[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 37 (Tuesday, February 25, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1138-S1139]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                Abortion

  Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I rise to have a dialogue. Let me 
start it this way. My brother and I did not always agree on things. I 
know that may be shocking that two brothers did not get along on 
everything. Maybe in your house you got along on everything, but my 
brother and I, growing up, did not agree on everything.
  In fact, growing up, I distinctly remember the day we reached epic 
levels, and we actually got masking tape out in our room and put a line 
down the floor that ran from one wall across to the other wall. We had 
an old-school stereo record player in our room. The line ran up the 
record player so that on one side he had the tuning knob and on the 
other side I had the volume knob. We would have to reach some sort of 
detente to listen to anything. If he turned it to a station I didn't 
like, I could turn the volume all the way down. We would have to work 
things out. The line even went through our closet, with his clothes and 
my clothes on it, and we had a clear line of separation that you could 
not cross that line. The rules were very clear in our room. For 
whatever reason, our mom put up with it for quite a while as we had our 
``Don't cross the line into my side'' kind of moment.
  It is interesting that today in the Senate there was in some ways 
kind of a line-drawing moment to not draw a line but to try to figure 
out where are our lines, where are our boundaries on an issue that 
Americans talk about all the time, in many ways, but always get nervous 
in that dialogue. It is the issue about when is a child a child.
  We have this weird dialogue as a nation because we have a great 
passion for children. We spend a tremendous amount of money, 
personally, on our families and in our communities and in nonprofits 
and Federal taxpayer dollars to walk alongside children to do 
everything we can to protect the lives of those children.
  We have some in this body who have proposed Federal taxpayer dollars 
for children in their very first days of life to have childcare that is 
available for them, but literally 3 days before that, they have also 
proposed Federal tax dollars for abortion to take that life.
  It begs the question: Where is your line on life? What is that 
moment? For me, I go with the science. It is conception. That is a 
dividing cell that has DNA that is different than the mom and different 
than the dad. That dividing cell is a uniquely different person. Every 
science textbook, every medical textbook that you look at would 
identify that DNA is different than any other DNA in the world. That is 
a different person. As those cells grow and divide and as that child 
grows and divides, whether they are 50 years old or whether they are 
only days old still in womb, the DNA is the same. All the building 
blocks are in that child from their earliest days.
  Others will look at it and will ask the question--like the Supreme 
Court did in 1973, when they ruled on Roe v. Wade on the issue of 
viability. That is when the Supreme Court said, in 1973, that States 
can engage and try to make some laws dealing with abortion, which is 
based around this issue of viability. Viability, in 1973, is very 
different than it is now. We have many children who are born at 21, 22, 
23, 24 weeks gestation who are prematurely delivered, spend months in a 
NICU facility, and thrive as adults. That viability question is 
different now than it was in 1973, but we also know more about the 
science now than we knew at that time as well.
  We know that a child--some would say on the science side of it--as 
early as 12 weeks old of development, still in the womb, can feel and 
experience pain. Certainly, by 20 weeks, 21, 22 weeks, they have 
developed a brain and have developed a nervous system. The system of 
experiencing pain is all in place. If anything happens to that child, 
that child will experience the pain and the effects of that.
  The New York Times had a really interesting article in October 2017, 
talking about a young man, Charley Royer. When he was just at 24 weeks 
development in the womb, the parents made a very difficult decision to 
have a surgery in utero. It is spina bifida. The child would be 
paralyzed. The New York Times writes about how they did this surgery--
this very intricate surgery--that happened at Texas Children's Hospital 
at Baylor College of Medicine. They basically delivered the child, 
doing surgery on that child, reinserting the uterus and the child back 
into the mom's womb, and then stayed all the way through until full 
gestation and was delivered.
  Charley is apparently doing very well. It was a remarkable surgery. 
During that surgery, they made sure they helped that child and gave him 
additional medications to protect him from pain because they were doing 
surgery on someone who felt the effects of the surgery at 24 weeks.
  Today we had a vote in the Senate to ask Senators, if you don't agree 
with me on this that the line should be conception, to consider that 
child a child at conception, would you consider that child a child when 
they can experience pain? They have a beating heart. They have a 
functioning nervous system. They have 10 fingers, 10 toes.
  This is not a tissue we are talking about. This is what a child looks 
like in the womb at 20 to 22 weeks. That is a child. The question is, 
Is your line when that child has a beating heart, has a functioning 
nervous system, can experience pain? Is that your line?
  We had that vote today. Unfortunately, this Senate body said no. The 
line is not at conception, and the line is not even when they look like 
this and can experience pain. That bill was voted down.
  There are only four countries in the world that allow abortion on 
demand at any time--four countries left in the world that still abort 
children who look like this, who experience pain, who are in late term. 
It is the United States, North Korea, China, and Vietnam. That is all 
that is left in the world that looks at this and says that is just 
tissue; that is not really a baby.
  This Senate voted again today to affirm that same club that we are in 
with China, North Korea, and Vietnam. That is not a club I want our 
Nation to be in. They are some of the worst human rights violators in 
the world, and they don't recognize the value and the dignity of life. 
We do, or at least I thought we did, but that is not where our line is, 
apparently.
  Today we took another vote in the Senate, and it was a very clear 
line as well to say: OK. If your line is not at conception, and if it 
is not when the child can experience pain, and it is not a late-term 
abortion when the child is actually viable, maybe your line is actually 
when they are delivered, when they are fully out of the womb. We took a 
vote on a bill called the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. 
It is a very straightforward bill. It is not about abortion at all. It 
is about a child who is fully delivered.
  In medical practice, there are times when there is a late-term 
abortion that in the procedure itself to actually conduct the abortion, 
instead of the child being aborted and killed in the womb, it is a 
spontaneous birth that actually occurs, and the child is actually fully 
delivered. The intent was to destroy the child in the womb, but that is 
not what happened. What happened, instead, in a small percentage of 
abortions, was that child was actually delivered. Now the question is, 
the child is no longer in the womb. The child is literally fully 
delivered and is crying on the table in front of you. What do you do? 
We asked the question of this body: Where is your line? Is your line at 
delivery? Even if the intent was originally abortion, that didn't 
occur, is your line at delivery? Unfortunately, this body voted no. We 
could not get 60 Senators of 100 to say even if a child is fully 
delivered outside of the womb,

