[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 560-562]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       ANNIVERSARY OF ROE v. WADE

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, today is the 37th anniversary of a double 
tragedy for our Nation. On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court of the 
United States twisted the Constitution to create a right to kill babies 
before they are born. Since then, nearly 50 million babies have lost 
their lives. That is more than 40 times the number of Americans who 
died in all of our Nation's wars. Those babies were living human 
beings, and they were killed by abortion.
  Less than 25 years earlier, inspired by the experience of World War 
II, the United Nations unanimously adopted the Universal Declaration of 
Human Rights. The United States voted for it, and it is said to be the 
most widely translated document in the world. Its very first words 
declare that ``recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and 
inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation 
of freedom, justice and peace in the world.'' Article 3 of the 
Declaration states that ``everyone has the right to life.''
  I belong to the human family because I am a living human being. So 
does every Member of the Senate, every citizen of this country, every 
human being on this planet. Each of us was no less a living human 
being, no less a member of the human family, before we were born than 
we are now.
  The facts did not change, but Roe v. Wade represented a radically 
different set of values. In January 1983, President Ronald Reagan said 
that the 10th anniversary of Roe v. Wade was a good time to pause and 
reflect. He said that the real issue with abortion ``is not when human 
life begins, but, What is the value of human life?'' That is still the 
real issue today. Do human beings still have, in the words of the U.N. 
Declaration, inherent dignity and inalienable rights? Or do we have, as 
President Reagan described, ``a social ethic where some human lives are 
valued and others are not''? I will ask to have printed President 
Reagan's profound essay titled ``Abortion and the Conscience of the 
Nation'' in the Record following my statement.
  We have not done enough to address the reasons that many women feel 
they have no alternative but abortion. I applaud the thousands of 
selfless women and men who volunteer and give and work to help women 
choose life. I understand that today there are more pro-life centers 
than abortion clinics in America. But abortion is right or wrong not 
because of why it is done, but because of what it is. Abortion is the 
killing of living human beings.
  A few years ago, Congress considered bills to ban the killing of 
horses and to promote humane treatment of farm animals. A House member 
who supported these bills and co-chaired the Congressional Friends of 
Animals Caucus said: ``The way a society treats its animals speaks to 
the core values and priorities of its citizens.''
  I believe that the way a society treats babies also speaks to the 
core values and priorities of its citizens. As President Reagan said, 
we ``cannot diminish the value of one category of human life--the 
unborn--without diminishing the value of all human life.''
  The result of the Roe v. Wade decision is the first tragedy we should 
mourn today. The second tragedy is the means the Supreme Court used to 
achieve that result. The real Constitution, the one that the people 
established, the one that is the supreme law of the land, the one that 
protects liberty by limiting government, does not contain a right to 
abortion. To achieve the result they wanted, the Justices effectively 
created a different Constitution, and in so doing asserted control over 
the charter that is supposed to control them. The Justices became 
masters over the Constitution they had sworn an oath to support and 
defend.
  So the result of Roe v. Wade diminished the value of human life. The 
means of Roe v. Wade diminished the value of liberty. The Supreme Court 
attempted to impose upon the people a set of values that they still 
reject. Most Americans still oppose most abortions, and last year more 
Americans called themselves ``pro-life'' than the alternative label for 
the time in the 15 years Gallup has asked that question. As President 
Reagan said in 1983, ``despite the formidable obstacles before us, we 
must not lose heart.''
  Today, we are challenged to reach out and to give of ourselves to 
help others. I championed the legislation to help make service a 
national priority. In July 2008, before he was elected President, 
Senator Obama said that when you serve, ``you are connected to that 
fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness not just for ourselves but for all Americans. That's why 
we call it the American dream.'' It might even be called the human 
dream.
  Is that still our dream today? What are our core values and 
priorities? Do we still embrace those universal human values of 
inherent dignity and inalienable rights for all members of the human 
family? Today, Roe v. Wade still gives us an opportunity to pause and 
reflect. That tragic decision, in President Reagan's words, ``has 
become a continuing prod to the conscience of the nation.''
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
President Reagan's essay titled ``Abortion and the Conscience of the 
Nation'' to which I referred.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the National Review, June 10, 2004]

               Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation

       Editor's Note: While president, Ronald Reagan penned this 
     article for The Human Life Review, unsolicited. It ran in the 
     Review's Spring 1983, issue and is reprinted here with 
     permission.
