[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5961]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           THE GOSNELL TRIAL

  (Mr. ROKITA asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. ROKITA. Mr. Speaker, I rise to highlight the deeply disturbing 
case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who is currently charged with four counts 
of first-degree murder and one count of third-degree murder related to 
the botched abortions at a Pennsylvania clinic. Former employees have 
testified that he delivered babies and then killed them by snipping 
their spinal cords with scissors. One staffer described this procedure 
as ``literally a beheading.''
  Mr. Speaker, life is precious; therefore, every abortion is a 
tragedy. But this case exposes the full horror of abortion carried to 
its logical end. As columnist Kirsten Powers recently wrote, the 
difference between late-term abortion in the womb and the murder of a 
newborn infant is simply ``merely a matter of geography.''
  In response to a nearly total lack of coverage by mainstream media, 
myself and many Members who stand today here, including Marsha 
Blackburn, Steve Scalise, and a whole cadre of folks that are speaking 
today, wrote to the heads of the major TV networks demanding that they 
cover this and other high-profile abortion controversies.
  Thankfully, this case has begun to receive the attention it deserves, 
and Americans are discovering that this is not about pro-choice versus 
pro-life, but about basic human rights.

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