[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6621]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            ABORTION DEBATE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LANKFORD. Abortion is one of the most divisive issues in America. 
One side sees the child in the womb as nothing but tissue, like a skin 
mole, and no one should tell a women when and if she can have an 
unnecessary and inconvenient tissue removed from her body. The other 
side looks at that ``tissue'' in the womb and sees it sucking its 
thumb, reacting to her mother singing, and possessing unique DNA, and 
asks the question: How can that not be a child?
  The debate about life will not be resolved today, though for the sake 
of millions of children who will die in the womb in abortion clinics, I 
wish it could have been resolved yesterday. H.R. 3, which we will be 
discussing all day today asks the question: Should the Federal 
Government ever use taxpayer dollars to pay for or supplement 
abortions?
  When the Nation is so divided over this issue, isn't it common sense 
not to force a person who is passionately opposed to the death of the 
unborn to assist in paying for the procedure?
  H.R. 3 also protects the conscience of health care providers to not 
be forced to perform a procedure that they believe violates their most 
basic oath: Do no harm.
  Each year, this Congress votes to prohibit abortion funding through 
our appropriations process. It's time that we settled this issue 
permanently and clearly. No taxpayer funding, support, or tax 
incentives of abortion in any way for this year, in any future year.
  In a day of skyrocketing debt, how can we justify supplementing 
abortion and saying that it's a necessary and essential element of 
government? I think we cannot.
  This is time to resolve this issue. I strongly encourage my 
colleagues to support H.R. 3 today in that vote.

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