       The 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe 
     v. Wade is a good time for us to pause and reflect. Our 
     nationwide policy of abortion-on-demand through all nine 
     months of pregnancy was neither voted for by our people nor 
     enacted by our legislators--not a single state had such 
     unrestricted abortion before the Supreme Court decreed it to 
     be national policy in 1973. But the consequences of this 
     judicial decision are now obvious: since 1973, more than 15 
     million unborn children have had their lives snuffed out by 
     legalized abortions. That is over ten times the number of 
     Americans lost in all our nation's wars.
       Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted 
     by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one 
     disposed to agree with the Court's result, has argued that 
     the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a 
     right. Shortly after the Roe v. Wade decision, Professor John 
     Hart Ely, now Dean of Stanford Law School, wrote that the 
     opinion ``is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense 
     of an obligation to try to be.'' Nowhere do the plain words 
     of the Constitution even hint at a ``right'' so sweeping as 
     to permit abortion up to the time the child is ready to be 
     born. Yet that is what the Court ruled.
       As an act of ``raw judicial power'' (to use Justice White's 
     biting phrase), the decision by the seven-man majority in Roe 
     v. Wade has so far been made to stick. But the Court's 
     decision has by no means settled the debate. Instead, Roe v. 
     Wade has become a continuing prod to the conscience of the 
     nation.
       Abortion concerns not just the unborn child, it concerns 
     every one of us. The English poet, John Donne, wrote: `` . . 
     . any

[[Page 561]]

     man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; 
     and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it 
     tolls for thee.''
       We cannot diminish the value of one category of human 
     life--the unborn--without diminishing the value of all human 
     life. We saw tragic proof of this truism last year when the 
     Indiana courts allowed the starvation death of ``Baby Doe'' 
     in Bloomington because the child had Down's Syndrome.
       Many of our fellow citizens grieve over the loss of life 
     that has followed Roe v. Wade. Margaret Heckler, soon after 
     being nominated to head the largest department of our 
     government, Health and Human Services, told an audience that 
     she believed abortion to be the greatest moral crisis facing 
     our country today. And the revered Mother Teresa, who works 
     in the streets of Calcutta ministering to dying people in her 
     world-famous mission of mercy, has said that ``the greatest 
     misery of our time is the generalized abortion of children.''
       Over the first two years of my Administration I have 
     closely followed and assisted efforts in Congress to reverse 
     the tide of abortion--efforts of Congressmen, Senators and 
     citizens responding to an urgent moral crisis. Regrettably, I 
     have also seen the massive efforts of those who, under the 
     banner of ``freedom of choice,'' have so far blocked every 
     effort to reverse nationwide abortion-on-demand.
       Despite the formidable obstacles before us, we must not 
     lose heart. This is not the first time our country has been 
     divided by a Supreme Court decision that denied the value of 
     certain human lives. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 was not 
     overturned in a day, or a year, or even a decade. At first, 
     only a minority of Americans recognized and deplored the 
     moral crisis brought about by denying the full humanity of 
     our black brothers and sisters; but that minority persisted 
     in their vision and finally prevailed. They did it by 
     appealing to the hearts and minds of their countrymen, to the 
     truth of human dignity under God. From their example, we know 
     that respect for the sacred value of human life is too deeply 
     engrained in the hearts of our people to remain forever 
     suppressed. But the great majority of the American people 
     have not yet made their voices heard, and we cannot expect 
     them to--any more than the public voice arose against 
     slavery--until the issue is clearly framed and presented.
       What, then, is the real issue? I have often said that when 
     we talk about abortion, we are talking about two lives--the 
     life of the mother and the life of the unborn child. Why else 
     do we call a pregnant woman a mother? I have also said that 
     anyone who doesn't feel sure whether we are talking about a 
     second human life should clearly give life the benefit of the 
     doubt. If you don't know whether a body is alive or dead, you 
     would never bury it. I think this consideration itself should 
     be enough for all of us to insist on protecting the unborn.
       The case against abortion does not rest here, however, for 
     medical practice confirms at every step the correctness of 
     these moral sensibilities. Modern medicine treats the unborn 
     child as a patient. Medical pioneers have made great 
     breakthroughs in treating the unborn--for genetic problems, 
     vitamin deficiencies, irregular heart rhythms, and other 
     medical conditions. Who can forget George Will's moving 
     account of the little boy who underwent brain surgery six 
     times during the nine weeks before he was born? Who is the 
     patient if not that tiny unborn human being who can feel pain 
     when he or she is approached by doctors who come to kill 
     rather than to cure?
