[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 74 (Tuesday, May 8, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H3826-H3832]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                LEGISLATION AS A REFLECTION OF MORALITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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, it is my privilege to address you here 
on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and to take 
up any of the topics that are already in order here, which is most 
every topic delivered in a decent fashion.
  But I have some things to talk about here tonight that are a bit 
celebratory, things that I am pretty happy about. I want to discuss, 
Mr. Speaker, the narrative of a significant accomplishment that I 
think, in the end, will save the lives of perhaps millions of innocent 
unborn babies in this country.
  The history of Roe v. Wade goes back to January 22, 1973, when the 
United States Supreme Court came down with a decision. Coupled were two 
cases the same day, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, and those two cases 
that were delivered launched abortion on demand in America. It was a 
stunning set of decisions, the scope of which, the magnitude of which, 
could not have been comprehended at that time.
  I remember then, when they came down. We had no children yet at that 
point. Marilyn and I were married, but at that age in life and not 
having any experience with the impact of such a decision--America 
didn't have that experience--the way we analyzed that thing, didn't 
understand how severe this would be.
  Yet, once the decision came down, there is something that I have 
learned, Mr. Speaker, and that is that people say: You can't legislate 
morality.
  I have always thought that was a pretty weak statement and not very 
defensible, but you hear it quite often: You can't legislate morality. 
You can't legislate morality.
  Well, legislation is a reflection of morality. For example, we have 
laws against murder and rape and assault and battery and armed robbery, 
and the list goes on and on of the things that are prohibited. They are 
the reflections of the morality of a nation.
  The lack of such legislation would indicate only one of two things: 
either it is the lack of morality, or it is a nation that doesn't need 
laws to frame it because the morality of the nation is so enshrined in 
the culture that there doesn't need to be laws.
  For example, one of those examples would be that, for centuries, 
marriage was between a man and a woman. We didn't need laws that said 
so because everybody knew that marriage defined a union between a man 
and a woman--in my case, joined together in holy matrimony.
  So as the legislation came forward--and I was in the Iowa Senate at 
the time--I remember some of that debate and discussion, and it was: 
Why do we need to pass this law to defend marriage, the Defense of 
Marriage Act?
  I helped write part of that language, Mr. Speaker, and I had a little 
bit of a hard time explaining why it was important that we move it, 
more or less, an insurance policy so that we could protect marriage in 
Iowa against the movement that had just begun not very much earlier 
than that by litigation out in Hawaii. And then the conflation between 
civil unions and marriage.
  But the reflection of the values of marriage were in our culture so 
deeply that senator after senator stood on the floor and said: Why do 
we need to do this? This is a redundant exercise. It is a waste of our 
time. Everybody knows that marriage is between a man and a woman.
  And we passed the Defense of Marriage Act. There were only about 
three or four who voted against it. We wondered why they did that. They 
were out there in the fringes, so we thought, at the time. That was 
about 1998.

                              {time}  1730

  By 2009--and that would only be 11 years later--the Iowa Supreme 
Court came down with the decision Varnum v. Brien, which imposed same-
sex marriage on Iowa, the transformation of a culture that needed a law 
to protect marriage, if we were to protect it. But once, for thousands 
of years--I will say at least for thousands of years--marriage was 
between a man and a woman, and it changed.
  When something became permissive, then the permissiveness of it 
changed the morality of the situation. That is not a very good 
description, Mr. Speaker, of what happened with the abortion 
circumstances in America. We understood then that life begins at the 
moment of conception. But when Roe v. Wade came down with the decision 
that prohibited the States from regulating abortion and prohibiting 
abortion, then it became permissible and permissive, and it became 
pervasive at the same time.
  Some of our peak incidents of abortion, from 1973 until the latter 
part of that decade, got up to 1.6 million abortions a year. And, 
today, after 45 years of Roe v. Wade, this Nation has seen 60 million--
some say 61 million--babies aborted. Babies who would be growing up in 
our society today: going to school; playing ball; studying; going to 
church; loving their brothers and sisters, their mothers, their 
fathers, their grandparents, their aunts, their uncles. They are gone: 
60 million little babies gone.
  And not only 60 million--there is no way to actually describe 60 
million babies as only--but, in addition, there are another roughly 60 
million who were not born because their mothers were aborted. A 
population between 100 and 120 million Americans are missing today 
because of Roe v. Wade's decision--Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton--an 
unsoundly and unjustly decision that came down from the United States 
Supreme Court.
  One of the problems we have in this country is we have three branches 
of government. A lot of government teachers and constitutional teachers 
instruct that it is three coequal branches of government, but that is 
not what our Founding Fathers expected. They defined it, instead, that 
the judicial branch of government would be the weakest of the three 
branches of government.
  Yet our society, our culture, our civilization gives such reverence 
to the United States Supreme Court that they can't even get their minds 
around the idea of: What do you do if the Court comes down with an 
atrocious, outrageous, erroneous, nonconstitutional decision that 
visits 60 million deaths of innocent babies on our country and another 
60 million babies who are not born because of a result of it? A missing 
100 to 120 million babies--a decision of the Supreme Court.
  And what do we do?
  We accept the decision as if the decisions of the Supreme Court are 
utterly sacrosanct, and the only way they can ever change is if the 
circumstances of that Court should change in such a way that the 
appointments and the confirmations to the Court could transform and 
reverse the erroneous decisions in the past.
  Now, there are circumstances where the Supreme Court has reversed 
their own decision. We had the Dred Scott decision that actually wasn't 
reversed. That was a decision on slavery. Some say that that was an 
erroneous, poorly found decision.
  I think I side with Abraham Lincoln that it was constitutional at its 
time. It probably was a decision that conformed to the Constitution, 
however morally wrong it was.
  Then along came the 13th, the 14th, and the 15th Amendments that 
rectified the situation that was put upon us by Dred Scott. And, by the 
way,

