach to hear these people at Planned Parenthood. 
They claim to act in the best interest of women, but instead they talk 
about compensation for tiny organs from aborted babies.
  I find myself asking: How did we get here? How did this great country 
that was founded on Biblical principles get to a place where we have 
federally funded organizations like Planned Parenthood who claim to 
care for women and provide health care for them instead deceive people 
and use those dollars to end lives--end lives of our future women that 
could potentially lead this country--and then turn around and sell 
their body parts to put even more dollars in their pocket?
  It reminds me of the Edmund Burke quote that says: ``The only thing 
that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do 
nothing.''
  And today, we have seen many good men and women come to this House 
floor and say that we will not ``do nothing.'' We have pushed on this 
issue before, but we are going to push even harder. We are going to 
talk even more. We are going to talk to people and have uncomfortable 
conversations about what is going on at Planned Parenthood.
  We are going to fight until we end the Federal dollars that flow into 
their bank accounts. We are going to fight until we make sure that our 
babies and our children are protected, whether they are born or unborn, 
and that every life is sacred; that we honor those Biblical principles 
that this country was founded on.
  Not only is what Planned Parenthood has been doing disgusting, but it 
raises questions about potential illegal behavior. Profiting from fetal 
tissue donation is illegal under Federal law, and so is altering 
procedures based on fetal tissue donation.
  So I have joined many of my colleagues here in the House, and we have 
asked our leadership team for an immediate investigation into Planned 
Parenthood and all of their practices. They need to be punished for 
what they have been doing.

[[Page H5326]]

  All lives matter, including the unborn. We need to do all we can to 
protect the most vulnerable among us.
  The world can be a very dangerous place, and it is dangerous because 
of the evil that is going on, but I believe it is much more dangerous 
when you have people who look on and do absolutely nothing to protect 
those among us.
  The duplicity of this organization needs to stop; and as long as 
Federal dollars flow to this organization, we all need to feel 
responsible and do all that we can to end it.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I thank the gentlewoman.
  Mr. Speaker, as profoundly tragic as it is, no one should have been 
surprised by the recent revelations that Planned Parenthood is 
harvesting and selling the body parts of little babies. They have so 
repeatedly proven themselves blind to the dignity of humanity. They 
have always been at the forefront of the greatest human genocide in 
human history, and Planned Parenthood is the number one advocate of 
killing more than 3,000 little unborn American babies every day. These 
recent revelations are just one more heartbreaking reminder that the 
Nation's largest abortion provider has always had a legendary disregard 
for the sanctity of innocent human life.
  It beggars incredulity that this Congress continues to give hundreds 
of millions of dollars of taxpayer money--against the taxpayers' 
wishes, Mr. Speaker--to a heartless organization like Planned 
Parenthood that goes to such grotesque lengths to promote the killing 
of innocent unborn babies through abortion on demand at any time 
throughout the 9 months of pregnancy for any reason or for no reason.
  This body recently passed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection 
Act that would, except in rare circumstances, protect both mothers and 
their little pain-capable unborn babies entering their sixth month, Mr. 
Speaker, of gestation from the unspeakable cruelty of Planned 
Parenthood and evil monsters like Kermit Gosnell.
  If the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act had already been law, 
it would have saved the lives of thousands of late-term, pain-capable 
babies every year, and it would have made it much harder for Planned 
Parenthood to harvest and sell the organs and body parts of unborn 
children since they simply would not have had as many of the more 
mature organs and body parts of the older babies to choose from.
  Mr. Speaker, there is no question whatsoever that Planned Parenthood 
brazenly and repeatedly violated the law in the selling of these little 
body parts. It is an unspeakable disgrace that the Obama Justice 
Department will likely never launch a criminal investigation to look 
into these unconscionable acts, but if this Congress and the American 
people now also look the other way and ignore this kind of insidious 
evil, we do so at our moral peril.
  If the conscience of this Nation is to survive, it is now vital for 
the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to become law. The House 
has already passed this critically important and timely legislation. It 
is now time for the Senate to do the same. We must not let the 
continuous and repeated manifestations of this unspeakable evil of 
killing late-term, pain-capable babies and selling their body parts go 
unanswered.
  Mr. Speaker, supporters of abortion on demand have tried for decades 
to deny that unborn babies ever feel pain--even those, they say, at the 
beginning of the sixth month of pregnancy--as if somehow the ability to 
feel pain magically develops the very second the child is born.
  Mr. Speaker, almost every other civilized nation on this Earth 
protects pain-capable babies at this stage and at this age, and every 
credible poll of the American people shows that they are overwhelmingly 
in favor of protecting these children. Yet we have given these little 
babies less legal protection from unnecessary pain and cruelty than the 
protection we have given farm animals under the Federal Humane 
Slaughter Act. It is a tragedy that beggars expression.
  The voices who have long hailed the merciless killing of these little 
ones as freedom of choice, especially the ones who profit from it, Mr. 
Speaker, will be very shrill and loud. But when we hear those voices, 
we should all remember the words of President Abraham Lincoln, when he 
said: ``Those who deny freedom to others deserve not for themselves; 
and, under a just God, can not long retain it.''
  Mr. Speaker, for the sake of all of those who founded and built this 
Nation and dreamed of what America could someday be, and for the sake 
of all those who since then have died in darkness so Americans can walk 
in the light of freedom, it is so very important that those of us who 
are privileged to be Members of this Congress pause from time to time 
and remind ourselves of why we are really all here.
  Mr. Speaker, do we still hold these truths to be self-evident? Mr. 
Lincoln called upon all of us, Mr. Speaker, to remember that 
magnificent Declaration of Independence by America's Founding Fathers 
and ``their enlightened belief that nothing stamped with the Divine 
image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and 
degraded, and imbruted by its fellows.''
  He reminded those he called posterity--that is us, Mr. Speaker--that 
when in some distant future some man, some factions, some interest, 
should set up the doctrine that some were not entitled to life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that ``their posterity''--that 
is us, Mr. Speaker, ``might look up again to the Declaration of 
Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers 
began.''

