[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 69 (Friday, April 27, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H3732-H3738]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Arrington). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege and the 
honor to address you here on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives, and I come to the floor today to bring up a list of 
subjects that I think should be deliberated upon here in the House 
Chamber.
  The first one that is on my mind is the moral calling that we have to 
step in to save the lives of the most innocent among us. And as I 
watched some of the discussion that took place here on the floor today, 
and I look over at the people that were a part of the privileged 
motion, as I reflect upon however strong they are in their verbal 
support for the Catholic Church, I didn't see one of them over there 
that actually will defend innocent, unborn human life. And we have 
tested it time after time here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives.
  So the central principle of the Catholic Church, and many other 
Christian faiths, I will add, is to protect innocent, unborn human 
life, to oppose abortion-on-demand, and to respect the values that once 
a child is conceived, once fertilization takes place, we have a unique 
combination of DNA that is never matched again in history; and that 
unique combination of DNA is created in God's image, and I believe that 
he puts a soul in that little baby from that moment.

                              {time}  1230

  And as that little baby starts to grow in its mother's womb, we have 
a child that is a gift to the world and a gift here to America; a gift 
to that child's parents, grandparents, family, neighbors, community; a 
gift to our country.
  Yet there is a policy here that allows for the Supreme Court to step 
in and intervene with the will of the people and establish what they 
seem to believe is a right to decide who lives and who dies and under 
what terms that might be.
  In 1973, January 22 of 1973, two decisions came down from the United 
States Supreme Court. One was Roe v. Wade, which most everyone seems to 
know and understand; and that Roe v. Wade decision essentially was that 
they believe that the child wouldn't be protected until after the first 
trimester. Trimesters were part of the dialogue in Roe v. Wade.
  Doe v. Bolton was the companion case; and in that companion case of 
Doe v. Bolton that was decided on the same day, it essentially said, 
except for all of these other things: the life or health of the mother, 
the familial relationship of the mother, the economic condition of the 
mother, of course the physical health of the mother. The list went on.
  But it was so broad that it really said this: that Roe v. Wade says 
you can have abortion on demand after the first trimester. Doe v. 
Bolton said you can have abortion on demand for any reason or 
essentially no rational reason whatsoever.
  And that stayed in place from 1973 until 1992, when the Planned 
Parenthood v. Casey decision came down.
  It is interesting that the son of Democrat Governor of Pennsylvania--
former Governor of Pennsylvania, since passed away, God rest his pro-
life soul--Bob Casey, who was denied the opportunity to speak before 
the Democratic National Convention because of his pro-life credentials, 
was the subject of the lawsuit from Planned Parenthood to Governor 
Casey of Pennsylvania.
  Out of that decision came a majority opinion that ratcheted the 
abortion issue a little ways, and it said: Well, you can't abort them 
after there is a viability.
  But that viability was indistinct, and it settled in somewhere around 
24 or 25 weeks. So it had litigation around that. We have had 
legislation around that. But, meanwhile, abortion on demand pretty much 
walked its way across this country.
  In the late part of the 1990s, we had legislation that passed that 
banned partial-birth abortion. It was a big debate here on the floor of 
the House of Representatives, that ghastly and ghoulish practice--and I 
won't describe it here on the floor out of sensitivity, Mr. Speaker, to 
ears that might not be able to absorb this--but it is ghastly and it is 
ghoulish, a partial-birth abortion.
  Yet that practice was going on around this country. This Congress 
banned it in the House and in the Senate. Then it was litigated; and, 
let's see, as it was litigated, the Supreme Court ruled that partial-
birth abortion was a legal act because the Congress had failed to 
define the act of partial-birth abortion precisely enough that it was a 
vague description as to what that act actually was. So they said that 
that burden couldn't be upon the abortionist to know what Congress 
actually meant. Therefore, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.
  They also added to it being indistinct that Congress had not 
established that it was never medically necessary to save the life of 
the mother.
  So we went back to work here in this Congress, and I was part of that 
as a member of the Judiciary Committee. The chairman of the 
Constitution and Civil Justice Subcommittee at that time was 
Congressman  Steve Chabot from Ohio, a very strong and principled pro-
life Congressman to this day, and I hope the next chairman of the House 
Judiciary Committee, and he is the central player in this, and I got to 
weigh in and maybe tweak the language a little bit, but we precisely 
defined the act of partial-birth abortion precisely enough.
  We also held hearing after hearing that concluded that a partial-
birth abortion was never necessary to save the life of a mother.
  There were ghastly testimonies that came before the Judiciary 
Committee in that period of time, but we passed that legislation off 
the House, we passed it off the Senate, and it was litigated again. 
LeRoy Carhart was the lead abortionist who litigated this case. It was 
Gonzales v. Carhart, as I recall.
  I went to Lincoln, Nebraska. It was heard in three circuits. The one 
in Lincoln, Nebraska, is the one I sat in on; and after a number of 
hours of listening to that case be heard before the court, I went out 
and did a press conference outside the Federal building because the 
judge had said that the two attorneys in the case, the opposing 
attorneys in the case, had done more due diligence than the United 
States Congress.
  I knew what the due diligence was here. He did not. So I raised that 
issue: How do you do more due diligence than the United States Congress 
bringing in the wisdom of America and the American people and having 
public hearings and rolling that information out over and over again, 
and the due diligence of precisely parsing the language of the decision 
that went against life and for a ghastly and ghoulish abortion, and 
precisely defined that act so that it could no longer be argued that we 
didn't make it clear enough in our legislation?
  And we made it very clear that it was never necessary to do a 
partial-birth abortion to save the life of the mother.
  We established those principles; and once we established those 
principles, then I am there in Lincoln, Nebraska, to defend it. I could 
only speak to that court through the press. There wasn't a way for me 
to walk down and make a case before the judge, but I made the case to 
the press; and when he read the press clippings the next morning, 
apparently, is when he discovered this, he offered to recuse himself.
  Well, I wish they had taken him up on that. But in any case, Judge 
Kopf

