[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 164 (Wednesday, September 22, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6599-S6600]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                ABORTION

  Mr. THUNE. Meanwhile, Mr. President, over in the House, Members are 
expected to consider legislation that would, as I said, preempt 
virtually all State restrictions on abortion. Democrats are calling the 
bill the Women's Health Protection Act. A more accurate name might be 
the ``abortion on demand act'' or we could simply refer to it as what 
it is--probably the most anti-life legislation ever to be considered in 
the U.S. Congress.
  This bill would eliminate pretty much any and every abortion 
restriction in every State across the country: parental notification 
laws, informed consent laws. Measures adopted by

[[Page S6600]]

States and upheld by the Supreme Court would disappear under Democrats' 
legislation. The bill would also prevent States from restricting any 
particular method of abortion, no matter how barbaric the method, and 
the bill would make it essentially impossible to impose any meaningful 
restrictions at all on abortion in any stage of pregnancy, including 
after the point of fetal viability, when the baby can survive outside 
its mother.
  The bill would also jeopardize doctors' and nurses' right to refuse 
to participate in abortions and specifically prevent them from having 
recourse under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to protect their 
conscience rights. It would put measures in place to ensure that any 
State pro-life law would face an uphill climb in the courtroom. In 
short, this legislation would make abortion on demand at any time, for 
essentially any reason, the law of the land in the United States.
  I hope--I really do hope--that during debate on this measure the 
Democrats are not going to pretend that their proposed abortion law 
somehow represents the prevailing sentiment of the country--because it 
doesn't. The vast majority of Americans believe that there should be at 
least some restrictions on abortion.
  Gallup has been polling on abortion for decades, and in all that 
time, the percentage of Americans who believe abortion should be legal 
under any circumstances has always remained under 35 percent. In fact, 
for most of the past several decades that number has remained squarely 
under 30 percent.
  A strong majority of Americans support at least some restrictions on 
abortion. Furthermore, the Associated Press poll from this June found 
that 65 percent of Americans believe that abortion should generally be 
illegal in the second trimester, or from about 13 weeks of pregnancy, 
while a whopping 80 percent--80 percent--of Americans believe that 
abortion should generally be illegal in the third trimester.
  And it is not surprising. Americans aren't dumb. And thanks to 
ultrasounds and scientific advances and plain old common sense, they 
know just how ridiculous it is to claim that unborn children are just 
blobs of tissue. Most people are well aware that an unborn baby with 
its own heartbeat and fingers and toes and DNA is, in fact, not a blob 
of tissue but a human being.
  And most people believe that human beings deserve to be protected, 
even when they are small and weak and vulnerable--especially when they 
are small and weak and vulnerable. And so it doesn't surprise me in the 
least that 80 percent of the American people think abortion should 
generally be illegal in the third trimester, because I can't imagine 
anyone being comfortable with the idea of killing a baby who is not 
only, like any unborn baby, a human being worthy of protection, but who 
is actually old enough to survive outside of his or her mother.
  And so, as I said, I really, really hope the Democrats are not going 
to pretend that they are representing the American people with this 
appalling legislation. They are not representing the American people. 
They are representing the radical abortion lobby, and the radical 
abortion lobby is terrified that, as it well knows, it does not have 
the majority of the American people on its side. And so it is relying 
on its Democrat allies to push for perhaps the most radical pro-
abortion legislation ever considered.
  The American people are better than this, and I would hope that the 
Democratic Party would be better than this. The Democratic Party has 
historically portrayed itself as the defender of the little guy. It is 
unfortunate that that doesn't extend to the littlest guys and girls 
among us: the unborn babies in danger of dying from abortion.
  There are hundreds of thousands of abortions in the United States 
every year. That is hundreds of thousands of innocent human lives lost. 
Do we really need to remove even the most modest restrictions on 
abortion?
  While, unfortunately, the vast majority of the Democratic Party is in 
the pocket of the radical abortion lobby, I hope that there are at 
least some--some House Democrats--out there who aren't comfortable with 
this bill in the Democratic Party's extreme abortion politics.
  And I hope that these Democrats will stand up and oppose their 
party's abortion-on-demand legislation. This anti-life legislation is 
an abomination, and it should never, never make it out of the House of 
Representatives.
  I yield the floor.

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