[[Page H3827]]

600,000 lives lost in the Civil War, putting an end to slavery and 
resolving the Union.
  Was the Union going to be something that one could separate from, or 
once you are part of the Union are you always part of the Union?
  And, as this turned out, 600,000 Americans were killed in the Civil 
War, putting an end to slavery--600,000. It sounds like a lot until you 
compare it to 60 million babies aborted, Mr. Speaker.
  This is the worst atrocity ever--accumulated effect of it--the worst 
atrocity ever committed on American soil, and it was sanctified by the 
Supreme Court in an unsoundly founded decision.
  Now, the thing that obstructs us from getting pro-life legislation 
passed is a few people who profess that they are pro-life--a pro-life 
organization. They say: Well, we have to respect the Supreme Court 
decision that it is sacrosanct.
  The Supreme Court laid out the parameters of viability not only in 
Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, but also in Planned Parenthood v. Casey 
in 1992: this viability concept, which is that if a baby can't survive 
outside of the womb, it is really not a life. Well, we know better than 
that because we can hear their hearts beat, we can watch them move 
around inside of the womb, we can watch them squirm, we can watch them 
suck their thumb, and we can watch them move their lips like they are 
trying to talk.
  We bond with these babies now through ultrasound. The ultrasound is 
just about as good as Skype with our children and grandchildren who are 
out here breathing this free air. Those are the circumstances that have 
changed. We know that it is life.
  The Supreme Court's decision wasn't soundly found. They weren't 
looking at an ultrasound then, back 45 years ago. We didn't know 
whether we had twins, or singles, or triplets, or quadruplets then 
because we didn't have enough ability to even listen to the heartbeat 
precisely enough. Today, we can, Mr. Speaker.
  Today, we are listening to heartbeats, and, today, we are watching 
babies squirm, and move, and suck their thumb, and move their mouth 
like they are trying to talk, and get their exercise inside of the 
womb. Now we know. We can't deny. It is not a blob of tissue, it is not 
some kind of an intruder. This is a unique DNA, innocent, unborn human 
life.
  We brought legislation here to this Congress called the Heartbeat 
legislation, H.R. 490. In this legislation, it says that before an 
abortionist sets about committing an abortion, he must first check for 
a heartbeat with transabdominal ultrasound, which picks up a heartbeat 
between 7 and 8 weeks from fertilization or conception. He must first 
check for a heartbeat. If a heartbeat is detected, the baby is 
protected.

  This rings not only in our hearts, but it rings true in our 
conscience. We know that where there is a heartbeat, there is life. And 
we know that if you go in and surgically, or by any other method, snuff 
out that heartbeat, you are snuffing out life, the most innocent among 
us.
  Father Jonathan Morris, a priest from New York whom we see on FOX 
News in the morning, one day was commenting. He was commenting about 
how the ladies and the mothers in the church, when their babies start 
to cry too loud, they get up and hustle them out of the church, and he 
said: Why would you do that?
  Those are the only innocent voices in that church. Well, the most 
innocent are in the womb, and the most innocent have been victimized by 
this idea of convenience, or women's rights, or that it is not somebody 
else's business to tell someone else what to do with their body.
  Well, it isn't about their body, Mr. Speaker. It is about that unique 
being, with that unique combination of DNA. That is how precious this 
is. We never know the potential of a baby, an innocent unborn baby.
  There was a story in the news a couple of days ago. Now, there are 
those who would predict that inside the womb you can identify Down 
syndrome, you can identify other afflictions; and those other 
afflictions, they might argue, make that baby less than perfect. But 
those babies, when they are loved, are perfect for those who love them.
  We can't decide with a level of certainty, regardless, when they are 
in the womb. If there is a heartbeat there, that is an innocent life 
that is deserving of protection. If we would not end that life of that 
baby outside of the womb, we would not, and should not, end it inside 
the womb. So if a heartbeat is detected, the baby is protected.
  H.R. 490 has 171 cosponsors here in the House of Representatives. It 
has come further and faster than any significant piece of pro-life 
legislation, I believe, since 1973 in Roe v. Wade in the first place.
  We need to get this bill to the floor of this House and send it over 
and put it on Mitch McConnell's desk. There is hardly any room left on 
Mitch McConnell's desk these days. That number must be up to 500 or so 
bills sitting on his desk. But we can put Heartbeat there on top of 
Mitch McConnell's desk.
  When you do that, that is the highest priority. Whatever it is on top 
of the desk is the highest priority. And we can say to Mitch: Bring 
this thing out to the floor of the Senate and send Heartbeat up to the 
President's desk.
  If you can't do that, send the President to the States where the 
Democrats who will vote ``no'' on it are running for office. Remind 
them that America is now a pro-life nation, and this pro-life nation 
wants to pass pro-life legislation.
  If they can't do it with the Senators who are seated over there now, 
they can do it with the Senators who can be seated over there next 
January. I believe that the conscience of America will be reflected if 
we send that over and put the bill on Mitch McConnell's desk.
  Here is the polling that we have also. There are some people who 
worry about public opinion. They should know their conscience and act 
off of their conscience. But off of public opinion, it works this way: 
the Heartbeat bill, H.R. 490. We have a Barna poll that was conducted, 
actually, February of last year.
  It says that 86 percent of Republicans support the Heartbeat bill 
without exceptions, 61 percent of Independents support it without 
exceptions, and 55 percent of Democrats support the Heartbeat bill 
without exceptions. That is an astonishing thing to see that we have a 
majority of Democrats. I would call that a landslide if I won by 55 
percent or more. This is a poll of a landslide among Democrats where we 
do have a Democrat or two or three who will vote for this bill. But, 
for the most part, that has been polarized here also.
  We used to have at least 60 different pro-life Democrats who would 
come in and vote on pro-life legislation. Now I count maybe three. I 
hope that number is more. I regret that the parties have gotten this 
polarized, but some of this stuff happened when they had to walk the 
plank to vote for ObamaCare, and the people who replaced them were 
conservative Republicans. That is one of the reasons why we have so 
many cosponsors here on the Republican side--171 cosponsors here--and 
162 national organizations or leaders have signed on.
  I notice that Reverend Franklin Graham sent out a tweet in support of 
Heartbeat legislation here a couple of weeks ago. I am a great admirer 
and respecter of Reverend Graham, and I believe that his moral 
barometer matches that of any moral.
  The support for this bill has come along well.
  I will circle back to the resistance that we have that we need to 
overcome yet, Mr. Speaker.
  While we reached a plateau on the Heartbeat bill, it became apparent 
to me that having one line in the water--however good that line is in 
the water here in the House of Representatives behind H.R. 490--it was 
also important to get some other lines in the water. The one thing that 
I could do was to take the Heartbeat bill and offer it up to the Iowa 
Legislature.
  I had a conversation with State Senator Brad Zaun. He had a shot and 
would have made a good Congressman, but he is chairman of the Judiciary 
Committee in the Iowa Senate today. I had that conversation with him 
and had a conversation with Senator Jason Schultz. They took the 
Heartbeat legislation and brought that into the Iowa Senate.
  The draft of that legislation was adapted to a bit of a degree to 
conform