[[Page H3733]]

found against life and for abortion, as did the other two circuits, and 
we had now lost at two or three circuits in the previous legislation, 
we lost before the Supreme Court, the ban on partial-birth abortion had 
been struck down, and we have lost in three circuits when we came back 
with the better language and the congressional findings that it is 
never necessary to do a partial-birth abortion to save the life of the 
mother.

  We lost in all of these areas. So that is two or three circuits the 
first time around, and a Supreme Court the first time around, and three 
circuits the second time around on our way to the Supreme Court.
  Now, who would think we would be successful before the Supreme Court 
the second time through with Gonzales v. Carhart?
  And I would say that, looking back on history, we should have been 
able to expect that. I don't know what I expected, I just knew what my 
job was was to do all I could do to save the lives of the most innocent 
among us.
  So the Supreme Court found in favor of life and against LeRoy Carhart 
and said that Congress had successfully and legally and 
constitutionally banned the ghastly and ghoulish act of partial-birth 
abortion.
  That is the only case that I know of where we have gone back to the 
court after we had failed the first time on the life issue, tried 
again. So when we went back to the court, we gained ground; we didn't 
lose.
  And if you track the court along the way, I think that you see that 
there has been an incremental increase in their support for the 
authority, the constitutional authority of Congress and the State 
legislatures, to ban abortion or to limit abortion. And we are sitting 
there today with a Supreme Court that might well be a 5-4 decision 
against the Heartbeat bill, H.R. 490; the Heartbeat bill that requires 
an abortionist who is contemplating committing an abortion to first 
check for a heartbeat, and if a heartbeat can be detected, the baby is 
protected. That is the standard that is within H.R. 490.
  We don't make exceptions for rape or incest because I believe it is 
immoral to execute a baby for the sin and the crime of the father.
  So we have a very clean, very precise, very well-worded--and it is 
not worded in anticipation of it going before this court, Mr. Speaker, 
but it is written in anticipation of going before the Court after the 
next appointment and confirmation to the Supreme Court. Gorsuch 2, I 
might say.
  And even though this Court could be disposed to uphold Heartbeat, 
because their legal argument gets a little vague, they don't get to say 
a heartbeat is vague. We know if there is a beating heart, there is 
life. We know it is a human life. We know that an unborn baby with a 
beating heart has at least a 95 percent chance of experiencing a 
successful birth.
  And some of those numbers go higher than that, not to 100 percent, 
but approach 100 percent. I use 95 percent because I am confident that 
that number does not overstate. It does not overstate the prospects for 
a child that has a heartbeat.
  We know that a heartbeat designates life. We know that abortion stops 
a beating heart. And we know that, in the 14th Amendment, it requires 
that we protect life, liberty, and property, in that order, I might 
add, in a prioritized order.
  And, Mr. Speaker, I take it all back to the Declaration of 
Independence when Thomas Jefferson penned the words that the protection 
for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are the words that are 
in our Declaration. A little bit different than John Locke's life, 
liberty, and property.
  But the life, liberty, and property is deeply entrenched within the 
literature that brought us up to the Declaration and the Constitution 
and is enshrined in the 14th Amendment.
  So I assert that our Founders understood, and nearly a century later, 
with the 14th Amendment, the Framers of the 14th Amendment understood, 
that they were prioritized rights. They didn't get this wrong. They 
never put property, liberty, and life; or liberty, property, life; or 
any other combination that might be conceivable with the three rights 
that are protected.
  In every case that I can find in literature anywhere, it is always 
life, liberty, and then it either says property or pursuit of 
happiness.
  As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, pursuit of happiness was understood 
by our Founding Fathers to be rooted in the Greek word ``eudemonia.'' 
E-u-d-e-m-o-n-i-a is how it is spelled, and I believe exactly how it is 
also pronounced.
  And what it means is, that is the Greek word for pursuit of 
happiness, which they understood to mean the development of the whole 
human being. The development of a person's physical body, to get to 
exercise and stay in shape, get in shape, stay in shape, become 
proficient athletically so that you can use your body for all of the 
things you might need to use it for.
  And the second component of this is to develop one's self 
intellectually, because God gives you a brain, after all, and that raw 
material, that brain, is a gift to you. You have an obligation to 
develop your intellectual capacity. So that is your education, your 
training, your cognitive skills, develop them to the max.
  So develop yourself physically, develop yourself intellectually, and 
then the third component is develop yourself spiritually to put 
together the composition of the whole human being. That pursuit of 
happiness is understood by the Greeks and identified by the Greek word 
``eudemonia.''
  That is what the Founding Fathers understood when Thomas Jefferson 
took the quill and wrote: ``Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.'' Not 
a fun tailgate party, not putting your feet up and watching the ball 
game. Not a celebration among your family in that way. All those things 
are fine, but it is about developing the whole human being.
  And even that, as important as it is to develop yourselves as a whole 
human being, the efforts and endeavors to do so could never step on the 
liberty of others; the liberty of others to have a speech, religion, 
assembly, the right to keep and bear arms, the rights to property. All 
of those things that are some of the liberties that are God-given 
liberties that are protected, they are protected even from someone else 
in their pursuit of happiness or their development of their own 
eudemonia, cannot take away someone else's freedom of speech, religion, 
right to assembly, freedom of the press, the right to keep and bear 
arms, the protection from unreasonable search and seizure, or the right 
to own property. All of those things are protected as God-given 
liberties in the Framers' documents, and particularly in the 
Declaration of Independence, and then they are additionally enshrined 
within the Constitution itself.
  So pursue happiness, use your liberties to do that. None of those 
things are any good if you don't have life. Life is the paramount 
right; and in protection of life, especially the most vulnerable among 
us, innocent, unborn human life, and the protection of that life, no 
one can use their liberties to take someone else's life.

