[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2757-2763]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to be recognized to 
address you here on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives, this great deliberative body.
  To start this off, I yield to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. 
Fortenberry).
  Mr. FORTENBERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa. 
Perhaps this will embarrass you, my colleague, Steve King, but as I was 
flying into Nebraska last week--and I do this on occasion--I am looking 
out of the window and looking at the rolling hills of the western edge 
of Iowa as it borders the Missouri River and all of that beautiful 
terracing that has been done, all of that extraordinarily productive 
farmland, in order to save the soil and increase yields, and I wonder 
how much of that Steve King did himself in a former life. So I am 
grateful not only for the opportunity but mostly for your friendship.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. The answer would be a fair amount, and I yield to 
the gentleman.
  Mr. FORTENBERRY. Mr. Speaker, as I was going through my mail last 
week, I read a publication that I receive frequently at my house from 
what is known as the Great Plains Trail Network. This is a dedicated 
group of people who enjoy, promote, and foster the growing network of 
hiking and biking trails in my hometown of Lincoln and the vicinity. 
They provide an extraordinary service to our community. Most notably, 
the trail systems provide an alternative means of transportation, 
physically linking our community in creative ways along creek beds and 
underpasses, through open plains and wooded areas, and beside the 
wooden fences between residential neighborhoods. These trails also link 
us in a more profound way. They link us to the values of healthy 
exercise, neighborliness, and the beauty of nature--even in the setting 
of the urban city environment.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I received an unusual media request recently. New 
York Magazine wished to speak to me. I took the meeting because I 
wanted to give a broader perspective on the issue of environmental 
stewardship, particularly in light of policy debates about energy and 
the environment. Since this topic can be so toxic, I thought it was 
important to reframe the issues with some prairie perspective, if you 
will. Perhaps, Mr. Speaker, it is time to spike the football and focus 
on solutions and activities that all of us can agree on and that all of 
us see are beneficial.
  Mr. Speaker, for the 21st century, we must harmonize environmental 
and economic security. As a different public policy approach, I am 
considering a new idea called the zero-emissions energy credit, or 
ZEEC.

                              {time}  1600

  The more that we can do, I believe, to stop waste and pollution 
through conservation and innovation gives us peace of mind in regards 
to the proper use of our resources.
  This ZEEC concept would reward reduced emissions through a tax credit 
system. In this way, the government is not picking one technology over 
another or fighting over one regulation versus another, but positively 
valuing the diminishing externality cost of polluting emissions.
  Mr. Speaker, environmental initiatives can also take many other 
forms. I am very proud to be recently named the co-chair of the 
International Conservation Caucus, called the ICC. It is one of the 
largest bipartisan caucuses in the Congress.
  The ICC works to ensure the sustainability of both persons and 
wildlife, works to promote market innovation, as well as proper 
stewardship of our precious natural resources.
  As an example, not long ago, in the African country of Mozambique, in 
the midst of a civil war, the Gorongosa National Park was completely 
stripped of wildlife and devoid of people. A once lush microecosystem 
is dead, primarily due to political disagreement.
  Interestingly, fascinatingly, extraordinarily, a mere 10 years later, 
thanks to the work of a major philanthropist and a receptive 
government, a park system now teams with wildlife, with indigenous 
people reintegrated back into their homeland, who are engaged in now 
good and sustainable farming methodologies, engaged in park management, 
as well as conservation, all creating an atmosphere in which the entire 
ecosystem once again thrives.
  Mr. Speaker, I don't know anyone in this body or anywhere else who 
wants dirty air or dirty water. However, as another example, if you 
live in Beijing, polluted air alone costs you 5\1/2\ years off your 
life. Parts of India are perhaps worse.
  By the way, the Chinese Government was infuriated with the United 
States because we created at our embassy a pollution monitoring device, 
and then publicly released that data to Chinese society. It had a major 
effect. As one Chinese person once whispered to me: What is the point 
of all this economic development if it kills you?
  Economic development without a soul strips us of the capacity to 
fully prosper. On the other hand, one of the prime contributors to 
environmental desecration is economic underdevelopment. Persons who 
have diminished economic options will use the resources at hand, 
sometimes merely to survive.
  The tragedy of the commons occurs when there are fractured social 
linkages, a lack of access to technology and information to feed, 
clothe, and house in a more sustainable way.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe this: as new technologies emerge, we may see 
exciting opportunities to build our own sustainably sourced microenergy 
economy, one that harmonizes with the environment and creates new 
economic opportunities and linkages.
  This doesn't mean we all live on game preserves, but through proper 
public policy and innovation, we may be on the trail to environmental, 
economic, and community security, and perhaps create a new type of 
Great Plains Energy Network.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend, Congressman King, for the 
various aspects of leadership he has provided, particularly today, on 
an essential issue: a pro-life issue.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the gentleman 
from Nebraska (Mr. Fortenberry) for his presentation here today, his 
friendship, and the job he has been doing for a long time representing 
the eastern third of Nebraska, generally speaking.
  I would point out also, Mr. Speaker, that we actually first met on 
the pro-life issue. As I was looking at the primary candidates that 
were vying for that position in eastern Nebraska, I wanted to measure 
their character, the content of their character, the value of their 
faith and their commitment to principle and planning and Constitution, 
but especially life. In looking at the candidates, it didn't take very 
long to figure that out.
  I think Nebraskans have done very well with the representation that 
they have sent to this Congress, especially in the case of Mr. 
Fortenberry, who has exceeded my expectations. And I am pleased to say 
that here.
  As the gentleman indicated, I came to the floor here this afternoon, 
Mr. Speaker, to speak about life, about innocent, unborn human life.
  To start with, I will put it this way, Mr. Speaker. There are a 
series of values that we hold dear. Many of the debates here on this 
floor and in the committees and the various committee rooms around the 
Hill that we have are more or less working around the edges of the 
central issue. Sometimes, though, we do get to the central issue. The 
central issue was debated here on the floor earlier with a different 
piece of legislation.
  When young people are growing up in America and they are listening to 
their parents, their teachers, other friends and relatives and 
schoolmates, the question will emerge--and you can't