       The real question today is not when human life begins, but, 
     What is the value of human life? The abortionist who 
     reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all 
     its parts have been torn from its mother's body can hardly 
     doubt whether it is a human being. The real question for him 
     and for all of us is whether that tiny human life has a God-
     given right to be protected by the law--the same right we 
     have.
       What more dramatic confirmation could we have of the real 
     issue than the Baby Doe case in Bloomington, Indiana? The 
     death of that tiny infant tore at the hearts of all Americans 
     because the child was undeniably a live human being--one 
     lying helpless before the eyes of the doctors and the eyes of 
     the nation. The real issue for the courts was not whether 
     Baby Doe was a human being. The real issue was whether to 
     protect the life of a human being who had Down's Syndrome, 
     who would probably be mentally handicapped, but who needed a 
     routine surgical procedure to unblock his esophagus and allow 
     him to eat. A doctor testified to the presiding judge that, 
     even with his physical problem corrected, Baby Doe would have 
     a ``non-existent'' possibility for ``a minimally adequate 
     quality of life''--in other words, that retardation was the 
     equivalent of a crime deserving the death penalty. The judge 
     let Baby Doe starve and die, and the Indiana Supreme Court 
     sanctioned his decision.
       Federal law does not allow federally-assisted hospitals to 
     decide that Down's Syndrome infants are not worth treating, 
     much less to decide to starve them to death. Accordingly, I 
     have directed the Departments of Justice and HHS to apply 
     civil rights regulations to protect handicapped newborns. All 
     hospitals receiving federal funds must post notices which 
     will clearly state that failure to feed handicapped babies is 
     prohibited by federal law. The basic issue is whether to 
     value and protect the lives of the handicapped, whether to 
     recognize the sanctity of human life. This is the same basic 
     issue that underlies the question of abortion.
       The 1981 Senate hearings on the beginning of human life 
     brought out the basic issue more clearly than ever before. 
     The many medical and scientific witnesses who testified 
     disagreed on many things, but not on the scientific evidence 
     that the unborn child is alive, is a distinct individual, or 
     is a member of the human species. They did disagree over the 
     value question, whether to give value to a human life at its 
     early and most vulnerable stages of existence.
       Regrettably, we live at a time when some persons do not 
     value all human life. They want to pick and choose which 
     individuals have value. Some have said that only those 
     individuals with ``consciousness of self'' are human beings. 
     One such writer has followed this deadly logic and concluded 
     that ``shocking as it may seem, a newly born infant is not a 
     human being.''
       A Nobel Prize winning scientist has suggested that if a 
     handicapped child ``were not declared fully human until three 
     days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the 
     choice.'' In other words, ``quality control'' to see if newly 
     born human beings are up to snuff.
       Obviously, some influential people want to deny that every 
     human life has intrinsic, sacred worth. They insist that a 
     member of the human race must have certain qualities before 
     they accord him or her status as a ``human being.''
       Events have borne out the editorial in a California medical 
     journal which explained three years before Roe v. Wade that 
     the social acceptance of abortion is a ``defiance of the 
     long-held Western ethic of intrinsic and equal value for 
     every human life regardless of its stage, condition, or 
     status.''
       Every legislator, every doctor, and every citizen needs to 
     recognize that the real issue is whether to affirm and 
     protect the sanctity of all human life, or to embrace a 
     social ethic where some human lives are valued and others are 
     not. As a nation, we must choose between the sanctity of life 
     ethic and the ``quality of life'' ethic.
       I have no trouble identifying the answer our nation has 
     always given to this basic question, and the answer that I 
     hope and pray it will give in the future. American was 
     founded by men and women who shared a vision of the value of 
     each and every individual. They stated this vision clearly 
     from the very start in the Declaration of Independence, using 
     words that every schoolboy and schoolgirl can recite:
       We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are 
     created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with 
     certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, 
     liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
       We fought a terrible war to guarantee that one category of 
     mankind--black people in America--could not be denied the 
     inalienable rights with which their Creator endowed them. The 
     great champion of the sanctity of all human life in that day, 
     Abraham Lincoln, gave us his assessment of the Declaration's 
     purpose. Speaking of the framers of that noble document, he 
     said:
       This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of 
     the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble 
     understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. 
     Yes, gentlemen, to all his creatures, to the whole great 
     family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped 
     with the divine image and likeness was sent into the world to 
     be trodden on . . . They grasped not only the whole race of 
     man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the 
     farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their 
     children and their children's children, and the countless 
     myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages.