                              {time}  1245

  And no one can use their pursuit of happiness to take someone else's 
liberty or life. These are prioritized in that order: life is 
paramount, liberty comes second, and eudemonia--pursuit of happiness--
comes third.
  That is the structure that was understood intellectually and 
intuitively by our Founding Fathers, by the Framers of our 
Constitution, and the drafters of our Declaration, and that is the 
framework that we must adhere to in this country if we are going to 
continue to enjoy God-given liberty in any of its forms over the long 
haul.
  The sin that this Nation is committing with 60 million abortions--
these innocent little babies who are the future of our country, 60 
million, and today we have what we call a full-employment economy. The 
unemployment rate is as low as it has been since 2001. And I am 
constantly hearing employers say: You need to get me a labor force.
  Well, I remember 10 years ago the message was: You need to create 
jobs. The private sector creates jobs--not government, as a rule. But 
it was jobs 10 years ago. Today, it is: We have too many jobs and not 
enough workers.
  Well, where are those workers? They are the aborted generations that 
we are missing today, the ghosts that sit between us when nearly a 
third of a generation is gone and 60 million are missing.
  Not only 60 million are missing, but there is roughly another 60 
million who

[[Page H3734]]

were not born because their mothers were aborted. And when you do the 
back-of-the-envelope calculation on that, it falls to roughly 60 
million more. So somewhere between 100 million and 120 million 
Americans are missing because Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, Planned 
Parenthood v. Casey--Planned Parenthood, that, itself, spends millions 
lobbying the United States Congress and State legislatures across this 
land, millions.
  They are the number one abortion company--factory--in America, 
committing around 354,000 abortions a year of the right at 1 million 
abortions a year.
  When I talk to people here on this floor, a gentlewoman from the 
other side of the aisle just spoke here some minutes ago, who said to 
me: Steve, why are you worried about abortion? We have got abortions 
down to under 1 million a year.
  The peak was about 1.6 million abortions a year, so why am I worried 
about this?
  They score the difference between the high watermark in abortions at 
1.6 million and what appears to be a very stable, maybe low watermark 
of 1 million abortions a year. They think that somehow by messaging we 
have saved 600,000 babies every year is good because we are not 
aborting babies at the willy-nilly pace we were at the peak of 
abortions a couple, four decades ago.
  I say instead, you don't get to keep score because there aren't as 
many babies being taken today by abortionists. You can only keep score 
by ending a ghastly, ghoulish, and immoral practice and protecting 
these innocent lives. These are innocent lives of all races. All of 
God's children, every one, created in His image.
  And that unique piece of DNA that I mentioned at the beginning, Mr. 
Speaker, that will never be matched up again. Of all of the possible 
combinations, it is beyond our imagination to think how that unique 
person could become matched up in another generation. There are 7 
billion people on this planet, and what are the distinctions between 
us?
  Just think, how many times have you heard a voice from another room 
and recognized that voice because it is unique. You know who it is. It 
has to be somebody usually close to you or somebody you have heard 
quite often.
  I know that I have come up behind a vehicle out in my neighborhood 
and the vehicle had probably been traded two or three times since I had 
seen the driver, but I come up behind that pickup, I see the back of 
his head, and I can tell by the way he sits behind the steering wheel 
who he is--even if I haven't seen him in 20 years--because we are that 
unique. There are 7 billion faces here, and they are all unique.
  Even though there is identical DNA in the case of identical twins, 
triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets, septuplets, sextuplets--I think I 
covered all that has ever existed--but whatever kind of combination of 
unique matches of DNA, they still look different enough. All of their 
mothers can tell them apart. And the older these identical twins get, 
the easier it is for all of the rest of us to tell them apart just by 
looking at their face, sometimes by listening to their voice.
  Even the genetically identical are not identical. We can tell them 
apart because God has given us a unique visage, a face. And think what 
we do with it. I mean, can you imagine if you were going to create the 
world and invent all of the things that were put here in Genesis and 
then you put Adam and Eve down there on the planet, what kind of 
thought process that takes to give us a visage, a face, that is so 
unique that everybody can tell it apart from everybody else?
  Think how hard it would be if we all wore a mask every day. We 
couldn't recognize each other. If we couldn't recognize voices or 
faces, or if we couldn't read facial expressions, how hard would it be 
to go do business? How hard would it be to express a feeling, a sense? 
How hard would it be to say: ``I am happy with you''; ``I kind of 
wonder about you''; ``I have my doubts about you''; and ``I am angry at 
you.''
  All of those things come out of our faces, and little kids, from 
babies on up, recognize facial expressions. They know a smile means 
joy; they know a frown might not be; and we listen to them and watch 
their faces. It is instinctive in them, because God gave us those 
abilities to be unique and to express ourselves, each with our own 
unique visage.
  And that is what we are eliminating with abortion, somehow believing 
that it is a mass of tissue that doesn't have identifying 
characteristics, that doesn' have a potential--and we all know in our 
hearts better than that. That is why I wrote the Heartbeat bill, 
because it does touch to our hearts, and we know what the sound of that 
beating heart is.

