[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 19 (Monday, January 29, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S547-S548]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



               Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Bill

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, there are a lot of important things the 
Senate is taking up right now. Obviously, there is the issue of 
immigration, the budget, and disaster relief. There are a lot of 
pertinent issues that need to be resolved. One of those things that was 
in the middle of the conversation came up today. It is part of a 
conversation that, quite frankly, doesn't come up often in this body, 
but this seemed like a reasonable piece to be able to come up. It came 
up to the Senate to open debate on it, and it failed to get the 60 
votes to support the beginning of what should be an easy conversation 
on a hard issue--this issue about children and life.
  In 1973, when Roe v. Wade passed, the Supreme Court at that time 
determined that for children that were viable--and that is the 
definition they left out there--there is a governmental interest in 
being able to engage with those children. Well, viability in 1973 was 
very different than what it is now, decades later. In 1973 viable was a 
much older child. Now that we know a lot more, a lot more children 
survive. Children who are born at 22 weeks of gestation have between a 
50-percent to 60-percent chance of survival now. That was not true in 
1973.
  The rest of the world has caught up with this technology, and their 
governments have acknowledged of this issue that a child who has 10 
fingers and 10 toes and a beating heart--they suck their thumb in the 
womb, they yawn, they stretch, they move--is a child.
  I understand there is wide argument about a child that is at 8 weeks 
of gestation, whom I believe is a child, but others look at it and say: 
It doesn't look like a child yet. But a child at 20, 22, 24 weeks of 
gestation even looks like a child when you look at the child in the 
ultrasound. It is hard to disagree, especially when children are born 
at that age prematurely and they survive, and many of us know kids that 
were born at 22 weeks. The bill that came up today on the Senate floor, 
which had bipartisan support and had a majority of support but not 60 
Senators' support to be able to discuss this, was a very simple, 
straightforward bill. It asked just one question: Will we as Americans 
continue to allow elective abortions when the child is viable?
  The Supreme Court said in 1973 that the government has a right to be 
able to step in and protect a viable child. There is no question that 
they are at that age of viability. There is no question, at that age of 
20 weeks, that science shows us they experience pain in the womb, and 
that if surgery happens for a child in utero like that, that child is 
actually given anesthetic to be

[[Page S548]]

able to calm their pain during that surgery because they have a 
developed nervous system and because they have a beating heart. This 
body refused to even take up the issue and debate it.
  There is no question that I am very passionate about the issue of 
life and about children, and that we should as a culture protect 
children. But this one confuses me--for this body, more than any other 
issue. There are only seven nations in the world that allow elective 
abortions after 20 weeks. There are only four nations in the world that 
allow elective abortions after 24 weeks. We are in that elite club. We 
are in the elite club with three other nations that allow elective 
abortions that late--Vietnam, North Korea, and China--the worst human 
rights violators in the world. There sits the United States in that 
very elite club.
  Why are we there? Because we can't even discuss the possibility that 
a child is a child, and anyone who has ever seen an ultrasound at 24 
weeks cannot deny that is a child, and if that child was delivered 
prematurely, they would survive and grow and develop into a person. The 
only difference between that child at 20 weeks and an adult now is 
time.
  This issue will continue to come up, and it should because we as a 
culture should promote a culture of life and of honoring people--people 
at their most vulnerable moment. There is no more vulnerable a moment 
than that for that child. We have to get out of this club of elective 
abortions and the only group that allows it--North Korea, China, and 
Vietnam. When will we wake up to the fact that the entire rest of the 
world--all of Europe, all of Africa, all of Central America, all of 
South America, every one of those countries--sees that plain? A child 
is a child, and we need to be able to guard its life.
  So I am sad that today in a bipartisan vote with more than 50 votes 
to be able to get into it and pass it, we didn't have enough people 
even to want to discuss it and to be able to bring up the bill. We will 
bring it up again for the sake of those children and their futures. We 
will bring it up again, and we will keep bringing up the facts of the 
argument, not the emotion but the facts of the argument, and we will 
win people over.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.

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