[[Page S1139]]

crying on the table, that is a child. That is a frightening statement 
about where we are in our culture.

  I have had all kinds of folks say: Well, this is not about 
infanticide. Infanticide is already illegal.
  I said: Yes, that is true.
  In 2002, there was unanimous support in this body, in the Senate, to 
pass a bill saying that if a child is delivered, that would be 
infanticide. The problem was, it left no consequences at all and 
allowed what still happens today where if a child is fully delivered, 
there are no consequences for allowing them to die on the table.
  A couple of years ago, Kermit Gosnell was fully delivering children 
in his abortion clinic. He was fully delivering them, and then he would 
take scissors, flip the child over, and snip their spinal cord to kill 
them. He is in prison right now for carrying out that act because that 
was considered infanticide. But what is still legal is allowing the 
child to just lie there on the table until they slowly die.
  Jill Stanek is a nurse who has practiced for years in Illinois. She 
gave testimony in a hearing not long ago and testified multiple times 
about what is going on in some of these abortion facilities and what 
happens when a child is fully delivered and they are still alive. In 
her experience, what she has watched before, she has noticed that 
children will live outside the womb. These are viable children lying on 
the table, or in her particular hospital, they literally took the child 
to a linen closet and closed the door and left him there. They would 
live somewhere between an hour and, some children, as long as 8 hours, 
just waiting to die. Ladies and gentlemen, in ancient times, it was 
called exposure when you would take a child and set them outside to die 
without medical care.
  Our vote today was, if a child is fully delivered, should they get 
medical care, or should we just allow medical facilities to just back 
off and allow them to slowly die? And today this Senate could not get 
60 votes to say we should at least give medical care to that child 
instead of allowing them to slowly die on the table on their own--a 
child literally crying, kicking their feet, but ignored. I would hope 
we are better than that as a country, but apparently the line has still 
not been discovered for the value of a child. I am one who believes 
that a child has great value, a child has great worth. Whether that 
child is a kindergartner or in the womb, that child has value. As a 
culture, we should stand for the value of every child.
  I am amazed, absolutely amazed when I think about the fact that 100 
years ago, my wife, my mom, and my daughters would not have been able 
to vote. I can't even process that 100 years ago, my wife, my mom, and 
my daughters would not have been allowed to vote in America. What were 
we thinking as Americans that we did that?
  I am amazed that there was a time in America not that long ago where 
if you were of Japanese descent, they rounded you up, put you in camps, 
and held you, as an American citizen, just because you were of Japanese 
descent. I can't even process the fact that we did that as Americans.
  I cannot believe there was a time in America where we looked at 
African Americans and said: That is three-fifths of a man. I cannot 
even process that was in our law, that we declared a human being three-
fifths of a person.
  I am so grateful that we no longer round up people because they are 
of Japanese descent, that we allow women to vote, and that we consider 
all people equal. I am so grateful that time has passed. I long for the 
day, which I believe is coming, that we as a nation look back and say: 
What were we thinking that we allowed children to live or die based on 
our convenience? And if a child was inconvenient, we just killed them 
or we set them on the table and allowed them to slowly die from 
exposure because they were inconvenient in the moment. There will be a 
day when we will look back on this season in American history and we 
will say: What were we thinking that we considered some children more 
valuable than others, that we considered some lives worth living and 
some to just be thrown away?
  What is your line? When is a life worth protecting? When does life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness actually apply to you in America? 
I wish it was conception or at least when they can experience pain or 
at least when they are fully born, but this body has not yet found the 
moment when we can agree that life is valuable. I long for the day that 
we do.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.