  In my iPhone here, Mr. Speaker, I have a series of different little 
babies with beating hearts, and I can turn on that audio and listen to 
the beating heart of my little granddaughter that is due to be born in 
the latter part of July of this year. The baby is 26 weeks and 2 days 
along, today, as we speak, and the last heartbeat pulse I got was 161 
beats per minute. I also have, of course, the ultrasound pictures in 
here of that little miracle that is waiting to burst forth and breathe 
free air here in America.
  And I am far from alone. There are millions of Americans that 
experience the same thing.
  I have what is now a former district representative that worked for 
me for a decade, and there framed in his office--a picture about this 
big--framed was the first picture of their firstborn son, firstborn 
child, and his name is Joseph Dean Anderson, and the picture is of his 
ultrasound.
  The picture was there well before he was born, and they bonded with 
him from the beginning because they could see the facial expressions. 
They could watch him move. They could hear his beating heart. And 
today, that little guy is about 9 years old, a handsome, towheaded 
little boy that loves God and will be a fine American citizen.
  We have an obligation to protect those lives, Mr. Speaker. This 
Congress has, I believe, the votes within it to protect those lives, 
but not the will, at this point, to move H.R. 490, the Heartbeat bill, 
to this floor--or even to committee, for that matter.
  Now, I have gone to work on this and we brought the Heartbeat bill 
further and faster than any pro-life legislation of consequence since 
Roe v. Wade in 1973. As we entered into this Congress and we went to 
work on this--and my thanks to Janet Porter and Tom DeLay for their 
tremendous work that they have done--we built a whip team here in this 
Congress of about 12 to 15, and we fanned out throughout the 
Conference, and people brought their cards back in, and we ended up 
with 170 cosponsors on H.R. 490.
  Well, I said, ``ended up.'' That is how many we had yesterday when 
the Sun came up. We added one more at the end of the day yesterday, and 
I am thankful that we are still making progress. And I expect there 
will be a trickling that will be added on to that, but it is a pretty 
good, long list of Republican Members that say: I will vote for it. I 
am just not quite ready to sign on the bill yet.
  They have their own political reasons for that, but I believe the 
votes are here in this Congress to pass Heartbeat.
  And if we pass Heartbeat, we will have taken the first step to saving 
the lives of nearly 1 million babies a year in America and starting to 
fill back up again that hole that is two or three generations old by 
now, 45 years old. Some would say that is two generations. It is 
probably closer--Thomas Jefferson declared a generation to be 19 years. 
Two, or a little more than two generations are missing in America. Some 
of those little girls who were aborted would have had babies by now, 
and there would have been roughly maybe another 60 million babies 
already born to that generation that is missing.
  We have an obligation to defend their lives. We have an obligation to 
defend life. We have an obligation to restructure, again, the 
priorities of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
  How can we sit here and say we are moral? How can we be indignant 
about a discretionary decision made by the Speaker of the House and not 
have a bit of a qualm about 60 million babies aborted because of the 
intransigence of the people who stood there just an hour ago to lecture 
the American people on a judgment call that they disagreed with form 
the President of the United States and, by the way, with the Speaker of 
the House.
  That lack of a moral position over on that side of the aisle is why 
we still

[[Page H3735]]

have Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, nearly 1 
million abortions a year, two missing generations, and a population 
that would be 100 million to 120 million stronger had that Supreme 
Court made the decision that was constitutional, true, right, and just 
in all of its aspects in 1973.
  Information emerged years later at the retirement of Justice Blackmun 
that Justice Kennedy was prepared to vote on the pro-life side in 
Planned Parenthood v. Casey and that there were decisions that were 
made that will always be within the bowels of the Supreme Court as to 
why that didn't happen. But the information out there says it was very 
close, that the decision really was on the side of life; and for an 
unexplained reason, it went the other way in 1992, and that gave 
Kennedy the opportunity to write the majority opinion in Planned 
Parenthood v. Casey. That is why we came up with the viability 
nonstandard standard.
  Now we have taken the Heartbeat bill up through the circuit court in 
North Dakota, and the court struck it down, as we knew they would. It 
just should be common knowledge by anyone who is involved in this 
discussion that with the Supreme Court precedent decisions, and 
especially precedent decisions that are as well-known and have extended 
as long as they have with Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Doe v. Bolton 
and Roe v. Wade, that with those precedent cases, no lower Federal 
court is going to attempt to defy the United States Supreme Court.
  So any pro-life legislation that challenges existing Supreme Court 
precedent, which we must do if we are going to ever reduce the nearly 1 
million abortions a year down to far fewer--by, say, 95 percent--will 
always lose at the lower court. At every level in the Federal court, we 
will lose, because those lower courts will not challenge the United 
States Supreme Court, Mr. Speaker.
  That means we have to go back through this motion that we had again, 
go back through the exercise we had again that three circuits heard the 
ban on partial-birth abortions. Three circuits struck it down, even 
though we had rewritten the legislation to conform with the Supreme 
Court decision because they were not about to tell the United States 
Supreme Court that the inferior courts are superior to the Supreme 
Court. So we accept that.