       He warned also of the danger we would face if we closed our 
     eyes to the value of life in any category of human beings:
       I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of 
     Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon 
     principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If 
     one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it 
     does not mean some other man?
       When Congressman John A. Bingham of Ohio drafted the 
     Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee the rights of life, 
     liberty, and property to all human beings, he explained that 
     all are ``entitled to the protection of American law, because 
     its divine spirit of equality declares that all men are 
     created equal.'' He said the right guaranteed by the 
     amendment would therefore apply to ``any human being.'' 
     Justice William Brennan, writing in another case decided only 
     the year before Roe v. Wade, referred to our society as one 
     that ``strongly affirms the sanctity of life.''
       Another William Brennan--not the Justice has reminded us of 
     the terrible consequences that can follow when a nation 
     rejects the sanctity of life ethic:
       The cultural environment for a human holocaust is present 
     whenever any society can be misled into defining individuals 
     as less than human and therefore devoid of value and respect.

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       As a nation today, we have not rejected the sanctity of 
     human life. The American people have not had an opportunity 
     to express their view on the sanctity of human life in the 
     unborn. I am convinced that Americans do not want to play God 
     with the value of human life. It is not for us to decide who 
     is worthy to live and who is not. Even the Supreme Court's 
     opinion in Roe v. Wade did not explicitly reject the 
     traditional American idea of intrinsic worth and value in all 
     human life; it simply dodged this issue.
       The Congress has before it several measures that would 
     enable our people to reaffirm the sanctity of human life, 
     even the smallest and the youngest and the most defenseless. 
     The Human Life Bill expressly recognizes the unborn as human 
     beings and accordingly protects them as persons under our 
     Constitution. This bill, first introduced by Senator Jesse 
     Helms, provided the vehicle for the Senate hearings in 1981 
     which contributed so much to our understanding of the real 
     issue of abortion.
       The Respect Human Life Act, just introduced in the 98th 
     Congress, states in its first section that the policy of the 
     United States is ``to protect innocent life, both before and 
     after birth.'' This bill, sponsored by Congressman Henry Hyde 
     and Senator Roger Jepsen, prohibits the federal government 
     from performing abortions or assisting those who do so, 
     except to save the life of the mother. It also addresses the 
     pressing issue of infanticide which, as we have seen, flows 
     inevitably from permissive abortion as another step in the 
     denial of the inviolability of innocent human life.
       I have endorsed each of these measures, as well as the more 
     difficult route of constitutional amendment, and I will give 
     these initiatives my full support. Each of them, in different 
     ways, attempts to reverse the tragic policy of abortion-on-
     demand imposed by the Supreme Court ten years ago. Each of 
     them is a decisive way to affirm the sanctity of human life.
       We must all educate ourselves to the reality of the horrors 
     taking place. Doctors today know that unborn children can 
     feel a touch within the womb and that they respond to pain. 
     But how many Americans are aware that abortion techniques are 
     allowed today, in all 50 states, that burn the skin of a baby 
     with a salt solution, in an agonizing death that can last for 
     hours?
       Another example: two years ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer 
     ran a Sunday special supplement on ``The Dreaded 
     Complication.'' The ``dreaded complication'' referred to in 
     the article--the complication feared by doctors who perform 
     abortions--is the survival of the child despite all the 
     painful attacks during the abortion procedure. Some unborn 
     children do survive the late-term abortions the Supreme Court 
     has made legal. Is there any question that these victims of 
     abortion deserve our attention and protection? Is there any 
     question that those who don't survive were living human 
     beings before they were killed?
       Late-term abortions, especially when the baby survives, but 
     is then killed by starvation, neglect, or suffocation, show 
     once again the link between abortion and infanticide. The 
     time to stop both is now. As my Administration acts to stop 
     infanticide, we will be fully aware of the real issue that 
     underlies the death of babies before and soon after birth.
       Our society has, fortunately, become sensitive to the 
     rights and special needs of the handicapped, but I am shocked 
     that physical or mental handicaps of newborns are still used 
     to justify their extinction. This Administration has a 
     Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop, who has done perhaps 
     more than any other American for handicapped children, by 
     pioneering surgical techniques to help them, by speaking out 
     on the value of their lives, and by working with them in the 
     context of loving families. You will not find his former 
     patients advocating the so-called ``quality-of-life'' ethic.
