[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16255-16256]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            ADAM WALSH BILL

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I opened my remarks tonight to say there 
are a lot of issues being considered. Let me in closing mention a great 
event we had today for a bill that will get a fair amount of 
attention--but not the attention it deserves--in affecting people's 
lives in a very direct way. It is called the Adam Walsh bill, named for 
a little boy, 6 years of age, who died 25 years ago today.
  The bill addresses an issue that has been highlighted a lot, most 
recently on television, that has to do with sexual predators which had 
been facilitated a lot by the Internet. This bill establishes two 
registries. One is for sexual predators. Right now there are about 
500,000 we know of in this country; 100,000 we don't know where they 
are. It establishes a registry across the country, a national registry.
  In addition, it will develop a child abuse registry which builds on 
the recommendations and sponsorship initially of a wonderful nonprofit 
group that focuses on the tragedy associated with child abuse, but also 
more constructively and optimistically about what we need to do. That 
is called Childhelp, stationed in Arizona. Senator Kyl is very familiar 
with it.
  One huge disappointment, though, that occurred this week is that we 
passed another bill 2 days ago, the Child Custody Protection Act, which 
focuses on a real tragedy that occurs today, and that is young girls 
taken, not by their parents, across State lines in order to get an 
abortion without notifying their parents, flouting the law and not 
notifying their parents or getting the consent of their parents.
  We passed that bill overwhelmingly, with 65 votes, on the floor of 
the Senate. It passed the House of Representatives months ago, and we 
are ready to go to conference on that particular bill.
  It is very important we go to conference to put an end to this 
tragedy which occurs all too often in this country. We tried to go to 
conference. The Democrats on the other side specifically rejected our 
proposal to go to

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conference. We put forth a unanimous consent request which was denied, 
and that is a real tragedy.
  I will not proffer that unanimous consent request again right now, 
but we will be doing so over the coming days. The Democrats have made 
it very clear that they are going to obstruct the regular order of 
business in going to conference. I am very disappointed, and I think it 
is absolutely wrong.

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