  I don't want to hear an argument from pro-life organizations that 
say: Well, the case is already settled. We tried Heartbeat before the 
circuit when it was passed in North Dakota, and the circuit struck down 
the North Dakota law, so we are defeated.
  Really, that is not a defeat. When you know you have to accept that 
defeat in order to qualify to get to the Supreme Court, that is not a 
defeat. That is a process that you accept at the onset.
  I accept that process at the onset to go forward through the lower 
courts to get to the Supreme Court, but the challenge isn't so much 
that, right now. The immediate challenge is this:
  There are four windows that we have to get Heartbeat, H.R. 490, 
through if we are going to save the lives of these babies with the 
beating heart. The first window--by the way, these windows have to be 
opened in the right sequence. There are four windows, and I will name 
them: the House, the Senate, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court.
  If the Supreme Court opens up and we lose pro-life majorities in the 
House or Senate, if the Supreme Court opens up, it isn't going to do us 
any good because we can't get there with the case--at least, out of 
this Congress we can't.
  If we lose the Presidency, say we wait until the year 2020 and lose 
the Presidency and we end up with a pro-abortion President again, it 
isn't going to do us any good. Remember, President Obama said he didn't 
want to see his daughters punished with a baby.

                              {time}  1300

  If we end up with a pro-abortion President, again, it won't matter if 
there is a pro-life majority in the House or the Senate, because the 
President would veto it.
  By the way, Mr. Speaker, we do have a pro-life majority in the Senate 
today. It is a bare pro-life majority. It is a 51-49 pro-life majority 
in the Senate. That was proven with the 20-week bill that did not 
defeat the cloture vote over there, but it had a bare majority of 
votes. So it is close, but a pro-life majority in the Senate.
  We have a pro-life majority in the House of Representatives. That is 
clear here. I believe we have the votes to pass H.R. 490, the Heartbeat 
bill, off the floor.
  Window number one, pro-life majority in the House. We have it. Let's 
move H.R. 490. Let's move it now.
  The second window is the pro-life majority in the Senate. 
Questionable. But if they suspended their rules, they could pass 
Heartbeat in the Senate. If that happened, H.R. 490 then would go to 
the President. The President will sign H.R. 490, the Heartbeat bill. He 
will sign it, and one of the things that I guarantee is that Vice 
President Mike Pence, who has a terrifically good heart himself, would 
be standing next to the President of the United States at that time.
  The President would sign that bill. Now we can count on it, at that 
point. That is window number three.
  Window number one, pro-life majority in the House; window number two, 
pro-life majority in the Senate; window number three, a pro-life 
President that will sign the bill.
  Window number four is the Supreme Court. We have to walk through the 
swamp and the quagmire of the lower courts to get there, but we would 
get there at that point. A Heartbeat bill passed by this Congress would 
get to the Supreme Court, and they would have a very difficult time 
refusing to grant cert and they would hear the case, I believe, and it 
would be a landmark case.
  We would be in a position to see Planned Parenthood v. Casey 
reversed, Doe v. Bolton reversed, Roe v. Wade reversed, and to see life 
respected in America again, as it was before 1973. That is the path we 
need to follow.
  What is obstructing this path, Mr. Speaker?
  I know that you are asking that yourself, but for me, I am prepared 
to answer the question that you are thinking.
  There seems to be a perhaps longstanding rule, one that was probably 
continued by Speaker Boehner or created by him. It seems that it goes 
back further than the current leadership in the House, but I have 
talked to each one of the top three Republican leaders in the House and 
each have told me: We won't bring pro-life legislation to the floor of 
the House unless it is supported by the top three pro-life 
organizations in the country, that being Family Research Council, Tony 
Perkins; Susan B. Anthony List, Marjorie Dannenfelser.
  Both of those people are good friends and powerful, committed pro-
life workers. I have great respect for them and all of their 
organizations they have put together, and many others. By the way, 
there are 170 cosponsors on Heartbeat, plus 162 pro-life organizations 
or national leaders that are cosponsors on this. So I have named the 
two of the three, what some have expressed as the holy trinity of pro-
life, so to speak.
  The other is the National Right to Life, NRLC. @NRLC would be their 
Twitter handle. They say: We do not oppose Heartbeat. I say they do not 
support Heartbeat. They say they don't have veto power, but the 
Speaker, the majority leader, and the whip say they do. But the 
Speaker's spokesman said: No, there isn't any such rule. Well, it is 
being applied.
  National Right to Life, when I say to them it is time to lead, 
follow, or get out of the way, they say: Well, we do not oppose and we 
don't have that kind of power.
  My answer to that is: Then pick up the phone, call the Speaker, and 
tell Speaker Ryan you don't want to have that veto power; remove 
yourself from this. And I said specifically: Lead, follow, or get out 
of the way.
  It is probably too late to lead for them. It is probably not too late 
for them to follow--I hope they do--but at a minimum, get out of the 
way. Pick up the phone, call the Speaker, tell the public that you 
don't want to have veto power over Heartbeat, that you want to get out 
of the way.
  If the Speaker wants to pick another organization, let him do that. 
That would be fine with me. There are plenty of good organizations out 
there.
  Meanwhile, National Right to Life says to me: Why are you dividing 
the

