[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 13 (Thursday, January 20, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S359-S360]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             MARCH FOR LIFE

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, tomorrow, the streets of our Nation's 
Capital will be filled with Americans from across the country who have 
come to Washington, DC, to march for life. They come to nudge the 
conscience of our Nation, to remind all of us that every day in this 
country, baby girls and boys are being killed by abortion.
  The March for Life, of course, is just one small facet of the pro-
life movement, which works every day in this country to offer help and 
hope to moms in need. Pro-lifers collect supplies for pregnant moms. 
They pay for prenatal care. They assist moms with housing. They help 
moms continue with their schooling or find employment. They provide a 
listening ear to support a mom going through a difficult time.
  The March for Life is just one small facet of that work, but it is an 
important one because abortion is an injustice that happens behind 
closed doors. It is not something that we see happening, and so it is 
all too easy to forget that every day in this country, hundreds of 
babies are being killed by abortion.
  The CDC reports that almost 630,000 babies were killed by abortion in 
2019 alone--630,000. That number is so big, it is almost unfathomable. 
To put 630,000 in some kind of perspective, that is equivalent to 
roughly 70 percent of the population of my State of South Dakota killed 
in 1 year--630,000 unique, unrepeatable human beings; future doctors, 
nurses, farmers and teachers and plumbers and busdrivers and research 
scientists, beloved sisters and brothers and nieces and nephews, future 
moms and dads. That is a lot of lives lost.
  So events like the March for Life are fundamentally important because 
they provide a public witness to the truth about abortion. They remind 
all of us of what can be all too easy to minimize or ignore or forget, 
and that is that in this country, we are denying our most vulnerable 
citizens their most basic right.
  You would think by now that we would have learned our lesson about 
deciding that one group of human beings is expendable; about deciding 
that some human beings are excluded from the protection and dignity 
that every member of the human family should enjoy. Unfortunately, 
history makes clear that great sins are often repeated. But we don't 
have to stay silent in the face of them. Indeed, we

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must not stay silent in the face of them.
  ``Rescue those being led away to death,'' it says in the Book of 
Proverbs. ``[H]old back those staggering towards slaughter. If you say, 
`But we knew nothing about this,' does not he who weighs the heart 
perceive it? . . . Will he not repay everyone according to what they 
have done?''
  The March for Life helps make sure that we can never offer the excuse 
``But we knew nothing about this'' and reminds us of our responsibility 
to speak up to rescue the babies in this country who are being led away 
to death mere weeks or months after their life has begun.
  Those who would defend a supposed right to abortion would like 
Americans to believe that the decision that legalized abortion in this 
country is settled law, but the truth is, it is not. If it were settled 
law, the Supreme Court wouldn't regularly be asked to rule on abortion 
legislation.
  There is a reason why Roe v. Wade has never taken on the character of 
settled law, and that is because it was a fundamentally wrongheaded 
decision; a decision in tension with our most basic beliefs as 
Americans--that every person is endowed by our Creator with certain 
unalienable rights. Chief among them is the right to life.
  Americans are not a perfect people. We have made some very grave 
errors in our past. But Americans are fundamentally a good people. 
While we have not always fully realized the promise of our 
Declaration--the promise of protection for the unalienable rights of 
every person--it is something we keep fighting for and pursuing.
  We really believe in the right to life and liberty and to the pursuit 
of happiness, and we have the sentiments to go with that: a strong 
sense of justice, a passion for the right, an instinct to protect the 
vulnerable. So the idea of killing innocent, vulnerable human beings is 
not something we can easily make our peace with. So it is not 
surprising to me that, despite the best efforts of the pro-abortion 
movement, a strong majority of Americans support restrictions on 
abortion.
  An 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.
  Americans know that abortions kill babies. The pro-abortion movement 
can talk all it wants about blobs of tissue or products of conception; 
science and technology and common sense point inexorably to the 
humanity of the unborn child. And Americans know that human beings 
deserve to be protected even when they are small or weak or 
vulnerable--especially when they are small or weak or vulnerable.
  It is reprehensible that a country like ours, dedicated to the 
defense of human rights, has some of the most extreme abortion laws in 
the world. We are part of just a tiny handful of countries that allow 
elective abortion past 20 weeks of pregnancy. Among those other 
countries are China and North Korea--not exactly the kind of company we 
want to be keeping when it comes to protecting human rights.
  It is time for us to do better. We can do better. And I am so 
grateful for all of the marchers and for all those in the pro-life 
movement who are out there fighting to ensure that we do better.
  ``Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,'' it says in 
the Book of Proverbs. Thank you to all those who are speaking up 
tomorrow. Keep speaking up, and I am confident that sooner or later, 
life will prevail.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Heinrich). The majority leader.

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