[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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