[[Page H3736]]

pro-life community? We can't be pitting ourselves against each other. 
We will never accomplish anything if we fight among ourselves.
  My answer back to that is, Mr. Speaker: Accusing me of dividing?
  One hundred seventy Members of the House of Representatives say: I 
want Heartbeat to the floor for a vote. There are a whole bunch of 
others who want to vote for it that aren't yet ready to sign on.
  The will of we the people is reflected in the votes in this 
republican form of government which is guaranteed to us in the United 
States Constitution. It is not what anybody says out here that controls 
what goes on in here. It influences, but it doesn't control.
  We have an obligation, every one of us. All 435 of us owe our 
constituents our best effort and our best judgment. That best effort 
and judgment doesn't mean that we let unelected, outside organizations 
dictate against the will of the majority here in the House of 
Representatives. But that is what is going on by this rule that hangs 
up there in the Speaker's office that, unless National Right to Life 
comes onboard, the pro-life legislation is not coming to the floor of 
the House of Representatives.
  I do not think that that is a defensible position. It is not 
defensible for National Right to Life, whose mission statement says 
they protect life from the beginning of life until natural death. If 
you look a little further on their website--because I wanted to know 
the technicalities--when they believe life begins, posted on their 
website: at the moment of fertilization.

  I agree with them completely, with their mission statement, that we 
should protect life from the moment of fertilization until natural 
death, because human life is sacred in all of its forms. It begins at 
the moment of fertilization. It begins at the moment of conception.
  In fact, former Governor Bob Casey, whom I spoke of earlier in 
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, said years ago--I clipped it out and put 
it on my bulletin board--before we had electronics, everything had to 
be saved; you couldn't go search on the internet--pre-internet, 
Governor Bob Casey said: Human life cannot be measured. It is the 
measure itself against which all other things are weighed.
  Think of that. What is a life worth?
  It can't be quantified because it is the measure.
  When the Frenchmen created the metric system, they did a calculation 
of the distance either around the Earth or pole to pole--who knows if 
it is right or not--and they divided it down into increments and came 
up with the meter. Well, the meter is a standard for distance of 
measure.
  How long is a meter?
  Well, it is whatever the distance is that is identical to the 
platinum strap, I will call it, the platinum meter stick that is stored 
at standard temperature and pressure so that it doesn't expand or 
contract and it is always a standard length. They created it in kind of 
an odd fashion, but they established it as the measure.
  That measure, that platinum stick at standard pressure and 
temperature that is a meter is the distance against which all other 
distances are measured and made within the metric system.
  Well, that gives you an idea of what human life is. Human life is 
sacred in all of its forms. It is the measure itself against which we 
measure every other value that we have.
  So how can we say that this life is not worth it when it is sacred 
and it is the measure?
  We are here with the National Right to Life resisting--and I use that 
word as an informed word, not just a random one off the shelf--
resisting the movement of Heartbeat, because they believe that if we 
challenge the Supreme Court, then Kennedy would be--and I will use 
these words--Justice Kennedy, because I do respect him--using their 
words, would be forced to vote against Heartbeat and would be in a 
position to assign Justice Ginsburg to write the majority opinion, in 
which case she would likely take away all things that we have gained.
  I say: What? What do we have to lose? What could we possibly lose?
  All we know is this: 45 years of incrementalism has piled up 60 
million dead babies. And we are afraid to challenge the Supreme Court, 
when every time we knock on their door, we have gained something rather 
than lost something?
  Furthermore, society is moving. Society is moving in the direction of 
life, because we see the ultrasounds. We know.
  I will say, Mr. Speaker, I always knew. I knew when I picked up my 
first little baby, little David King, on March 24, 1976, and I looked 
at him, that little miracle. There was an aura about him. I was so 
amazed at the miracle of that child, you could have convinced me that 
he was the second coming of Jesus Christ himself, that aura about him.
  I was stunned. I was so drawn to him, drawn to that miracle. I had to 
go to work later on that day, and I was sitting there working and I was 
thinking: Could anybody take that little baby's life now, now that he 
is these few hours old? Could they take his life when he is an hour 
old? Could they take his life at the moment he was born when he burst 
forth into the delivery room and began to cry and gurgle and scream and 
experience the harshness of birth, which has got to be a stunning 
thing--I am kind of glad, maybe, I don't remember that myself--but I 
remember his. An absolute miracle.
  If they couldn't take his life the minute after he was born, why 
could they take it the minute before he was born or the hour or the 
day? Or could we take his life the week before he was born or the month 
or the trimester or another trimester?
  You can follow that all the way back to conception. There is no 
distinct moment in development of an innocent little baby. Once the 
sperm fertilizes the egg and you have that unique combination of DNA, 
from there on, there is no distinct moment or instant.
  I would like to protect those babies from that moment on, but we 
can't prove that fertilization, conception today, medically, in that 
instant, but we can with a heartbeat. Anyone that has heard a heartbeat 
knows that that beating heart tells us there is life. It speaks to our 
hearts and it speaks to our consciences.
  It is impossible to be a moral human being and make an argument that 
taking the life of a little baby with a beating heart somehow is 
justifiable, when we know the potential for that little baby is as 
great as our own in almost every case.

