[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15523-15524]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  GRATITUDE FOR PASSAGE OF MICAH'S LAW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Arizona (Mr. Franks) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I am so grateful that yesterday 
this Chamber passed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, or 
Micah's Law. I am especially grateful to everyone who actually voted 
for it and had the courage and the humanity to do so.
  In the years to come, no matter what else they do in this Chamber, I 
believe they will look back on that day as a day they stood for those 
who cannot protect themselves, for the least of their little brothers 
and sisters.
  Mr. Speaker, it was just over 4 years ago that one Kermit Gosnell was 
convicted of killing a mother and murdering innocent late-term, pain-
capable babies in his grisly torture chamber clinic even after they 
were born.
  When authorities entered the clinic of Dr. 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 described 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, this can't be America.
  Kermit Gosnell now rightfully sits in prison for killing a mother and 
murdering innocent children just like the one I just described. And yet 
there was and still is no Federal protection for any of them, and if he 
had killed these pain-capable babies only 5 minutes earlier and before 
they had passed through the birth canal, it would have all been 
perfectly legal in many of these United States of America.
  Now, supporters of abortion on demand have tried for decades to deny 
that unborn babies ever feel pain, even those, they say, 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.
  Now that we have passed Micah's Law, Mr. Speaker, voices who have 
long hailed the merciless killing of these little ones as freedom of 
choice, freedom will now grow louder than ever, especially the ones who 
profit from it most.
  I pray when Senators hear those voices, they will search their own 
souls and 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. Speaker, Abraham Lincoln called upon us to remember that 
magnificent declaration of America's Founding Fathers, and said: ``. . 
. their enlightened belief that nothing stamped with the Divine image 
and likeness was sent into the word to be trodden on, and degraded, and 
imbruted by its fellows.''
  He reminded those he called posterity, that when in the distant 
future some men, 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--

[[Page 15524]]

``might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take 
courage to renew the battle which their Fathers began.'' Wow.
  Mr. Speaker, what we are doing to these little babies is real, and 
all of us here know that in our own hearts. So let me close with a 
final wise counsel from Abraham Lincoln, who stood so strongly for 
human dignity, and it desperately applies to all of us in this moment.
  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, what if the words of the American Declaration of 
Independence really are true? What if there really is a creator? And 
what if these little pain-capable human beings really are his children?

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