[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 1492-1493]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            SILENT GENOCIDE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Madam Speaker, it is February 6, 2008, in the 
land of the free and the home of the brave. And before the sun set 
today in America, almost 4,000 more defenseless unborn children were 
killed by abortion on demand. That is just today. That is more than the 
number of innocent American lives lost on September 11, only it 
happens, Madam Speaker, every day in America.
  It has now been exactly 12,798 days since the judicial fiat called 
Roe v. Wade was handed down. Since then, the very foundation of this 
Nation has been stained by the blood of almost 50 million of our own 
unborn children. And all of them, Madam Speaker, had at least four 
things in common: they were just little babies who had done nothing 
wrong to anyone; each one of them died a nameless and a lonely death; 
each of the mothers, whether she realizes it immediately or not, will 
never be the same; and all the gifts that these children might have 
brought to humanity are now lost forever.
  Yet even in the full glare of such tragedy, this generation clings to 
blindness and invincible ignorance while history repeats itself, and 
our own silent genocide mercilessly annihilates the most helpless of 
all victims to date, those yet unborn.
  Madam Speaker, perhaps it is important for those of us in this 
Chamber to remind ourselves again of why we are really all here. Thomas 
Jefferson said, ``The care of innocent human life and its happiness and 
not its destruction is the chief and only object of good government.'' 
Madam Speaker, protecting

[[Page 1493]]

the lives of our innocent citizens and their constitutional rights is 
why we are all here. It is our sworn oath. The phrase in the 14th 
amendment capsulizes our entire Constitution. It says, ``No State shall 
deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of 
law.'' The bedrock foundation of this Republic is the declaration, not 
the casual notion, but the declaration of the self-evident truth that 
all human beings are created equal and endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights, the right of life, liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness.
  Every conflict or battle our Nation has ever faced can be traced to 
our commitment to this core self-evident truth. It has made us the 
beacon of hope for the entire world. It is who we are. And yet another 
day has passed, Madam Speaker, and we in this body have failed again to 
honor that commitment. We have failed our sworn oath and our God-given 
responsibility as we broke faith with nearly 4,000 more unborn children 
who died without the protection that we should have given them.
  Perhaps tonight, Madam Speaker, maybe someone new who hears this 
sunset memorial will finally realize that abortion really does kill a 
baby, that it hurts mothers in ways that we can never express, and that 
12,798 days spent killing nearly 58 million children in America is 
enough. Perhaps we will realize that the next time we meet that America 
is great enough to find a better way than abortion on demand.
  And so tonight, Madam Speaker, may each of us remind ourselves that 
our own days in the sunshine of life are numbered and that all too soon 
each of us will walk from these Chambers for the very last time, and if 
it should be that this Congress is allowed to continue on yet another 
day to come, may that day be the one when we hear the cries of the 
unborn at last. May that be the day that we find the humanity, the 
courage and the will to embrace together our human and our 
constitutional duty to protect the least of these, our tiny American 
brothers and sisters, from this murderous scourge in our Nation called 
abortion on demand.
  Madam Speaker, it is February 6, 2008, 12,798 days since Roe v. Wade 
in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

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