[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 12 (Thursday, January 21, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S162-S163]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, tomorrow is January 22. This is a date that 
has become known for two related but radically different reasons. 
First, it is the anniversary of the Supreme Court's infamous decision 
in Roe v. Wade that imposed on America the most permissive abortion 
regime in the world. That decision degraded human life by degrading the 
Constitution.
  At the center of the debate over the morality, legality, or policy of 
abortion is the fact that each abortion kills a living human being. 
That this fact is inescapable does not prevent many from trying 
mightily to escape it, but it cannot be avoided, obscured, or ignored. 
Let me repeat: Each abortion kills a living human being. That fact 
informed President Ronald Reagan when he wrote a moving essay in 1983 
titled ``Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation.'' He wrote: ``We 
cannot diminish the value of one category of human life--the unborn--
without diminishing the value of all human life.'' The real question, 
he said, is not about when human life begins but about the value of 
human life. I believe that remains the real question today.
  Starting even before America's founding, the law had been on a steady 
march toward protecting human beings before birth. The 19th century 
movement that succeeded in prohibiting abortion except to save the life 
of the mother was led by medical professionals and civil rights 
activists. That consensus, however, began to unravel in the 20th 
century.
  In 1948, the United States voted in favor of the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights, which recognizes in its preamble the 
inherent dignity and inalienable rights of ``all members of the human 
family.'' Like every Member of this body, I am a member of the human 
family because I am a living human being. So are you, Mr. President; so 
is each of us. Article 3 of the declaration states that ``everyone has 
the right to life.''
  Words such as ``universal'' and ``inherent'' and ``all'' are 
unambiguous and clear. Only 25 years later, however, the Supreme 
Court's Roe v. Wade decision declared quite the opposite--that the 
right to life is actually not universal and does not belong to every 
member of the human family. The Court said, in effect, that some 
members of the human family get to determine whether others live or 
die.
  The contradictions continued. On April 2, 1982, the U.S. Senate 
ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 
Article 6 declares:

       Every human being has the inherent right to life. This 
     right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily 
     deprived of his life.

  This time, it took the Supreme Court just 88 days to send the 
opposite message. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Court reaffirmed 
its decision that the U.S. Constitution protects the right to abortion. 
In other words, the right to life is not inherent, it cannot be 
protected by law, and it can be arbitrarily taken away.
  This sort of confusion about the fundamental value of human life has 
put the United States in an appalling position. The United States is 
one of only seven nations in the world to allow abortion even into the 
sixth month of pregnancy. We join on that list China and North Korea, 
which are hardly champions of human rights. More children are killed by 
abortion in 2 days in America than all American servicemembers who have 
been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  Last year, we all witnessed the depths to which this degradation of 
human life leads. Planned Parenthood, the Nation's largest abortion 
provider, is in the dark business of trafficking in baby body parts and 
uses word games and spin to hide what it is actually doing. These 
aren't children or babies, says Planned Parenthood; they are products 
of conception. These aren't body parts; they are tissue specimens. This 
should come as no surprise. Stripped of inherent dignity and worth, 
human beings can easily become commodities.
  Last week, in his final State of the Union Address, President Obama 
said that a future opportunity for our families and a peaceful planet 
for our kids are within our reach. How can that possibly occur without 
a basic commitment to the fundamental value of human life and the 
inherent dignity and worth of every human being?
  Let me highlight one more contrast. Early feminists Susan B. Anthony 
and Elizabeth Cady Stanton published and edited a newspaper titled The 
Revolution. They editorialized against abortion and even rejected ads 
for abortifacient drugs, arguing that abortion was a tool for 
oppressing women. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a 
degree from an American medical school, strongly opposed abortion. Dr. 
Charlotte Denman Lozier, another trailblazer for women in the medical 
profession, helped and defended women who were pressured to have 
abortions. One writer described Dr. Lozier's work

[[Page S163]]

as ``thoroughly woman-affirming and life-affirming.''
  These priorities of being both pro-women and pro-life have today been 
made enemies instead of allies. Today, the right to abortion and even 
its actual incidence have, for many, become signs or symbols of 
progress instead of oppression. This idea that the act of killing a 
living human being should be held up as a step forward, as a light to 
guide our way, strikes me as deeply misguided and as something to mourn 
rather than celebrate. We should instead deepen the conviction that all 
human beings have inherent dignity and worth. That once was, and should 
be again, the foundation for our culture, society, and, yes, even our 
politics.
  The Supreme Court not only degraded human life in its Roe v. Wade 
decision but did so by degrading the Constitution. The Court found a 
right to abortion not in the real Constitution but in a constitution of 
its own making. The real Constitution would not allow the Court to 
impose its own values on the Nation, and so the Court simply created a 
different constitution that would. By claiming to find an unwritten 
right in our written Constitution, the Justices seized control of the 
Constitution that is supposed to control them.
  If it is possible, I urge my colleagues to set aside the particular 
subject of abortion and consider what this really means. All public 
officials, including Supreme Court Justices, take an oath to support 
and defend the Constitution of the United States. That Constitution, 
the real Constitution, is supposed to be the primary way that the 
American people impose limits on government. In fact, as the Supreme 
Court recognized in the 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision, the 
Constitution is written down so that those limits on government will be 
neither mistaken nor forgotten. In his farewell address of 1796, 
President George Washington said that the people's control over the 
Constitution is the heart of our system of government. Our freedom 
depends on it.
  With decisions like Roe v. Wade, however, the Supreme Court takes 
control of the Constitution away from the people, distorts our way of 
government, and compromises the freedom the system makes possible. 
Thomas Jefferson warned against allowing the Supreme Court to twist and 
shape the Constitution into any form it pleased. Yet that is exactly 
what the Court does in Roe v. Wade. Instead of conforming their 
decisions to the real Constitution, the Justices conform the 
Constitution to their own preferences, values, and agenda. They turn 
their oath to support and defend the Constitution into an oath to 
support and defend themselves.
  January 22 is known for the decision in which the Supreme Court 
degraded human life by degrading the Constitution. The Court used 
judicially tragic means to achieve a morally and culturally tragic end. 
Thankfully, however, January 22 is also known for another, radically 
different, event known as the March for Life. Every year for decades, 
hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens have come here to 
Washington to do just that--march for life. They represent what once 
was the norm: the belief that life itself is precious and that each 
human being has inherent dignity and worth. By coming to Washington 
year after year, they stake their claim that those principles can once 
again prevail.
  There is reason for hope. More than 70 percent of Americans believe 
that abortion should be illegal in most or all circumstances. That 
figure has not changed in more than 40 years. What has changed is that 
more Americans today identify themselves as pro-life than as pro-
choice. Large majorities favor a range of limitations on abortion and 
in 2014 elected scores of new pro-life legislators at both the State 
and Federal level. Perhaps most encouraging of all, the percentage of 
young people who believe that abortion should not be permitted in most 
or all circumstances has risen steadily and significantly. The number 
of abortions reported each year to the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention has dropped by 50 percent in the last 25 years.

  The organization Feminists for Life was founded in 1972 before Roe v. 
Wade sent us into this tailspin. They have said for years that women 
deserve better than abortion. Life, not death, should be our priority.
  I hope and pray that more and more of us will be--in large and small 
ways each and every day--marching for life.
  I yield the floor.

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