[[Page H3828]]

to the State legislature. They worked that bill around through their 
caucus a little bit. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee there, 
Senator Brad Zaun, said: I am bringing this bill through committee. He 
was keeping me up to speed with what was going on.

  That was an intense hearing before the committee. I am just going to 
speak on what I hear back channel--not that I was in the room. There 
were some people who wanted to stage a protest against the Heartbeat 
bill. So the chairman of the Judiciary Committee looked at them before 
he gaveled in the committee and said: If anybody has come here to 
protest, raise your hand, and I will throw you out now. I liked his 
approach. There was no need to throw anybody out because they actually 
behaved.
  So there was a quiet, but an intense, hearing and markup before the 
Iowa Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Republicans all voted for the 
Heartbeat bill. Then here it sits on the calendar of the floor of the 
Iowa Senate.
  Now the next big milestone needed to be reached, and that is that the 
majority leader, Bill Dix, brought the topic up before the caucus. That 
is closed door, so I am only speculating on what I picked up also back 
channel, Mr. Speaker. But he said to the 29 Republicans seated there in 
the caucus: Is there anybody here who doesn't want to vote for this 
Heartbeat bill? No one raised their hand, so the decision was made: We 
will bring it to the floor.
  Well, it had been assigned to the chair of the subcommittee for the 
bill, who was Amy Sinclair. Amy Sinclair put together the subcommittee 
effort and prepared herself for an intense debate. It was expected to 
be an intense debate. I pointed out to her that my first debate on the 
floor of the Iowa Senate took me 7\1/2\ hours before I got my bill 
passed.