                              {time}  2045

  Thomas Jefferson, whose words marked the beginning of this Nation 
said:

       The care of human life and its happiness and not its 
     destruction is the chief and only object of good government.

  The phrase in the Fifth Amendment capsulizes our entire Constitution, 
Mr. Speaker. It says:

       No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property 
     without due process of law.

  The 14th Amendment says:

       No State shall deny any person within its jurisdiction the 
     equal protection of the laws.

  Mr. Speaker, protecting the lives of all Americans and their 
constitutional rights, especially those who cannot protect themselves, 
is why we are really all here.
  Mr. Speaker, not long ago, I heard Barack Obama speak very noble and 
poignant words that, whether he realizes it or not, apply so profoundly 
to this subject. Let me quote excerpted portions of his comments.
  He said: ``This is our first task, caring for our children. It is our 
first job. If we don't get that right, we don't get anything right. 
That is how, as a society, we will be judged.''
  President Obama asked: ``Are we really prepared to say that we are 
powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? 
Are we prepared to say that such violence, visited on our children year 
after year after year, is somehow the price of freedom?''
  The President also said, ``Our journey is not complete until all our 
children are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm. That is 
our generation's task,'' he said, ``to make these words, these rights, 
these values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness real for 
every American.''
  Mr. Speaker, never have I so deeply agreed with any words ever spoken 
by President Barack Obama as those I have just quoted.
  How I wish Mr. Obama and the rest of us could somehow open our hearts 
and our ears to his incontrovertible words and ask ourselves, in the 
core of our souls, why these words that should apply to all children 
cannot include the most helpless and vulnerable of all children. Are 
there any children more vulnerable than little pain-capable babies 
before they are even born?
  Mr. Speaker, it seems that, somehow, we are never quite so eloquent 
as when we decry the crimes of past generations; but, oh, how we often 
become so staggeringly blind when it comes to facing and rejecting the 
worst of atrocities in our own time.
  As Americans, in the land of the free and the home of brave, we now 
live in a day when monsters like Kermit Gosnell snip the spinal cords 
of born babies and Planned Parenthood that, for financial gain, uses 
partial-birth abortions to deliberately harvest intact body parts of 
innocent babies whom they have deprived of the chance to even be born.

[[Page H5327]]

  Mr. Speaker, what we are doing to these little children, the least of 
these, our little brothers and sisters, is real. The President knows 
that, and all of us here know that in our hearts.
  Medical science, regarding the development of unborn babies, 
beginning at the sixth month of pregnancy, now demonstrates irrefutably 
that they do, in fact, experience pain. Many of them cry and scream as 
they are killed, but because it is amniotic fluid going over the vocal 
cords instead of air, we can't hear them.
  It is the greatest human rights atrocity in the United States today, 
and for us to now stand by and allow it all to continue unabated while 
Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of these little murdered 
children is to desecrate everything that America was meant to be and 
for those noble Americans who died to make it come to be.
  Abraham Lincoln gave his contemporaries such wise counsel, Mr. 
Speaker, and it so desperately applies to all of us in this moment.

  He said:

       Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this 
     Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite 
     of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, 
     can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which 
     we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the last 
     generation.