[[Page 2758]]

grow up in America without the question of abortion emerging; and 
sometimes they are counseled on one side of that question and sometimes 
on the other--but when I am talking to young people, I want them to 
shape their values around the most solid principles, as our Founding 
Fathers shaped the values of America around the solid moral principles.
  It doesn't do to simply pass off the idea of abortion and say: I am 
not going to think about it; or I am going to leave it up to God to 
decide. He calls on us also to contemplate these things.
  Our Founding Fathers wrote into the Declaration of Independence that 
we have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When I 
contemplate those words and the order of those words, often it is 
conflated together as equal or equivalent values as if life and the 
pursuit of happiness are equivalent values, with liberty in the middle 
of all that, and you can stir it up and no one's pursuit of happiness 
should be diminished by someone else's search for liberty or the 
exercise of their liberty or that no one's life should trump that of 
someone else's pursuit of happiness or liberty.
  Mr. Speaker, in understanding the Declaration of Independence, the 
foundational document that undergirds our Constitution and the most 
beautiful document written in the history of the nation-state--and I 
believe that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were 
inspired with divine guidance, just a little bit lower standard of true 
than divine inspiration; a divine guidance--I believe our Founding 
Fathers thought deeply about that message that was coming to them from 
above and the words that were put down on that parchment by Thomas 
Jefferson.
  The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were rights 
that were considered carefully to be prioritized in their order of what 
was the most important down to the least important of the three. Life 
came first. They didn't say right to pursuit of happiness, to liberty, 
to life. They didn't say right to liberty, pursuit of happiness, and 
then to life. They wrote life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
  To understand what that means, think of this. First, the definition 
of pursuit of happiness is understood by our Founding Fathers. Our 
Founding Fathers didn't see this pursuit of happiness as let's just say 
a tailgate party on a Saturday noon or early Saturday afternoon. It 
wasn't about going off to a party or sitting in your backyard with your 
family or doing the things we enjoy to do, enjoying sports, watching or 
participating; or being out on the water or down the ski slopes.
  That was not imagined at all as the pursuit of happiness because they 
understood pursuit of happiness to be the definition of the Greek term 
that I pronounce eudemonia, pronounced with a Greek accent. But what it 
means is: in pursuit of happiness.
  Happiness under the Greek understanding of the term was the whole 
person; to develop one's self as the whole person. That would be to 
develop yourself physically. As you grow into adulthood, keep yourself 
in shape, build your muscles up, eat healthy, sleep healthy, do the 
healthy things, make sure that this temple of our body is taken care of 
and respected and appreciated. That is the vessel through which we 
carry our values and are able to carry out many of the things we do in 
our lives.
  So physical health was part of the pursuit of happiness, but also the 
mental development. And it is not just pursuing knowledge, not rote 
memorization alone, which has its value--always has, always will have--
but also the understanding of a philosophical person and an 
intellectually complete individual to complement the physically healthy 
and in-shape individual, philosophically sound, intellectually sound, 
but also theological sound.
  That is eudemonia. That is the complete human being. That is making 
the most out of God's gift to us and developing ourselves physically, 
mentally, emotionally, theologically, and psychologically. The whole 
human being.
  The understanding that our Founding Fathers had was that you have a 
right to pursue this. You have a right to develop yourself. In fact, 
the implication is that we have an obligation to do so. That means we 
have got an obligation to evaluate the moral questions in front of us 
with the brain that we are given and the values that we have developed 
and the education that we worked to earn.
  That is pursuit of happiness. But that is the lowest of the three on 
the priority, Mr. Speaker.
  The next value is liberty. With that value of liberty, there are 
certain things that are liberty. We take liberty with our speech. We 
take liberty with our religion. We take liberty with the press. We have 
our right to assemble and all of those things. If someone is in pursuit 
of happiness, they are not going to take away our rights to our 
liberty.
  Most of our rights to liberty are wrapped up in the Bill of Rights. 
The First Amendment catches the most important ones early. Also, the 
liberty to keep and bear arms, the property rights that come along in 
the Fifth Amendment, the components of liberty that we have and the 
provisions that allow us to face a jury of our peers and no double 
jeopardy. Those are liberties. The liberties that are defined trump the 
pursuit of happiness. In other words, someone else can't take away our 
freedom of speech because they are in search of a good tailgate party.
  We go from the lowest priority, the pursuit of happiness, to the next 
level up, liberty, and to the highest level up, which is the right to 
life. Life itself is sacred.
  When I talk to young people, I ask them the question: Do you believe 
that human life is sacred in all of its forms?
  They look around each other in the bleacher seats in the gymnasium, 
if it happens to be a school in that fashion, and they come to a 
consensus: Yes.
  And I will ask them: Is your life sacred? How about the person 
sitting next to you, is their life sacred?
  After a little while, they start to nod their heads and agree.
  It is no trick question. Human life is sacred in all of its forms. 
Once we understand that and we accept that universal consensus that is 
here in this society of America, then the only other thing we have to 
say is: Well, if human life is sacred and we protect it with all that 
we have, then we need to know when life begins and we need to know when 
life ends.
  We know that in 1973, 44 years ago, the Supreme Court came to a 
conclusion. Well, actually, they didn't know, but they spoke of 
viability and they used a vague, mushy definition of viability and 
trimesters, but that is not a way to define life. When you deal with 
something that is sacred in all of its forms, you don't use a 
definition that says maybe it is or maybe it isn't a life; maybe it is 
viable, maybe it isn't; maybe it has actually crossed this threshold of 
this trimester or this one or this one.
  So what they ended up in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the 
combination of the two was abortion on demand and the person's right to 
life. That personhood that begins at the moment of conception is 
subject to the judgment of the mother, who may think that this life is 
inconvenient to her liberty or her pursuit of happiness.

                              {time}  1615

  That was when they crossed a moral line that needs to be examined by 
everyone in this country who goes to the polls and votes or conducts 
themselves in a fashion that is affected by the abortion industry 
itself.
  So I say to them, students especially: Is human life sacred in all of 
its forms?
  The answer comes back: Yes, it is.
  And then I say: Then you have to choose a moment that life begins, 
and that moment, there is only one moment that we know, and that is the 
moment of conception. That moment of conception that life begins is a 
moment that I believe that God places the soul in that little being 
that is a full complement of a combination of the DNA of the father and 
the mother, the full complement of the human being, a unique human 
being, a unique human being that there will never be another one 
exactly like that little baby that is conceived.
  There will never be another one. Even identical twins have their 
distinctions, Mr. Speaker. Mothers can tell