                              {time}  1745

  It was official English, by the way. It was a long, hard slog, to 
quote Rumsfeld.
  Hers was entirely different. I thought there would be 6, 7, 8, 10 
hours of debate. She brought the bill up, made eloquent opening 
remarks, rebutted a few of the remarks that were made on the other 
side, and 24 minutes later, the vote went up on the board, 30-20.
  An independent voted also--and his name is David Johnson--for the 
heartbeat bill in the Iowa Senate, along with all 29 Republican 
senators, 30-20 on 24 minutes of debate.
  And it rocketed over to the house of representatives, and, once 
again, I had the misconception of thinking to myself, this is going to 
be easy, but, like a lot of things in life, it isn't that easy.
  So, as we began to see how the bill was going to move, if it moved at 
all, in the Iowa House, what I learned was that they didn't think they 
could move it, they didn't think they had the votes. The first whip 
check card that we worked on there--we needed 51 votes. There were 100 
in the Iowa House. Of the 51 votes we needed, we only had 35. So a 
bunch of us went to work.
  By the way, one of the people at the top of my list to thank here in 
this Congressional Record tonight, Mr. Speaker, is the Iowa 
representative of National Right to Life--who is not supporting this 
bill at the national level, and they need to lead, follow, or get out 
of the way. But their Iowa representative, his name is Scott Valencia, 
and he is of Iowa Right to Life. He was magnificent in the work that he 
did and the strategy that unfolded and in the network that he had put 
together with the pro-life community within Iowa.
  I could always count on Scott being at the center, the nexus, of the 
communications on who was thinking what, who was saying what, and 
helping to inform us in the spreadsheet we put together to whip the 
votes.
  Also on that list would be, from The Family Leader, Bob Vander 
Plaats, whom I have campaigned a lot with. We worked together to vote 
three supreme court justices off the Iowa bench. He and his team at The 
Family Leader, including Chuck Hurley, a longtime friend, and Danny 
Carroll, a former representative, were stellar in their efforts in 
focusing on how we would pull the votes together in the Iowa House.
  There were 32 organizations in the Iowa pro-life coalition. Those are 
the organizations that I referenced, Scott Valencia, that put his 
finger on that pulse, but many of these people are people I worked with 
for years, that go back 20 or more years on this issue, and I am so 
proud of the work they did.
  Our former majority leader here in the United States House of 
Representatives, Tom DeLay, made the trip up to Iowa to testify in 
favor of the heartbeat bill before a hearing in the Iowa House of 
Representatives, along with Dr. Kathy Altman, who was a witness for us 
here in Congress as well, Mr. Speaker.
  So I am very, very grateful to all of these folks and many more, but 
the jobs that they did helped move this thing in the right direction. 
The hearing was intense, and there was strong testimony on both sides, 
but the voice for the unborn, the voice for the most innocent prevailed 
in that hearing. And it gave more confidence to some of the people that 
were reluctant to vote in favor of the bill on that night.
  One of those people, I suspect--and I suspect only--would be Dave 
Heaton, who I count as a good friend. I have always enjoyed him and had 
a certain affection for the affable gentleman who has so many prime 
ribs down there in his restaurant in southeast Iowa, but when he voted 
``yes'' coming out of committee, he said, ``Yes for now,'' and I 
thought maybe that was the end of it. But it turned out that we needed 
51 votes. We wouldn't have had them if it hadn't been for the vote of 
Dave Heaton as he retires. God bless Dave. I appreciate his vote.
  I appreciate the vote and the work of so many there in the house, 
including Speaker Upmeyer, who is a second-generation speaker of the 
house of representatives, who has earned her place there and has become 
a very stable and a master strategist on how to move legislation 
through the legislature, along with Majority Leader Chris Hagenow, who 
was fully behind the heartbeat bill from the beginning and, I think, 
kept a low profile publicly but did a lot behind the scenes.
  Then another individual whose character I know well, and that is the 
Speaker Pro Tem Matt Windschitl, who has been part of this strategy all 
along, a very, very steady hand, a very, very clear strategist, 
somebody you want to ride the river with. He does come from over there 
in the river bottom, not very far from me.
  I appreciate the strategy and the work that each of these individuals 
did, but this doesn't stop at this point either, Mr. Speaker.
  The chairman of the Human Resources Committee, Joel Fry, did master 
work on it, as well as the floor manager in the Iowa House, Shannon 
Lundgren. Shannon, I believe, is in her first term, and I haven't 
gotten to know her personally, but here is the narrative that I get 
from the way she managed that debate in the house. It was a lot longer 
in the house. It went on for hours, 5 to 7 hours, something like that, 
perhaps more. The bill passed around 11:30 that night.
  Shannon, when she had brought the bill up there, this was the 
critique that came to me, is that she started out slow, and you might 
start to wonder if she was going to be able to hold her own through 
that very, very grueling trial that had been assigned to her that she 
was, I think, eager and proud to take on, and she should be proud, 
because she got stronger as the night wore on.
  So did a number of the other members of the Iowa House. They stepped 
up to defend their positions and to advocate their narratives. One of 
them would be Steve Holt. He and also Sandy Salmon, who had introduced 
her own bill, her own pro-life legislation, they were strong and many 
others were strong in the way they handled their debate.
  I didn't put together a complete, analyzed list here, Mr. Speaker, 
because, for one thing, I just didn't have the time, but I recognize 
the risk in naming names. There definitely are people that I have left 
out. There will be others that I will try to thread in here, but there 
will always be people that are left out.

  Some of them in the middle of this, though, were Jack Whitver, who is 
the leader in the Iowa Senate. I mentioned Amy Sinclair, the chair of 
the subcommittee and the floor manager in the senate. Senator Brad 
Zaun, whom I have talked with a lot and grown to admire, and I 
appreciate his drive. He

[[Page H3829]]

