[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 868-869]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         WHY WE ARE REALLY HERE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Franks) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow is January 22, 2015. It 
marks exactly 42 years to the day since the tragedy called Roe v. Wade 
was first handed down from the United States Supreme Court. Since then, 
every foundation of this Nation has been stained by the blood of more 
than 55 million of its own unborn children. Incomprehensibly, those who 
have profited from it most have hailed it as freedom.
  We should all remember the words of President Abraham Lincoln when he 
said:

       Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for 
     themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

  Mr. Lincoln called upon all of us to remember America's Founding 
Fathers, and ``their enlightened belief that nothing stamped with the 
divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on or 
degraded and imbruted by its fellows.''
  He reminded those he called posterity that when, in the distant 
future, some man, some factions, some interests should set up a 
doctrine that some were not entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness, that ``their posterity''--that is us, Mr. Speaker--that 
``their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of 
Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their Fathers 
began.''
  Mr. Speaker, for the sake of all of those who founded this Nation and 
dreamed of what America could someday be and for the sake of all of 
those since then who have died in darkness so America could walk in the 
light of freedom, it is so very important that those of us who are 
privileged to be Members of the United States Congress pause from time 
to time and remind ourselves of why we are really all here.
  Thomas Jefferson, whose words marked the beginning of this Nation 
said, ``The care of human life and its happiness and not its 
destruction is the chief and only object of good government.''
  The phrase in the Fifth Amendment capsulizes our entire Constitution. 
It says that no person shall be ``deprived of life, liberty, or 
property, without due process of law.''
  The 14th Amendment says no State shall deny ``to any person within 
its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.''
  Mr. Speaker, protecting the lives of all Americans and their 
constitutional rights is why we are all here; yet, today, a great 
shadow looms over America. When authorities entered the clinic of Dr. 
Kermit Gosnell, they found a torture chamber for little babies that 
defies description within the constraints of the English language.
  According to the grand jury report:

       Dr. Kermit Gosnell had a simple solution for unwanted 
     babies. He killed them. He didn't call it that. He called it 
     ``ensuring fetal demise.'' The way he ensured fetal demise 
     was by sticking scissors in the back of the baby's neck and 
     cutting the spinal cord. He called it ``snipping.'' Over the 
     years, there were hundreds of ``snippings.''

  Ashley Baldwin, one of Dr. Gosnell's employees, said she saw babies 
breathing, and she defined one as 2 feet long that no longer had eyes 
or a mouth but, in her words, was making like this ``screeching'' 
noise, and it ``sounded like a little alien.''
  For God's sake, Mr. Speaker, is this who we truly are? Kermit Gosnell 
now rightfully sits in prison for killing a mother and murdering 
innocent children like the one I just described; yet, if he had killed 
these babies only 5 minutes earlier and before they had passed through 
the birth canal, it would have all been perfectly legal in much of the 
United States of America.
  If there is one thing that we must not miss about this unspeakably 
evil episode, it is that Kermit Gosnell is not an anomaly; he is just 
the visible face of this lucrative enterprise of murdering pain-capable 
unborn children in America.
  Mr. Speaker, more than 18,000 very late-term abortions are occurring 
in America every year, placing the mothers at exponentially greater 
risk and subjecting their pain-capable unborn babies to torture and 
death without anesthesia. It is the greatest atrocity in the United 
States.
  According to the Bartlett study, a woman seeking an abortion at 20 
weeks is 35 times more likely to die from an abortion than she was in 
the first trimester. At 21 weeks or more, she is 91 times more likely 
to die than she was in the first trimester.
  Regardless of how supporters of abortion on demand might try to 
suppress it, it is undisputed and universally accepted by every 
credible expert that the risk to a mother's health from abortion 
increases as gestation increases.
  There is no valid debate on that incontrovertible reality; yet 
supporters of abortion on demand try to suppress that.

                              {time}  1730

  They also have tried for decades, Mr. Speaker, to deny that unborn 
babies ever feel pain, even those at the beginning of the sixth month 
of pregnancy, as if somehow the ability to feel pain magically develops 
the very second the child is born.
  Mr. Speaker, almost every other major civilized nation on this Earth 
protects pain-capable unborn babies at this age, and every credible 
poll of the American people shows that they are overwhelmingly in favor 
of protecting these children. Yet we have given these little babies 
less legal protection from unnecessary pain and cruelty than the 
protection we have given farm animals under the Federal Humane 
Slaughter Act. Mr. Speaker, it is a tragedy that beggars my ability to 
articulate.
  But I would submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that the winds of change are 
beginning to blow and that the tide of blindness and blood is finally 
turning in America. Because tomorrow we will vote on the Pain-Capable 
Unborn Child Protection Act in this Chamber, and it will be a vote that 
every one of us will always remember and for which we shall be held 
accountable.
  And no matter how it is shouted down or what distortions, deceptive 
what-ifs, distractions, diversions, gotchas, twisted words, changing 
the subject, or blatant falsehoods the abortion industry hurls at this 
bill and its supporters, it remains a deeply sincere effort, beginning 
at their sixth month of pregnancy, to protect both mothers and their 
pain-capable unborn babies

[[Page 869]]

from the atrocity of late-term abortion on demand; and ultimately, Mr. 
Speaker, it is one all humane Americans can support if they truly 
understand it for themselves.
  Mr. Speaker, not long ago, I heard Barack Obama speak very noble and 
poignant words that, whether he realizes it or not, apply so profoundly 
to this subject. Let me quote, if you will, excerpted portions of his 
comments. He said: ``This is our first task, caring for our children. 
It's our first job. If we don't get that right, we don't get anything 
right. That's how, as a society, we will be judged.''
  The President asked: ``Are we really prepared to say that we're 
powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? 
Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year 
after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?''
  The President also said: ``Our journey is not complete until all our 
children are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm.''
  ``That is our generation's task--to make these words, these rights, 
these values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for 
every American.''
  Mr. Speaker, never have I so deeply agreed with any words ever spoken 
by President Obama as those I have just quoted. How I wish that somehow 
we could all open our hearts and our ears to these incontrovertible 
words and ask ourselves in the core of our souls why these words that 
should apply to all children cannot include the most helpless and 
vulnerable of all children. How does any child become more vulnerable 
than these little pain-capable unborn babies?
  Mr. Speaker, it seems that we are never quite so eloquent as when we 
decry the crimes of a past generation, and we are never quite so 
staggeringly blind as when we assess an atrocity in our own time.
  What we are doing to these babies is real, and all of us here know 
that in our hearts. Medical science regarding the development of unborn 
babies beginning at the sixth month of pregnancy now demonstrates 
irrefutably that they do, in fact, feel pain. Many of them cry and 
scream as they die, but because it is amniotic fluid going over the 
vocal cords instead of air, we can't hear them. It is, Mr. Speaker, the 
greatest human rights atrocity in the United States of America today.
  I began and I close with the wise counsel from Abraham Lincoln to all 
of us. He said: ``Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this 
Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of 
ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or 
another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us 
down, in honor or dishonor, to the last generation.''
  Mr. Speaker, it is time to open our eyes and our souls and recognize 
that protecting pain-capable unborn children and their mothers is not a 
Republican issue or a Democrat issue. It is a test of our basic 
humanity and who we are as a human family. It is time to open our eyes 
and allow our consciences to catch up with our technology. It is time 
for Members of the United States Congress to open our eyes and 
recognize that protecting those who cannot protect themselves is why we 
are all here. And, Mr. Speaker, it is time for all Americans to open 
our eyes and our hearts to the humanity of these little unborn children 
of God and the inhumanity of what is being done to them.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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