[[Page 2759]]

them apart. Not always easily, but they can tell. Fathers can tell 
little babies apart. Even though they have got matching DNA that is 
exactly the same DNA, they are still unique. They are still a little 
bit different in certain ways. Their personalities develop in different 
ways, and they have physical characteristics that become more and more 
apparent as the years go on. There are no two human beings exactly the 
same. That is because God made it that way. Think of how unique this 
is.
  There are over 7 billion people now on this planet. Our population 
has gone over 7 billion people. Of all the people who have gone to 
their graves throughout history from the beginning of time, from the 
Garden of Eden until today, and all the people who live on the planet, 
7 billion today, and of all the people who will come, likely by the 
billions, into the future, there are no two faces that are the same. 
They sometimes look a little the same--more than a little--but there 
are no two faces that are the same. There are no two faces that anybody 
who knows them can't tell the difference.
  Think how genius it is to create a species, Homo sapiens. We each 
have a unique visage that will never be matched again throughout the 
duration of time. It has never been matched before from the beginning 
of time, and no matter what any scientist might do in a laboratory, 
there is never going to be anybody exactly the same, even if the DNA 
matches exactly. That is a unique approach to this.
  Think about this: The thing that we measure ourselves by and 
recognize ourselves by, our face, our visage, carries with it the 
package of all of the emotions and the thoughts and the expressions 
that bypass so much need to use the words in this very excellent 
language that we have.
  Think of how you interact with your friends, your family, your 
neighbors, when you are sitting at a meeting, when you are giving 
facial expressions that don't require a sound. People read those facial 
expressions, and they react off of them.
  I think of the days that I am out, as Mr. Fortenberry said, working 
on a crew, maybe laying pipe with my three sons, and we may not even 
have to speak all day long because facial expressions, a nod here and 
there, we know each other, we can communicate with our facial 
expressions, and that is enough. That is a unique thing that we have 
been blessed with.
  Every one of us is unique. Our lives begin at the moment of 
conception. We can't measure and we can't prove scientifically when 
that moment of conception is. We just know. We know that that is when 
that baby, when the components of the DNA of the father and the mother 
come together in that fertilized egg. That is the moment of conception; 
that is the moment that life begins.
  I would like it if we could identify scientifically, if a little bell 
went off and we knew, here is conception. There is a unique little life 
here in the womb of the mother--and, by the way, she is a mother at 
that moment. But we can't do that yet.
  We have come a long way. When our family was born, at that time, we 
couldn't tell whether it was a boy or a girl, and so it was nice, in my 
opinion, to have a surprise on whether it is a boy or a girl. Of 
course, I always prayed that they would be mentally healthy and, after 
that, physically healthy, but never began to ask whether it should be a 
boy or a girl.
  But today we know. We can measure if it is a boy or a girl. We can 
tell facial characteristics. We can see the personality of these little 
unborn babies in the womb. When they make faces, you can see them 
grimace. You can see them smile. You can see them suck their thumb. 
There are many, many people in this country today who have a 4-D 
ultrasound of one or more of their children that is taken well before 
they are born.
  I can think of one of my district personnel who has, in his office in 
Sioux City, a framed picture of the ultrasound of Joseph Dean Anderson, 
my godson. It is there, framed, the ultrasound of that little baby boy 
months before he was born. Now he is about 7 years old or so, perfect 
little towheaded, blond-haired kid running around, full of happiness, 