  Even if they are not, we have a case that looks like its going before 
the Supreme Court that bans the abortion of a baby that might be 
diagnosed with a disease, particularly--an affliction, I should call 
it--Down syndrome. In Indiana, now-Vice President Mike Pence signed the 
bill. These are some of the most lovable human beings on the planet. 
They have a heart in them that seems to have more love than the average 
heart in the rest of us. They have banned the abortion of Down syndrome 
babies in Indiana.
  Now, what is curious is, the way that is left, maybe that is upheld 
in the Supreme Court, maybe it is not, but if it is upheld in the 
Supreme Court, it leaves the door open for abortion on demand for 
others who are not diagnosed.
  So does it say that there will be babies of whom they will deny the 
diagnosis of the affliction of Down syndrome so they can be aborted?
  These moral questions should not be answered at all by a civilized 
society. They should be answered by this: a unique human being created 
at the moment of conception. We can be certain of that when that baby 
has a beating heart. If we stop that beating heart, we are ending an 
innocent human life. That is the question. I would like to start it at 
the moment of conception, but from a beating heart, that is the time 
that we can prove it.
  Now, everybody knows it. Everybody knows it because we have 
ultrasounds and the audio of that 161 beats a minute. That little 
granddaughter of mine that, Lord willing, we are expecting her arrival 
the last week or so in July, that strong, purposeful heart is beating 
at 161 beats a minute. We can't stop that life because it is 
inconvenient, because somebody is inconvenienced by a pregnancy.
  Why is it that abortion came along shortly after the contraceptives 
became so available everywhere, all the time, to anybody?

                              {time}  1315

  I remember when birth control pills came in, about the mid-sixties. 
Shortly after that, here is abortion on demand in 1973. If ever there 
was contraception

[[Page H3737]]

available on demand, they became available within the decade before Roe 
v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.
  Why did that happen? The least excuse possible was when 
contraceptives became the most available possible. That all happened 
almost simultaneously.
  And by the way, it was my generation coming of age at the time that 
that happened, Mr. Speaker.
  So I urge National Right to Life to lead, follow, or get out of the 
way. I would be awfully happy if you join in and follow, because we 
know this: there will be a turnover in the United States Supreme Court. 
We know that the President of the United States has pledged that he 
will make nominations to the Supreme Court off of the list of 21 that 
was approved by The Federalist Society, by The Heritage Foundation, 
and, if it matters, also by me.
  The first appointment out of that list of 21 is Neil Gorsuch. I think 
we can be very optimistic about the decisions that he will bring down, 
from what I know of him and his history and the conversations I have 
had with the people who have known him for a lifetime. I am very, very 
impressed with Neil Gorsuch. I might have disagreed with him already on 
a case a week ago, but I am very impressed with him, with his juris 
prudence, and with the principles that he carries within him.
  I would like to let the world know, Mr. Speaker, that when they 
interviewed the other candidates for Supreme Court, which I learned 
from White House counsel, they interviewed all 21 on The Federalist 
Society's list. And of those 21, they asked them all the same question, 
a whole series of questions, but they all got one same question, at 
least, and that was: If it is not to be you who would be nominated for 
the Supreme Court, who should it be? And of the other 20 who were 
interviewed, every one answered Neil Gorsuch. What a powerful 
endorsement of a man's juris prudence, of a man's character, of a man's 
support among his peers.
  I say, Mr. Speaker, that I could easily find 20 Members among this 
Congress who would say those same things about me, but I would have to 
handpick them. Neil Gorsuch didn't handpick those 20. They were listed 
by The Federalist Society and supported by The Heritage Foundation. His 
peers, universally, said Neil Gorsuch is the best pick. ``If you can't 
pick me, Neil Gorsuch is the best pick,'' was their answer.
  I would like to know what Neil Gorsuch said when he was asked that 
question. We may never know that, or perhaps that will be the next 
appointment to the Supreme Court.
  But the rumors about Justice Kennedy retiring, not substantiated. 
They have been coming back a little more all along. We don't know what 
he might do, but we do know that time moves on. Turnovers do happen in 
the Supreme Court. They are eventually inevitable. When that happens, 
we need to be ready.
  It won't do for us to sit on our hands in the House of 
Representatives, for the Senators to sit on their hands and to wait for 
a configuration of the Court to come around in such a way that we have 
great confidence that they will find in favor of life, no. Instead, we 
need to do our job; and our job is to move the Heartbeat bill, H.R. 
490, off the floor of the House of Representatives and send it over to 
the Senate.
  It will take some serious work to get that done over there at the 
Senate, Mr. Speaker, and I think we can get there. But if we are 
knocking on the door in the Senate, then the Senators who are running 
for office, and especially a good number of them who are, some say, 
vulnerable in conservative States, States that Donald Trump won--they 
have been getting a little more conservative the closer they get to 
their reelection, and we have got a shot.
  We have got a shot to put together, maybe after this next election, 
the 60 votes necessary; and we have got a shot, also, at the Senate 
changing the rules so they are no longer handcuffed by the filibuster 
rule and the requirement of 60 votes for cloture in the Senate. We 
can't control that, the other side of us. We can influence it perhaps, 
but we can't control it.
  We can control what we do here. That means we have to bring Heartbeat 
to the floor of the House of Representatives, and we need to get the 
votes on it to do it. We need to send it over to the Senate. And a way 
to do that now is for National Right to Life to pick up the phone, call 
the Speaker, and say: Mr. Speaker, take this cup from me; I don't want 
this responsibility. The guilt will be too heavy if there is an 
appointment to the Supreme Court and the Heartbeat bill hasn't gotten 
there because we wouldn't let it come to the floor of the House of 
Representatives.
  That is the guilt they have to carry.
  By the way, this configuration hasn't existed in 45 years, where we 
had the windows open of a pro-life majority in the House and in the 
Senate and a President who will sign it and a Supreme Court that we 
have confidence will find in favor of life. It hasn't existed in 45 
years. So, if we wait for a Court to get lined up in a way that pleases 
us, we might well wind up with no way to open up one of the other three 
windows necessary to get it to the Court.
  So why wouldn't we move the ball down the road as far as we can get 
it, get this thing out of the House of Representatives. Sit it on the 
desk of Mitch McConnell. If Mitch can't get that up this year before 
the elections in November, or even before the transition takes place in 
lame duck session, fine. We will start again next January. We will 
bring Heartbeat here again. We will send it to the Senate again, and 
the new Senators can deal with it.
  And maybe they change the rule at that point so that a simple vote--
even a 50-50 tie with Mike Pence there resolves this thing, sends it to 
Donald Trump. Donald Trump signs it with Mike Pence standing by his 
side. We send it to a Court that, by then, perhaps, has a new Supreme 
Court Justice there who would support our Constitution, the rule of 
law, we the people, the will of the people, and defend the obligation 
which we have, which is an obligation to defend life first, liberty 
second, pursuit of happiness third, or, according to the 14th 
Amendment, property third--those priorities.

