[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.
____________________