love, and energy. But he was first known in his mother's womb and first 
recognized as a family member there and his picture framed. It still is 
there in the office in Sioux City. He is about tall enough to see it 
straight on these days.
  That happens all over America because we know that life begins at the 
moment of conception. We hold it; we cherish life as sacred to us.
  These little babies are the future of America. They are God's will, 
and they are the future of America. Yet, nearly 60 million of them have 
been aborted over the years since 1973 and Roe v. Wade, nearly 60 
million. Think of that, 60 million babies in 44 years. And we are 
watching a nation that has a birthrate now that is lower than the 
replacement rate.
  You hear debate on this floor, Mr. Speaker, that says that we have to 
go to foreign countries to bring people in here to do the work that we 
don't have enough people to do. I don't accept that as a rational thing 
for a country to do in that way.
  What we need in this country is we need good people to have more 
babies and raise them right, and yet we are missing 60 million. That 
doesn't include the second generation of those who were aborted in the 
first half of the 44 years of Roe v. Wade.
  Thomas Jefferson concluded that a generation was 19 years. It is 
probably a little longer than that today. Generations turned over, by 
his estimation, in 19 years. It is just convenient for me, 44 years 
since Roe v. Wade, I am going to call that, divided by two, two 
generations, 22 years a generation. Two generations, a third of 
Americans, gone because of a court decision that unjustly found, 
unconstitutionally found, immorally found, irrationally found, and the 
guilt that this Nation carries for tolerating a Supreme Court decision 
and accepting that Supreme Court decision.
  But it is not everybody in this country who carries that guilt 
because we have armies of pro-life workers who are out there on a daily 
basis doing all they can to bridge the gap for, let's say, a mother who 
is in a crisis and can't care for the baby that is on the way; the 
crisis pregnancy centers that are there; the lives that have been saved 
by the thousands and thousands by the pro-life workers, the lives that 
have been saved by the inspiration that comes from seeing hundreds of 
thousands of pro-life marchers come to this city and make that march 
from around the Washington Monument on up to the Supreme Court and to 
the west side of the Supreme Court to plead for justice for those who 
are voiceless in the unborn.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, it is time for this Congress to address this. It 
is time for Congress to move along the issue. And so because we cannot 
medically prove when a conception begins, we believe profoundly that 
personhood begins at the moment of conception, and personhood needs to 
be protected in all of its forms. The closest we can get to verifying 
that personhood, that conception, is the measure of the heartbeat. We 
all know that a beating heart is life. When the heart stops beating, 
life ends.
  Now, we can detect a heartbeat as early as 16 days from conception, 
and often the number is published to be 18 days from conception, Mr. 
Speaker. It may not always be detectible in every pregnancy that early, 
but it is entirely detectible early on in the pregnancy.
  So I have introduced legislation, Mr. Speaker, to protect these 
innocent babes, these babes that can't speak for themselves, that can't 
cry out for their own mercy, but they are already formed in their 
mother's womb, and the unique individual that grows from the matching 
of those two DNAs. And when that heart starts to beat, a physician can 
detect that heartbeat, when they can detect the heartbeat, we need to 
protect the baby. With the understanding that when a heartbeat can be 
detected the baby must be protected, I have drafted and introduced 
legislation that is H.R. 490, Mr. Speaker.
  Now, this bill is titled the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017. It 
makes a lifesaving stride in enshrining the rights, the rights of the 
unborn, into U.S. law.