       I know that when the true issue of infanticide is placed 
     before the American people, with all the facts openly aired, 
     we will have no trouble deciding that a mentally or 
     physically handicapped baby has the same intrinsic worth and 
     right to life as the rest of us. As the New Jersey Supreme 
     Court said two decades ago, in a decision upholding the 
     sanctity of human life, ``a child need not be perfect to have 
     a worthwhile life.''
       Whether we are talking about pain suffered by unborn 
     children, or about late-term abortions, or about infanticide, 
     we inevitably focus on the humanity of the unborn child. Each 
     of these issues is a potential rallying point for the 
     sanctity of life ethic. Once we as a nation rally around any 
     one of these issues to affirm the sanctity of life, we will 
     see the importance of affirming this principle across the 
     board.
       Malcolm Muggeridge, the English writer, goes right to the 
     heart of the matter: ``Either life is always and in all 
     circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is 
     inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in 
     some the other.'' The sanctity of innocent human life is a 
     principle that Congress should proclaim at every opportunity.
       It is possible that the Supreme Court itself may overturn 
     its abortion rulings. We need only recall that in Brown v. 
     Board of Education the court reversed its own earlier 
     ``separate-but-equal'' decision. I believe if the Supreme 
     Court took another look at Roe v. Wade, and considered the 
     real issue between the sanctity of life ethic and the quality 
     of life ethic, it would change its mind once again.
       As we continue to work to overturn Roe v. Wade, we must 
     also continue to lay the groundwork for a society in which 
     abortion is not the accepted answer to unwanted pregnancy. 
     Pro-life people have already taken heroic steps, often at 
     great personal sacrifice, to provide for unwed mothers. I 
     recently spoke about a young pregnant woman named Victoria, 
     who said, ``In this society we save whales, we save timber 
     wolves and bald eagles and Coke bottles. Yet, everyone wanted 
     me to throw away my baby.'' She has been helped by Save-a-
     Life, a group in Dallas, which provides a way for unwed 
     mothers to preserve the human life within them when they 
     might otherwise be tempted to resort to abortion. I think 
     also of House of His Creation in Catesville, Pennsylvania, 
     where a loving couple has taken in almost 200 young women in 
     the past ten years. They have seen, as a fact of life, that 
     the girls are not better off having abortions than saving 
     their babies. I am also reminded of the remarkable Rossow 
     family of Ellington, Connecticut, who have opened their 
     hearts and their home to nine handicapped adopted and foster 
     children.
       The Adolescent Family Life Program, adopted by Congress at 
     the request of Senator Jeremiah Denton, has opened new 
     opportunities for unwed mothers to give their children life. 
     We should not rest until our entire society echoes the tone 
     of John Powell in the dedication of his book, Abortion: The 
     Silent Holocaust, a dedication to every woman carrying an 
     unwanted child: ``Please believe that you are not alone. 
     There are many of us that truly love you, who want to stand 
     at your side, and help in any way we can.'' And we can echo 
     the always-practical woman of faith, Mother Teresa, when she 
     says, ``If you don't want the little child, that unborn 
     child, give him to me.'' We have so many families in America 
     seeking to adopt children that the slogan ``every child a 
     wanted child'' is now the emptiest of all reasons to tolerate 
     abortion.
       I have often said we need to join in prayer to bring 
     protection to the unborn. Prayer and action are needed to 
     uphold the sanctity of human life. I believe it will not be 
     possible to accomplish our work, the work of saving lives, 
     ``without being a soul of prayer.'' The famous British Member 
     of Parliament, William Wilberforce, prayed with his small 
     group of influential friends, the ``Clapham Sect,'' for 
     decades to see an end to slavery in the British empire. 
     Wilberforce led that struggle in Parliament, unflaggingly, 
     because he believed in the sanctity of human life. He saw the 
     fulfillment of his impossible dream when Parliament outlawed 
     slavery just before his death.
       Let his faith and perseverance be our guide. We will never 
     recognize the true value of our own lives until we affirm the 
     value in the life of others, a value of which Malcolm 
     Muggeridge says: . . . however low it flickers or fiercely 
     burns, it is still a Divine flame which no man dare presume 
     to put out, be his motives ever so humane and enlightened.''
       Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a 
     free land when some men could decide that others were not fit 
     to be free and should therefore be slaves. Likewise, we 
     cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that 
     others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to 
     abortion or infanticide. My Administration is dedicated to 
     the preservation of America as a free land, and there is no 
     cause more important for preserving that freedom than 
     affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, 
     the right without which no other rights have any meaning.

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