  It is our obligation by Declaration of Independence, it is our 
obligation by Constitution, it is our obligation by the 14th Amendment, 
it is our obligation by every measure of humanity that I know of to 
protect life.
  I'll get to this closer, here, before I yield to Mr. Carter.
  I was listening to Father Jonathan Morris of New York on FOX News one 
morning. He was talking about how, when he is celebrating mass in his 
home church, when the mothers who bring their babies in, when the 
babies start to cry, they get up and carry the babies out of the 
church. And he said: I don't know why they would carry those babies out 
of the church. They think those crying babies annoy me for some reason. 
But we should always remember, those babies, those gurgling babies, 
those crying babies, are the only innocent voices in the entire church.
  And these babies are the most innocent among us, except the unborn 
babies don't have a voice. They can't cry out to us from anywhere 
except from Heaven. And they do cry out to us from Heaven, and we do 
have an obligation to hear them and to ask for forgiveness for what we 
have done.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to conclude my part of this, at least for 
the moment, and am happy to yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Carter). And I would note that the clock runs out at about 1:32, for 
the gentleman's information.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to Mr. Buddy Carter.


                  Honoring Patricia ``Trish'' DePriest

  Mr. CARTER of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Ms. Patricia ``Trish'' 
DePriest, who will be retiring this week as a casework manager after 34 
years of working for the First Congressional District of Georgia.
  Ms. DePriest has been referred to as the dame of Savannah's political 
scene but is, frankly, so much more than that. She has worked for three 
consecutive Members of Congress from Georgia's First Congressional 
District. She started working in 1983 for Congressman Lindsey Thomas. 
After that, she worked for Congressman Jack Kingston. Now she works for 
me.
  One of the first questions that I got when I was elected to this 
office came from a lot of constituents who said, ``Are you going to 
keep Trish?'' And I

[[Page H3738]]

would just think to myself, ``A better question is: Is Trish going to 
keep me?''
  Well, fortunately, she did, and I am glad she did. Throughout the 
First Congressional District of Georgia, if you say Trish's name, 
nearly everyone you speak to will have either a story about how she 
helped them or at least know someone whom she had helped.
  She has pushed passport applications. She is a passport expert. No 
one knows the passport system better than Trish DePriest, I assure you. 
She has passed through passport applications with lightning speed.
  She has pulled veterans benefits out of the most unlikely situations 
and cleared up entanglements in Social Security checks in order to get 
constituents back on their feet, and oftentimes at a low point in their 
lives.
  Constituents who come to Ms. DePriest often have nowhere else to 
turn, yet she is the secret weapon that always seems to come through in 
the most desperate situations.
  One of her most famous cases includes helping a man who, quite 
literally, woke up next to a dumpster in Richmond Hill, Georgia, with 
no memory at all of any friends, of any family, or of his past life. 
Trish was tasked with helping build it back again from ground zero. To 
give you a sense of her blunt personality, she told the Savannah 
Morning News: ``It's like he appeared here from another planet.''
  After 34 years of working for Congress, she has developed personal 
relationships with all the relevant staff members at each government 
agency, allowing her to perform her mighty tasks for constituents that 
other caseworkers may take years to develop.
  She has learned throughout her years to always ask constituents for 
the other side of the story, which she has become famous for drawing 
out, while using this to her advantage in performing casework. A 
countless number of constituents whom she has helped out over the years 
come in and out of the Savannah office each day just to chat with 
Trish, update her on their lives, and become her friend.
  Her bluntness and wit, her intelligence and sense of caring not only 
keep constituents coming back for her friendship, but keep her own work 
colleagues with a high level of morale.
  But Ms. DePriest, Trish, is more than just an excellent caseworker 
and staple of government in the First Congressional District of 
Georgia. Trish was a loving spouse of 50 years to her husband, Joseph 
Roy DePriest, Jr., who passed away in 2012. She is a caring mother to 
Lisanne and Jamey.
  She is also a breast cancer survivor, a testament to her strong will. 
In fitting fashion, when Trish was told of her diagnosis of breast 
cancer, she says she was more mad than scared and decided to jump in 
feet first and attack the problem--and that she did.
  There will never be another Trish DePriest for the First 
Congressional District of Georgia, but I know she will be around, 
helping other people wherever she can, and I hope everyone learns from 
her abundance of knowledge and her outlook on life.
  Trish, we are going to miss you in the office. We are going to miss 
you a lot. We want you to have a happy and a well-deserved retirement. 
Thank you for your service to the people of the First Congressional 
District of Georgia.
  God bless you, Trish.

                          ____________________