[[Page 2760]]

It ensures that no child for whom a heartbeat is detectible is aborted 
unless the life of the child's mother is endangered in fact by a 
physical disorder, by a physical illness, or by a physical injury.
  Any abortionist who performs an abortion under this legislation, H.R. 
490, the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017, any abortionist who performs 
an abortion in spite of a detectible heartbeat and outside of the 
exceptions that I have defined, which is for a physical disorder, a 
physical illness, or a physical injury, any physician who performs an 
abortion outside of those exceptions would be subject to a fine or 
imprisonment--and that is for a period up to 5 years--or both. This is 
a serious piece of legislation, and it needs to be, because life itself 
is the number one thing that is sacred here on this planet, especially 
in this country.
  This legislation, the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017, will require 
all physicians before conducting an abortion to detect the heartbeat of 
the unborn child; and that means they have to maintain the records of 
their endeavor to detect a heartbeat, and if a heartbeat is detected, 
the baby is protected. That is the center of this law.
  Ever since Roe v. Wade, which was unconstitutionally decided in 1973, 
44 years ago, these 60 million babies--almost 60 million babies that 
have been ended by the abortion industry--have received a rubber stamp 
from the courts, from the Federal Government, not from this Congress 
and not from the States. The Supreme Court overrules the efforts in the 
States to protect innocent, unborn human life. The Supreme Court 
overrules this Congress to protect unborn human life, and we have been 
trying to find ways around that decision ever since 1973. But I have 
introduced the bill, and it will protect the lives of the voiceless 
innocents.
  Then to make a point now, Mr. Speaker, there are probably some people 
who are thinking this is a little bit too big of a leap for where we 
are on the topic today. I would submit that it is not, that we have 
been working too patiently with what I will call incrementalism. When I 
came to this Congress more than a decade ago, I had been, at that time, 
already working to try to help pass legislation that banned partial-
birth abortions, and the Supreme Court had found the partial-birth 
abortion ban to be unconstitutional based on a couple of things. One of 
them was the Supreme Court ruled that it was necessary to save the life 
of the mother or the health of the mother, and the other one was that 
Congress hadn't defined the act precisely enough.
  So we went to work in the Committee on the Judiciary. I want to thank 
Congressman Steve Chabot of Ohio for taking the lead on this issue. We 
held hearing after hearing, and Congress had findings that a partial-
birth abortion was never medically necessary to save the life of the 
mother; and that is with much, much testimony of experts before the 
committee for a long period of time definitively concluding such, and 
then the act itself was more precisely defined.
  Then it went back before the courts, and each of the Federal 
districts that heard the case, three of them, simultaneously, all of 
them turned it down as unconstitutional. But it went to the Supreme 
Court, where the ban on partial-birth abortion was upheld. It has saved 
some lives but has put a small dent in this huge 60 million aborted 
babies industry.
  We began to go to work on this in other ways. We have legislation 
that is introduced before this Congress that bans sex-selected 
abortions.
  We know that there are mothers and fathers that will use the 
ultrasound to determine the sex of the baby. If they want a little baby 
boy and it is a girl, sometimes they will abort that little girl and 
try again for a boy. We know this is happening in places like China, 
where they have had, up until recently, the one-child policy, and the 
proportion of boys to girls is way out of whack in China because they 
are aborting little baby girls because they would prefer having a boy.