doesn't hesitate, he doesn't equivocate, he knows what he believes, and 
he strategizes and acts upon it. And Senator Jason Schultz, whom I 
first brought up this topic with.
  I want to thank every representative and every senator who spoke and 
who voted for the heartbeat bill in the Iowa legislature. It was a 
phenomenal accomplishment.
  Last year, they passed a 20-week, called sometimes the pain-capable 
bill. Many thought that would be the end of the effort on pro-life for 
a while, and they came back this year and passed heartbeat legislation.
  Not only was it the work, not only was it the debate, not only was it 
the negotiations and the votes that were counted and the effort on the 
whip team from those elected members who worked inside the house of 
representatives and the senate, but also the outside groups, the 32 
outside organizations and then some, that came together. It was a 
phenomenal, phenomenal effort that brought this together.
  I wanted to say also a couple of words about how difficult this was 
for some of the most pro-life people that we had. I am not one who 
believes in exceptions. I don't believe that a baby that is a product 
of a rape should be executed for the crime of their father. Neither do 
I believe that that should be the case for a baby who is a product of 
incest, which might be the crime of the father and it might be the 
crime of the father and the mother. Those babies are innocent, and they 
should have every right to life of every other baby conceived at any 
other time under any other circumstances.
  But it came to that place where there were either going to be 
exceptions or there was going to be no bill passed. I think there would 
have been a way we might have been able to resolve that, but by the 
time it came to that place on the calendar, that place on the clock, 
that place on the legislative clock, a decision had to be made: Are we 
going to bring a bill to the floor of the Iowa House with exceptions, 
or are we going to have no bill whatsoever? That was the decision. That 
was the crux of the matter.
  Coming to that place of decision, the right decision is: Let's save 
all the lives we can. Let's take all we can and get as much done as we 
can. If we could come back with heartbeat after the 20-week bill last 
year, maybe next year we can come back to eliminate the exceptions or 
perhaps even do personhood, which is the goal of the pro-life 
community. It should be that case worldwide.
  So I know it was a very difficult decision for some. I happen to know 
that Skyler Wheeler may be the most pro-life member of the Iowa House 
of Representatives, and it was a very difficult decision for him, but 
with Skyler Wheeler, we got to 51. We have a bill that then was sent on 
its way to the Governor's desk.
  Before I mention the Governor any further, I want to also mention 
some of the other help that we had. This promise on heartbeat 
legislation is rooted back to a request made by Phyllis Schlafly just 
days before she passed away that I would draft and introduce heartbeat 
legislation here in Congress. I followed through on that commitment.
  She was, in a time of her life, a living, breathing icon, the 
clearest political thinker of our time, a pure constitutionalist, a 
strong, faithful Christian woman who left her mark and her imprint 
across this Nation in many, many ways. I have powerful respect for 
Phyllis Schlafly, for her life, for her contribution, for her judgment, 
and for the promise that I made on the day of her funeral.
  I made that promise sitting in discussion and consultation with Janet 
Porter of Faith to Action, who has been the driving force on this, the 
launching force on this from the beginning. And Janet Porter now may be 
the most driven pro-life activist in America, and she has accomplished 
a lot to get this started. She teamed up with Tom DeLay, our former 
majority leader here. He made his fame as the whip, maybe the best whip 
that we have ever seen here in the House of Representatives. Both of 
them worked pro bono on this to move the votes and get cosponsors 
signed up here in Congress, which gave a lot of credibility to the 
heartbeat bill on its way to the Iowa legislature.
  In addition, one of the push-backs that we got in the Iowa House was, 
``We don't want to spend taxpayers' money defending this legislation.'' 
It is something that they believe that--I mean, some of the folks would 
say: We will lose in court. So if you know you are going to lose, you 
can't spend taxpayers' money, knowing you are going to lose.

  My response back to that was: We know we are going to lose at the 
lower court level. Anybody that argues that that is a reason not to 
move pro-life legislation, because we will lose at the district court 
level, we will lose at the circuit level, that is a given, because we 
have a strong precedent established by the United States Supreme Court 
in Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Of 
course the lower courts, respecting the Supreme Court, are not going to 
try to overturn a Supreme Court decision. We have to accept the idea 
that this will be litigated, it will go through the lower courts, and 
as it goes into the lower courts, we will lose at each turn until we 
get to the United States Supreme Court.
  To give an example of how this worked in the past, on the ban on 
partial-birth abortion, which came to us about the end of the 1990s, as 
I recall, on the initial case, the ban on partial-birth abortion, that 
gruesome and ghastly procedure that is so, so awful, to describe it 
here on the floor of Congress is more than I will do here tonight, Mr. 
Speaker, but Congress banned that procedure.
  Having banned that procedure, it was litigated by--guess what--
Planned Parenthood, the advocacy group for abortion itself, and the 
Supreme Court struck down our ban on partial-birth abortion. Of course, 
they have to use a rationale, so their rationale was that the act of a 
partial-birth abortion wasn't precisely enough defined, that it was 
vague, and if it was vague, then how would the abortionist know if he 
is committing a crime or not. I said: ``You are killing a baby. That 
ought to be enough.''
  Instead, the Supreme Court ruled to strike down our ban on partial-
birth abortion, but they wanted a more precise description of it. And 
they argued that Congress had not established that a partial-birth 
abortion is never medically necessary to save the life of the mother.

                              {time}  1800

  So I arrived in this Congress shortly after that decision. We went to 
work on this. The chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and 
Civil Justice at that time, where I am the chair of the Subcommittee on 
the Constitution and Civil Justice today, was  Steve Chabot of 
Cincinnati, a strong pro-life advocate, and we held hearing after 
hearing in the Constitution and Civil Justice Subcommittee.
  By the way, the chairman of the full committee at that time was 
sitting here just a few minutes ago, Mr. Jim Sensenbrenner.
  So we established, through congressional hearings, and wrote a new 
ban on partial-birth abortion that precisely defined the act of a 
partial-birth abortion that we would prohibit by statute and 
congressional findings, after hearings, that it is never necessary to 
commit this heinous act in order to save the life of the mother.
  With those congressional findings coupled with the precise 
definition, we passed the legislation and sent it out again, and it was 
litigated again by, let's see, Planned Parenthood--or that was Carhart. 
LeRoy Carhart was the abortionist out of Omaha who was the lead on that 
case, Gonzales v. Carhart, as I recall.
  But in any case, that precise definition that we drafted and the 
congressional findings that it is never medically necessary to save the 
life of the mother were enough to get the same Court to reverse 
themselves and accept the conclusions that Congress had drawn because 
we had conformed to their request.
  So there is a case where the Court came down on the side of striking 
down our ban on partial-birth abortion, and then we brought it back 
through the courts again and it was tried in three circuits 
simultaneously, and in every circuit we lost. But then the cases were 
packaged together and they went before the United States Supreme Court, 
and then we won on the side of life.