  Mr. Speaker, these are, indeed, days that will be considered in the 
annals of history and, I believe, in the councils of eternity itself. 
This bloody shadow has loomed over America for too long.
  It is time for the Senate to pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child 
Protection Act because, in spite of all the political noise, protecting 
little pain-capable unborn children and their mothers is not a 
Republican issue; it is not a Democrat issue; it is a test of our basic 
humanity and who we are as a human family.
  It is time to open our eyes and allow our consciences to catch up 
with our technology. It is time for Members of the United States 
Congress to open our eyes and our souls and remember that protecting 
those who cannot protect themselves is why we are really all here.
  It is time for all Americans, Mr. Speaker, to open our eyes and our 
hearts to the humanity of these little unborn children of God and the 
inhumanity of what Planned Parenthood is doing to them.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Arizona (Mr. 
Franks) for yielding me time, but also your longtime steadfast, 
earnest, and passionate leadership on this issue. It is much needed, 
especially in light of what we have seen this past week.
  We hear the euphemisms, the terms that are used talking about the 
unborn humans, the unborn babies. We hear terms like cell masses, cell 
clumps, specimens, calvaria when referring to a baby's head. A 
calvarium, is this even a term anybody in real life uses, especially 
when applied to an unborn baby's head? Is this a word that would apply 
to what ISIS does in beheading humans around the world?
  We don't use euphemisms like that. Why would we apply this to the 
unborn? These euphemisms disappear when there is a value assigned to 
the parts that can be harvested from the unborn. We hear descriptions 
of the techniques in this harvesting actually on the video that we have 
been hearing about and seeing, less crunchy techniques. The callousness 
of a terminology like that, less crunchy techniques, in order to 
preserve more parts for harvest.

  Are we talking about cheese puffs here? No; yet that is how callous 
this is. We talk about the price of parts in these videos. They have a 
value in this market they are talking about. Are we talking about cuts 
at a butchers' convention in pricing these parts? This is what it is 
like.
  It is unconscionable, Mr. Speaker, how callous, how base these terms 
are when we are talking about the unborn. We hear about how, for this 
process to happen, that consent is required. Well, who is being 
consented on this? The unborn donor, do they have a say in this? 
Obviously not.
  Mr. Speaker, and for all Americans, this issue is now right out in 
front of everyone in bright, vivid, bold, blood red colors for all to 
see what the attitude is, what the modus operandi for Planned 
Parenthood is and has been and will continue to be unless this body 
does something about it.
  We are right to call for investigations to get to the bottom if there 
is criminal activity here of what we have seen and is alleged with 
these videos. We are right to move forward with Mrs. Black's bill, 
should these come true. Even beyond that, for years, the millions of 
dollars that have been given to this organization, Planned Parenthood, 
to do what they do, it is time to defund them.
  It also is time to move on my colleague from Arizona Mr. Franks' 
carefully crafted and obviously correct bill on the Pain-Capable Unborn 
Child Protection Act because what kind of a country are we, what kind 
of a society are we to continue to allow these things to happen and not 
take action?
  I call on the Senate to take that bill up and pass it and put it on 
the President's desk, and he can explain to the American public his 
position on this issue.
  As we review, again, the grisly tactics of Planned Parenthood and 
others that would do as they do and the recent criminal prosecution of 
Kermit Gosnell--who isn't that much different than what we are talking 
about right here--if we don't take action, then we should be ashamed 
because, for all of us, the Lord is watching what we do.
  I thank my colleague.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Walberg), a grandfather, a father, and a lover of 
children.
  Mr. WALBERG. I thank the gentleman for the opportunity tonight to 
talk to this issue.
  I, too, stand in full support of passage of the Pain-Capable Unborn 
Child Protection Act and ask the Senate to reach down deep into their 
consciences, their hearts, their emotions.
  So often, we don't talk about that on the floor of this august body, 
the House of Representatives, but that is where it ought to flow 
because, indeed, we here, both in the House--the people's House--and 
the Senate, were sent to represent people, people of a great nation, 
people of a blessed nation, a nation that has honored the worth, the 
purpose, and the value of life itself since its inception.
  We were formed of people with great ideals; great value; great 
courage; and, indeed, formed with their blood given for the rights and 
freedoms of all individuals. For us to concern ourselves with 
protecting the most innocent among us, even those that are among us in 
the womb, I think of my new granddaughter in the womb right now, in my 
daughter's body, waiting for, in just a month and a half, the 
opportunity to breathe air itself and become a functioning human being 
cared for, growing and ultimately becoming all that God intended for 
her. I would say the same for any human being, born or unborn, that we 
must protect.
  Mr. Speaker, I certainly thank the gentleman from Arizona for his 
courage to push for this, with unwillingness to bend and bow under 
those that would say: Oh, get over it; stop defending something that is 
indefensible.
  I would say thank God for defending something that is totally 
defensible.
  As was mentioned earlier, we were founded on principles, principles 
that were firm and correct. The Founders and Framers long understood 
the power of truths versus human wisdom, truths and wisdom that said:

       We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are 
     created equal and endowed by their Creator, by their Creator 
     with certain unalienable rights, among them the right to 
     life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

                              {time}  2100

  John Adams said, ``Our Constitution was made only for a moral and 
religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any 
other.''
  And, indeed, what we have seen in videos in recent days, has 
evidenced that, when you step out of that moral principle, you go into 
things unthinkable and grotesque.
  It has been said that righteousness exalts a Nation, but sin is a 
reproach to any land. How could we not feel reproached in looking at 
videos of a licensed doctor who is willing to take and sell body parts 
and to countenance pain as something that is just part of the process 
and to be totally unconsidered?

[[Page H5328]]

  Mr. Speaker, I spent a good deal of my early adult life in the 
pulpit, ministering to people from an authority far greater than this 
government or even this Constitution, the greatest document on the face 
of this Earth, manmade.
  But the psalmists said, ``Behold, children are a gift of the Lord. 
The fruit of the womb is a reward.'' That is true. Certain commentators 
will denigrate me for bringing up these truths, and so be it. But they 
are truths.
  Jeremiah, the prophet, speaking of God, said, ``Before I formed you 
in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart.''
  The psalmist David, who became King David, said, ``For you formed my 
inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb.''
  Does that sound like what that doctor was doing in the womb, weaving, 
carefully forming? No. She was destroying. We must fight back against 
that evil.
  He want on to say, ``I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully 
and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it 
very well. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret 
and skillfully wrought in the depths of the Earth. Your eyes have seen 
my unformed substance. And in Your book were all written the days that 
were ordained for me when, as yet, there was not one of them.''
  I thank the gentleman from Arizona. I thank him for his courage and 
standing for life itself and acknowledging the fact that the Creator 
has formed something of greatness.
  And we must not stand in the way, but do everything possible to 
reject the pain, to reject the defeat, to reject the conquering of the 
human spirit beginning right in the womb.
  May God help us in this country to repent, to seek his healing, to do 
right, and to spare the innocent among us.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I thank the gentleman from Michigan.
  Mr. Speaker, my time is nearly gone. And I suppose I take great heart 
from what I have heard here tonight because it seems to mirror history 
itself.
  When people of goodwill finally saw the victims in tragedies and 
recognized them as fellow human beings, their hearts and minds began to 
change.
  Mr. Speaker, I feel like the winds of change are beginning to blow 
here. I feel like people are starting to ask the real questions.
  And I know that, when we talk about abortion, it seems like all of 
the rules change. Sometimes you wonder if the furniture is going to 
start floating in the room when you hear some of the arguments.
  But the real question is: Does abortion take the life of an innocent 
child? If it doesn't, Mr. Speaker, I am willing to stop talking about 
it.
  But if it really does take the life of a child, then those of us in 
this Chamber standing in the seat of freedom of the greatest Nation in 
the history of the world also stand in the midst of the greatest human 
genocide in the history of the world.
  Mr. Speaker, I feel like America is finally beginning to see through 
some of the facade of the abortion industry and Planned Parenthood's 
obfuscation.
  But I have another fear, and that is that sometimes we have seen such 
horrors lately--the Kermit Gosnell clinic that snipped little babies' 
spines, the killing of children that are late-term, pain-capable--that 
recognition is beginning to seep through the conscience of America.
  But I paraphrase an old saint quote that said vice is an evil which 
is so frightening and mean that to be hated means only to be seen, but 
seen too often with its familiar face, first we endure and then we pity 
and then we embrace.
  One of the great weaknesses of mankind is that sometimes, when we see 
evil often enough, we become desensitized to it. Planned Parenthood and 
the abortion industry has shown us so much evil in recent decades that 
I wonder if we are becoming a little calloused to it.
  Do you ever wonder, Mr. Speaker, or ask yourself: Are we really 
killing more than 3,000 unborn children every day? Are we really 
staining the very foundations of this Nation with the blood of our own 
children? Is that really happening in America?
  Mr. Speaker, I would just suggest that it is past the time for great 
introspection on the part of this country because we are either the 
last best hope of the Earth or we will simply be another empire that 
lost its way.
  I am of the opinion that America, as they led the way to stop 
slavery, will someday recognize the humanity of these little babies and 
see all of humanity then begin to understand that protecting them is 
really part of who we all are.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________