                              {time}  1630

  That happens in America, too, but not as statistically evident. It is 
immoral to do that. That piece of legislation has 77 percent support. 
That is the strongest support we have, statistically, for abortion 
legislation that exists, as far as I know, in this Congress.
  Then we have pain-capable legislation, little babies that can feel 
the pain of abortion when that needle with a saline solution is stuck 
into--Mr. Speaker, I am just going to bypass the details of how this 
functions. Babies can feel pain. They can experience joy; they can 
experience pleasure; and they can experience pain. We have legislation 
to prohibit abortion from the time that we can determine that that baby 
feels the pain of being aborted. But that is a definition of pain, not 
a definition of life.
  If this is a unique life, as I have described at length here, then 
this unique life must be protected. We don't say this unique life which 
has this soul--and God put in this soul from the moment of conception--
doesn't deserve to be protected unless they feel pain. What we are 
saying is it bothers our conscience too much to have a baby killed that 
can feel the pain and suffering.
  I support these other two pieces of legislation that I have 
described: the ban on sex-selective abortion and the ban on pain-
capable abortion. But, Mr. Speaker, that doesn't get at the heart of 
this.
  The heart of this is this: sacred human life. Human life, sacred in 
all of its forms, begins at the moment of conception. We need 
legislation to protect that personhood. And when we can define and 
clearly detect a heartbeat, a heartbeat in a baby from as early as 16 
days, we must protect the life of that innocent baby.
  So that, Mr. Speaker, is my conviction, my deep conviction, my very 
profoundly held conviction. But I wonder: What does the rest of the 
country think?
  Sometimes I find myself out there right without a majority. Sometimes 
they will say: Well, you didn't have a majority because you weren't 
right. And this one, I have no doubt, Mr. Speaker, human life is sacred 
in all of its forms.
  So we ask the question in polling across America: What do the 
American people think of the proposal to ban abortion once a heartbeat 
can be detected? Mr. Speaker, the polling that we have out there is 
very carefully done, and I am going to give you the numbers first. This 
is the general number that asks the question, if the heartbeat is 
detected, the baby is protected, and here is how the polling came 
together. Sixty-nine percent agree with the position that I have just 
taken here in the bill that I have introduced, which is H.R. 490, the 
Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017.
  The data contained in this polling report are responses to a question 
that was commissioned by Faith2Action. That is in a Barna Group 
OmniPoll. 1,002 interviews were conducted of U.S. adults nationwide. 
The sampling error for this 1,002 interviews is plus or minus 3.1 
percent. That is about as accurate as you get with polling. That means 
that there is a 95 percent confidence level that these numbers are 
right.
  The data is weighted in the national distribution of U.S. adults. 
They took minimal statistical weighting and they used it to calibrate 
the samples--so, of known population percentages--and it is in relation 
to the demographic variables of age, gender. I bet it is age, sex, 
education, and region, so that it is scientifically applied. It is a 
poll that was run from January 19 until January 27. This is pretty 
fresh information, about as fresh as it gets.
  These interviews were conducted over a majority landline--60 percent 
or so off landlines and 40 percent off cell phones or other mobile 
devices, so that we got a good cross section of people throughout that. 
They were conducted by experienced, trained interviewers. They were 
supervised at all times. They were monitored. They were computer-
assisted telephone interviewing to make sure that the balance of this 
thing was as good and as objective as it could get, Mr. Speaker.