[[Page H3830]]

  The Court reversed itself, but we lost at every lower court level. We 
only had a chance to succeed at the Supreme Court. And that is going to 
be the case with this legislation, as well, because it directly 
challenges Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
  So it has to get to the Supreme Court. We are going to lose until we 
get there. When we get there, especially if we arrive in the Supreme 
Court with a new appointment to the Supreme Court, we are looking at, 
more likely now, under today's circumstances, the potential of a 5-4 
Court, a Court that would be coming down on the side of the 
Constitution and the strict constructionism that protects life.
  We are obligated to protect life under the 14th Amendment. So if 
Congress can define life, we define it as, if a heartbeat is detected, 
that is life, the baby is protected.
  And the cost of defending this case isn't going to fall on the backs 
of Iowa taxpayers, Madam Speaker. Instead, we have two organizations 
that have volunteered to step up, pro bono, to defend this case before 
the courts, and those two organizations are--this is the message from 
Matt Staver of Liberty Counsel--Liberty University, many will know it 
as--and that has produced a pretty good chief of staff in my operation, 
Sarah Stevens.
  Matt Staver has agreed to defend this, pro bono. That is Latin for 
``on the house.'' And also Martin Cannon of St. Thomas More Society 
will have agreed that they will also defend it pro bono. So we will see 
how this comes together, but it doesn't put the taxpayers of Iowa at 
risk.
  So it makes it not only the right decision for life, the right 
decision for law, the right decision for our Constitution and, in 
particular, our 14th Amendment, it makes it the right decision for the 
taxpayers.
  When we look at the society we live in today, the last time we had 
unemployment numbers down as low as we are seeing now, I remember them 
bringing a bill into the State legislature that would require all of 
the health insurance policies in Iowa to cover contraceptives. One of 
the arguments they made was we can't be having women missing work 
because they are pregnant, having babies. We need the labor force too 
much.
  Well, that didn't fit to my analysis at the time, which is why I 
remember it. Instead, we need babies that will go to work in 18 or 20 
years, and we need to sustain ourselves and our society.
  I tell young people constantly, good people need to have a lot of 
babies and raise them right. That fixes everything that can be fixed. 
If good people raise their babies right and have a lot of babies, there 
will be enough people here to do the work we need to do; and we will 
create the jobs for others, and we will see people picking up and 
carrying their share of the load, pulling the harness instead of riding 
in the wagon. That is what saves this society.
  But, in any case, here we are, Madam Speaker, with a bill that passed 
out of the Iowa House that night, on about Wednesday night of last 
week, at 11:30 at night--might have been Tuesday night, 11:30 at night. 
May 2 was, let's see. About 11:30 that night.
  And the dedication of our Iowa senators was such that they said: 
Well, let's just take this up right away. Why don't you carry that 
across the rotunda and we will take it up on the floor of the Iowa 
Senate.
  And they did. And after a fairly short debate, they passed it in the 
Iowa Senate.
  Again, there were so many missing, but 29 to--let's see. I remember 
the lower number of it. But it passed easily out of the Iowa Senate, 
and it was messaged to the Governor that night, which would have been, 
I believe, May 2.
  So by the time we got around to Friday, I found myself in South 
Carolina, at the invitation of the Governor of South Carolina, to talk 
about sanctuary cities, and we ended up doing a press conference also 
on Heartbeat, interesting conversation.
  I think we enjoyed a friendship, and I expect that South Carolina 
actually had a Heartbeat bill in front of them that was--it would have 
been very hard for it to survive reaching the sine die part of their 
session because they were about done.

  The same with the sanctuary city bill. We tried to do what we could 
with that, but anything that didn't pass down there I think comes up 
again next year, and they have got an extra boost to get that done.
  I really appreciate the leadership provided by Governor Henry 
McMaster on the sanctuary cities and on Heartbeat, and we will make 
sure that we are supportive down there, as we have been in Iowa.
  Also, Governor Ricketts of Nebraska has said: Send me a Heartbeat 
bill; I'll sign it.
  I know that there are people in the Nebraska Unicameral that are 
preparing to bring Heartbeat in next year in Nebraska, and I know that 
it is also part of the Governor's debate in the race in Florida. So 
there are other States that are looking as well.
  This could be something that spreads out across the countryside in 
State after State after State, Madam Speaker, but it would not have had 
this kind of momentum had it not been for Governor Reynolds, who had a 
bill signing ceremony on Friday afternoon at 3 in her formal office in 
the capitol and filled the office up with lots of young kids and good, 
steady, stalwart legislators who deserve a lot of credit and to take a 
bow for this.
  I looked at the pictures of that bill signing ceremony, and it 
occurred to me that they probably saved as many lives just during the 
debate for Heartbeat as were represented by the children in Governor 
Reynolds' office.
  I thank Governor Reynolds for signing the bill and putting it into 
law.
  She had put out a statement a week or a little more earlier that said 
that she is proud to be part of the most pro-life administration in 
Iowa history. Well, she can now, with confidence and, hopefully, at 
least, an inner pride let us know that she has signed the bill, and it 
makes Governor Kim Reynolds the most pro-life Governor in the history 
of the State of Iowa.
  This accomplishment came about because of the work done by people I 
have mentioned here and many, many more who worked on this, who prayed 
for this, who relentlessly pushed in the right direction to bring about 
a bill that could go to the Governor's desk.
  Governor Reynolds had such a magnificent bill signing ceremony that 
sent such a strong message to the rest of the country; and that message 
to the rest of the country would be this, Madam Speaker: that Iowa, 
this purple State, this State that voted for Barack Obama twice--we 
also went for Donald Trump, I might add. But Iowa actually launched 
Barack Obama's campaign for the Presidency. He slipped in there from 
Illinois and got a big bounce in the first-in-the-Nation caucus, and 
off he went to the Presidency and to his reelect as well, with strong 
support out of Iowa. But he won Iowa each time.
  So prior to President Trump winning in the 2016 election, the time 
before that that went Republican was George Bush's 2004 reelect. We 
worked that hard, and he won Iowa by only 10,000 votes.
  The other time, the next time prior that Iowa had gone for a 
Republican President was Ronald Reagan's reelect in 1984. So that is 
how rare those Iowa victories are.
  We are a purple State, but Iowa Republicans have put up excellent 
leadership, and excellent leadership has emerged from a coalesced 
Republican Party that has been very strong and has hammered out the 
planks in the platform over and over again. They ring with utter 
clarity to me when I read that platform these days, Madam Speaker.
  So I put out this challenge to the States and the rest of the 
country: If purple State Iowa can pass Heartbeat and have the strongest 
pro-life legislation in the United States of America--of the 50 States, 
Iowa has the strongest pro-life legislation passed into law, signed by 
Governor Reynolds--then the challenge that is laid out there for the 
rest of the States is see what you can do. Take a look at Iowa's 
legislation. Move the cleanest you can. No exceptions is best because 
that baby's life begins at the moment of fertilization, and we need to 
protect innocent life from that point on.
  But we can define the beginning of life medically by requiring an 
ultrasound, and that ultrasound, if it picks up a heartbeat, if a 
heartbeat is detected, the baby is protected. That

