[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 9 (Wednesday, January 15, 2020)]
[House]
[Pages H246-H247]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              ROE V. WADE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Budd) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BUDD. Mr. Speaker, the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade was 
decided 47 years ago this month. Since abortion was made legal, more 
than 60 million unborn children have had their lives prematurely ended.
  This is a matter of conscience, and just like the plurality of 
American people, I believe that life begins at conception.
  In recent years, advances in science and medicine have given us an 
increasingly vivid picture of what life in the womb is like. A child 
has a heartbeat at just 6 weeks. A child feels pain at just 20 weeks. 
Science makes it clear that life exists in the womb, and, therefore, an 
unborn child is entitled to the most fundamental of human rights, and 
that is the right to live.
  Even the plaintiff in that landmark case, Norma McCorvey, who at that 
time went by the name Jane Roe, changed her view and worked on behalf 
of the pro-life movement. She said: I think I have always been pro-
life, but I just didn't know it.
  Roe v. Wade is not only a human tragedy but a constitutional one as 
well.
  In our Constitution, power is divided among three branches: Article 
I, Congress; Article II, the Presidency; and Article III, the courts. 
Congress makes the laws, the Executive enforces them, and the courts 
apply them.
  Courts should not be in the business of striking down acts of 
Congress or State statutes simply because the individual judges have 
political disagreements with what the people's representatives have 
decided. In our constitutional system, judges may strike down laws only 
if those laws conflict with the Constitution, our country's supreme 
law.
  But that is not what happened in Roe v. Wade. Five Justices created a 
right to abortion by reinterpreting the Due Process Clause of the 
Constitution. That clause says that no State may deprive anyone of 
life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
  But even supporters of the decision have cast doubt on this 
justification. Harvard Law School's Laurence Tribe wrote: ``One of the 
most curious things

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about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive 
judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.'' And even Justice 
Ruth Bader Ginsberg had called the decision ``heavyhanded judicial 
intervention'' that was ``difficult to justify.''

  Essentially, the Court went out of its way to commit one of the most 
dramatic cases of judicial overreach in history. Instead of letting 
each State decide the issues for themselves, five Justices circumvented 
the system and created a decades-long human tragedy that continues to 
this day.
  Since Roe, individual States have been valiantly trying to impose 
some sort of moral and legal safeguards on abortion. They have enacted 
laws prohibiting racial and gender discrimination in abortions; laws 
requiring women to see ultrasounds of their babies before committing to 
ending the unborn child's life; laws prohibiting abortion after a fetal 
heartbeat has been detected; and laws banning dismemberment abortions, 
where the doctor would have to physically tear the baby apart. Sadly, 
all of these laws have been struck down by judges claiming to follow 
the precedent of Roe v. Wade.
  The human toll of this tragic overreach is staggering. Not only have 
over 60 million innocent children lost their lives, but the mothers of 
these children have had to live with the lasting psychological impacts 
that these abortions have had on them. Scientific studies have shown 
that women who have had abortions have a higher risk of mental health 
conditions like depression.
  How could anyone turn a deaf ear and blind eye to the suffering of 
these vulnerable children and mothers? This issue transcends what it 
means to be an American and goes to the core of what makes us human.
  Complex issues like this one are often fraught with controversy and, 
yes, heated tempers; but at the heart of that complexity and emotion 
lies a simple fundamental truth, and that is that unborn children 
deserve human rights.
  I hope that one day soon the Supreme Court corrects their 
constitutional error so that the American people can reassert their 
voice in determining the moral question of our time.

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