[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15256]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                        EXECUTING PREGNANT WOMEN

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, if a woman on death row is pregnant, should 
she or should she not be executed? That is the question that was 
recently posed to the Vice President, by Tim Russert on Meet the Press. 
The Vice President responded, ``I don't know what you're talking 
about.''
  When Mr. Russert asked the question again, the Vice President laughed 
and said he would want to think about it. The next day, Mr. Gore 
emerged from his campaign headquarters and said that it should be up to 
the felon to decide.
  Mr. Speaker, most people on death row are there because they have 
willfully taken another life, often several of them. The death penalty 
is not given for manslaughter or third degree murder. It is only given 
to perpetrators of the most horrible crimes.
  How on Earth could the Vice President believe that we should be 
asking these people for permission to kill their innocent, unborn 
children along with themselves?
  Is the child guilty of the crimes as the mother? Obviously not.
  We have had laws for hundreds of years against executing pregnant 
death row inmates.
  Mr. Speaker, the Vice President's position on this issue is wrong. It 
is callous and cruel.

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