[[Page H3831]]

phrase rings in the conscience of Americans nationwide. That is why 86 
percent of Republicans support Heartbeat, H.R. 490. That is why 61 
percent of Independents, and that is why 55 percent of Democrats do.
  And, by the way, that 55 percent of Democrats is why no Republican 
will lose their seat for voting for Heartbeat, because Democrats won't 
dare attack you for that. If they do so, they are going against their 
own base, their own people, who are 55 percent pro-life, even though I 
can only count about three over here among the Democrats who will be 
cosponsors of this legislation and, I think, that can define themselves 
as pro-life.

  So I thank all of these individuals who have worked so hard to put 
this whole strategy together, and I spent some time speaking to the 
issue, Madam Speaker, because I want the people to understand that 
things don't come easy and good ideas don't just float to the top and 
sail off to be passed. It takes real work and real organization to get 
things accomplished, and determination and conviction and people who 
believe.
  I look back at Dr. John Willke, who was the founder, the original 
founder of National Right to Life, and that is the oldest and the 
largest pro-life organization in the country. He said this: ``When I 
founded the pro-life movement, it wasn't to regulate how abortions 
would be done. It was to bring the abortion killing to an end. We have 
waited too long, and that wait has cost us too much.'' That is Dr. John 
C. Willke, cofounder and former president of National Right to Life.
  Now, in their mission statement, I am not sure if I have it here in 
my text, Madam Speaker, but I will get it as close as I need to from 
memory if I don't have it.
  National Right to Life's mission statement says that they are 
dedicated to protecting human life from the beginning of life till 
natural death. The beginning of life raised a question with me, so I 
went through their website to find out how they define the beginning of 
life.
  They define it on their website, National Right to Life, as from the 
moment of fertilization. Life begins at the moment of fertilization, 
according to National Right to Life, and ends at natural death.
  I agree with that. I think their mission statement is correct. I 
think we need to defend life from the moment of fertilization until 
natural death, and I think National Right to Life should do the same 
thing.
  But they believe that we should not challenge the Supreme Court. They 
believe that we have to accept Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Planned 
Parenthood v. Casey, and we have to accept the idea of viability that 
was framed within the Casey decision. That is why they have supported 
the 20-week bill, to get up there close to the edge of viability, this 
idea that a 24-week baby can survive outside the womb, a 23-week baby 
can survive outside the womb, a 22\1/2\-week baby can survive outside 
the womb.

