[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 18635]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                   BORN ALIVE INFANTS PROTECTION ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Pitts) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, it was not long ago we were all scratching 
our heads wondering how anyone could ask what the meaning of ``is'' is.
  Words have plain meanings, or at least they used to. And while many 
of us laughed about the President's confusion, this kind of semantic 
game has become a matter of life and death for many newborns because 
many in the abortion industry are trying to convince us that even after 
a child is born, even if he or she is born healthy, the child is not 
really a person. They claim the baby has no rights or legal 
protections, or even the right to live. The U.S. Court of Appeals for 
the Third District has gone so far as to rule in favor of this 
outrageous position.
  This is yet another example of a group of radical judges turning 
kooky ideas into law through a fiat that the Constitution does not 
entitle them to.

                              {time}  1445

  In the case of Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey v. Farmer, 
the court ruled that it was ``nonsensical for a State legislature to 
conclude that an infant's location in or outside the mother's womb has 
any relevance in deciding if the child may be killed. The Court decided 
that all that matters is whether or not the mother intended to have an 
abortion, even if it was a partial-birth abortion, which most Americans 
think is murder.''
  In other words, if a child is born alive because a doctor has induced 
labor as part of an abortion procedure, regardless of how late in the 
pregnancy, the child still may be killed. It does not matter how 
healthy the baby is or how loudly it cries. Once the mother decides to 
abort her child, it makes no difference how the baby exits the womb, we 
may still kill the child with impunity.
  Mr. Speaker, how on Earth can we claim to be a civilized nation when 
we are killing living, breathing children and calling it legal?
  I would like to read a portion of the testimony Jill Stanek gave back 
in July during the hearings on the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. 
Jill is a nurse that worked in a hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois. Her 
hospital, which, I am embarrassed to say, is called Christ Hospital, 
performs abortions for women even in their second and third trimester.
  Jill says that babies at that hospital sometimes survive the abortion 
procedure. These babies want to live, but the hospital lets them die 
anyway. Here is a little bit of her story.
  ``In the event that a baby is aborted alive, he or she receives no 
medical assessments or care but is only given what my hospital calls 
`comfort care.' `Comfort care' is defined as keeping the baby warm in a 
blanket until he or she dies, although even this minimal compassion is 
not always provided. It is not required that these babies be held 
during their short lives.
  ``One night, a nursing coworker was taking an aborted Down's syndrome 
baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents 
did not want to hold him, and she did not have time to hold him. I 
could not bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone in a 
Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes 
that he lived. He was 21 to 22 weeks old, weighed a half pound, and was 
about 10 inches long. He was too weak to move very much, expending any 
energy he had trying to breathe. Toward the end he was so quiet that I 
could not tell if he was still alive unless I held him up to the light 
to see if his heart was still beating through his chest wall. After he 
was pronounced dead, we folded his little arms across his chest, 
wrapped him in a tiny shroud, carried him to the hospital morgue where 
all of our dead patients are taken.
  ``Other co-workers have told me many upsetting stories about live 
aborted babies whom they have cared for.''
  And there is much more.
  Jill's story should horrify every American. We must decide are we a 
civilized nation or will barbaric practices like this continue.
  I urge my colleagues to support the Born Alive Victims Protection 
Act. Let the American people know that we still know what decency 
means.

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