                              {time}  1815

  So under the supposition that we work our way back to actually a 21-
week baby can survive outside the womb--and I saw data that said a 
20\1/2\-week also. So the 20-week is marked down there to try to 
stretch the definition of viability just about as far as they could 
bring themselves to do so, but they fear challenging the Supreme Court.
  They are accepting of the Supreme Court decisions, those decisions 
from 45 years ago, 60 million abortions ago, and they are stuck in the 
idea that we can't challenge the Supreme Court.
  Well, how could you not challenge the Supreme Court of the United 
States? This is the United States Congress. Some teach it has three 
coequal branches of government. I said earlier it is not three. There 
is a superior branch of government. There is a branch of government 
that is the weakest of the three, defined by our Founding Fathers, to 
be the judicial branch of government.
  And we have a decision that is called Marbury v. Madison that came in 
in the first years of the 19th century, where the Supreme Court 
asserted their authority to define the Constitution and tell us all 
what it means, and we have acquiesced to that, decision after decision, 
for over 200 years.
  And how can it be that a Supreme Court of lifetime appointees that 
conceivably could all be stacked under the terms of one President and 
live for decades after that and stay on the Court after that that could 
invoke all kinds of havoc on God-given liberties, and we would have no 
way to appeal a decision of the Supreme Court? We just have to accept 
those decisions as if they are the final authority? They are God to us?
  I say we respect them. I think we respect their jurisprudence. I 
think we carefully observe what they do. And I think that most of the 
decisions they make are soundly founded, but some of them are 
completely wrong.
  And they have reversed themselves in their own history, which is 
utter proof that they are completely wrong.
  I would point out that the clearest one is the Kelo decision. They 
haven't reversed it yet, but Justice Scalia said he expected it would 
be reversed at some time.
  But this was the confiscation of property. The Fifth Amendment of the 
Constitution guarantees property rights. It says: ``Nor shall private 
property be taken for public use without just compensation.''
  The Supreme Court of the United States, in the Kelo decision, in 
about 2005, struck those words ``for public use'' from the Fifth 
Amendment of the Constitution.
  Now, how can we tolerate a decision like that and accept it because 
it comes from the Supreme Court? And does it live forever that way?
  Does the Obergefell decision, that legal, rational thought out of 
nowhere, they impose same-sex marriage on every union in America? How 
is it that a decision made by either the Iowa Supreme Court or the U.S. 
Supreme Court has taken away the rights of my sons to be married as 
husbands and wives? Why does the Supreme Court get to visit with that 
edict?
  Because we respect them, we accept those decisions, we don't question 
them, because the culture is what the culture is.
  Well, the culture has got to change, and we have got to change our 
way of looking at this issue of abortion. We cannot sit around and 
twiddle our thumbs or wait until the Supreme Court is configured 
differently.
  But we can do this: we can anticipate it will be configured 
differently. We can call upon the Supreme Court to reverse their 
previous decisions. This idea of stare decisis, the concept that once 
decided, a subsequent court has to accept the decision made by their 
predecessors, this Congress can't do that. Well, we can. We don't. We 
say: No Congress can bind a subsequent Congress. No Congress can say: 
You shall appropriate X dollars going into the future and have that be 
irreversible.
  All decisions made by our predecessors in previous Congresses and 
signed by any previous President can be reversed by the United States 
Congress if it is our will to do that. We don't accept as sacrosanct a 
decision made by a previous Congress, and neither should we accept a 
decision as sacrosanct made by a previous Supreme Court. They should 
all be open to question.
  Yes, we should respect their judgment, their jurisprudence, but we 
can't allow ourselves to be bound by those decisions, even if we have 
to go all the way back to challenge Marbury at some point.
  But we won't have to do that, Madam Speaker, because I believe the 
next appointment to the Supreme Court brings a strict constructionist, 
an originalist, to the Court, as promised by President Trump.
  He followed through with Neil Gorsuch. I believe he will follow 
through with a second appointment to the Court, if given that 
opportunity.
  We need to move Heartbeat legislation over to the desk of Mitch 
McConnell so we can begin to apply how we are going to get it off his 
desk and get it to the floor of the Senate and passed and over to 
President Trump's desk, where he will sign the Heartbeat legislation 
and where the very pro-life Vice President Mike Pence will be standing 
next to him when that day happens.
  All of this needs to unfold here, Madam Speaker, and the obstruction 
really comes from the number one pro-life organization, the largest and 
the oldest: National Right to Life.
  So I will put up only one poster here, Madam Speaker, and this is it. 
National Right to Life says, and this is off

[[Page H3832]]

of their site, they do not oppose the Heartbeat bill.
  By my utilization of the English language, I don't know the 
difference between ``do not oppose'' and ``do not support.''
  But what we need is support, not this intransigence that is going on, 
especially when the leadership in this House has essentially given the 
National Right to Life and two other organizations that, by the way, 
support the Heartbeat bill, a de facto veto that no pro-
life legislation comes to the floor of the House of Representatives 
unless it is supported by the top three organizations in the country.

  Supported by. Does not support. Why? Heartbeat matches their mission 
statement more closely than anything that they have supported before. 
And it is drafted with the anticipation that we would get it before the 
next appointment to the Supreme Court, not this one. And they fear that 
somehow we are going to lose some ground if we go to the Court before 
the Court is ready. And I say I fear for every year we fail to get the 
Heartbeat bill to the Supreme Court, we have on our conscience a 
million abortions in America taking place; a million little babies not 
born; a million little pairs of shoes that aren't going to be sitting 
there by that little bed, by that little crib; a million little 
children, as innocent as could be, who will never have the chance to 
live, to love, to learn, to laugh, to play, to fall in love, have 
children of their own, and raise their children with our American 
values in their hearts, our faith taught to them, their souls saved and 
demonstrated here as they lift our country up and the world up with the 
beliefs and the convictions that were passed to us from God through our 
Founding Fathers.
  And we equivocate on something like this? And National Right to Life 
stands there, essentially in the way? Whether they do not oppose or 
whether they do not support, until that changes, this bill does not 
come to the floor, unless the Speaker changes his mind, the majority 
leader changes his mind, and the majority whip changes his mind.
  So I call upon National Right to Life to take a look at Iowa. It may 
be news to them, Madam Speaker, that Heartbeat passed Iowa. It will be 
litigated. It will be on its way towards the Supreme Court, and maybe 
to the Supreme Court, but there is no acknowledgement that this has 
happened on the part of National Right to Life. It is as if it didn't 
happen for them, because they can't bring themselves to break out of 
the mold that they have been stuck in for years. This is a 45-year 
hidebound mold, and if it doesn't change, it is 1 million abortions a 
year, every year, until it does change.
  This strategy, over the last 45 years, has cost the lives of 60 
million babies. Now, I am not asserting that it could have been solved 
and reversed in the first year or 2, or 5, or even 10. But along the 
way, we have to make the case that the Supreme Court, if they don't 
change, cannot be allowed to be the final word on the lives of another 
60 million babies.
  So, Madam Speaker, congratulations to the State of Iowa, the Iowa 
General Assembly, the Iowa Senate, the Iowa House of Representatives, 
the Iowa Governor, the leadership in the House and in the Senate, all 
of those who teamed up and joined hands and worked relentlessly and 
persistently to bring this Heartbeat bill through, and the signature of 
Governor Reynolds. God bless them all for the job that they did. May we 
match their effort and their success here in the United States 
Congress.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________