[[Page 2761]]

  So this polling result says, among U.S. adults nationwide, a slight 
majority, 55 percent, agree strongly that, if a doctor is able to 
detect the heartbeat of an unborn baby, that baby should be legally 
protected--that is the core of the question that was asked--and 18 
percent disagree either strongly or somewhat with this.
  So when I look at the numbers here, 69 percent overall are packaged 
up within the agree strongly component--fifty-five percent. Now, that 
is landslide in a political election, 55 percent. And this will be a 
landslide in the polling that says 55 percent strongly agree that, if a 
doctor can detect a heartbeat, the unborn baby should be protected by 
law, a 55 percent landslide majority, Mr. Speaker. And then you add to 
that the 14 percent who agree somewhat with this.
  So, from a general agreement standpoint, 69 percent, or as close as 
you can get and not exactly hit the number, 7 in 10 Americans say let's 
protect those lives of those innocent, unborn babies when you can hear 
their heartbeat.
  The people who disagree strongly are only 10 percent. And then those 
who disagree somewhat are another 8 percent; 18 percent disagreeing on 
the other side, but only 10 percent disagree strongly.
  So 55 percent say they strongly support a ban on abortion, once a 
heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected, and only 10 percent 
disagree with that strongly. I am going to say that they are probably 
some of the hardcore leftists that I am engaged in debate with on 
almost a daily basis with here, Mr. Speaker. But you can divide 10 
percent into 55 percent and say, for everyone out here who says we 
should not protect that innocent, unborn baby whose heart is beating, 
for everyone who says that, there are five and a half Americans who say 
we have to protect, we have got an obligation to, and they believe 
strongly that we protect the lives of those innocent, unborn babies 
with a heartbeat.
  That is a huge majority on the side of life. I am very gratified to 
know that that is the position of the American people, with only a 3.1 
percent margin of error in a scientific poll that I am happy now is 
part of the Record in the United States Congress.
  I would say there is another way to analyze this poll. I am looking 
at this one that says there are 13 percent undecided, Mr. Speaker. So 
you have 69 percent who agree altogether, and you have got 18 percent 
that disagree altogether, and 13 percent that neither agree nor 
disagree. Now, I always wonder, when we are doing polling, why do we 
measure those without an opinion? If they don't agree or disagree, that 
is about the definition of ambivalent. They call that mox nix where I 
come from.
  So if I take that out of there and calculate it the other way and put 
it together, you add together 69 percent and 18 percent, and then you 
say what percentage are those that agree, well, it is actually 79.3 
percent say we should not abort a baby whose heart is beating, and 20.7 
percent say, well, it would be okay with them if we did. That is 
another way of measuring this. And that is a 4-to-1 measure--5.5-to-1, 
4-to-1 Americans are ready to protect innocent, unborn human life.
  Mr. Speaker, think what this means. Think what it means that we are a 
society that seems to have plugged our ears to the understanding that 
life begins at conception. I have known this for a long time. It wasn't 
a mystery to me.
  I see the beautiful little baby going out now. Mr. Speaker, that is a 
very gratifying thing to see from down here, parents raising their 
children right.
  But from my standpoint, I have this memory. Marilyn and I were 
married in 1972. I remember sitting there in card club, and the 
discussion at that time was we have all these babies being born in 
Central America and why do they have these babies if they can't feed 
them? Why don't they just abort them? I remember that discussion around 
card club on a Friday night.
  It didn't really trigger me at the time because we hadn't been very 
far into the abortion debate. I hadn't thought about it very much. We 
weren't parents, and Marilyn wasn't pregnant at the time. We were just 
married.
  So I remember that discussion though, and it just didn't hit me. It 
just kind of went through. I don't even know if I engaged in it. I just 
remember that somebody at the table said, well, if they can't feed 
them, why don't they just have an abortion?
  Well, not very long after that our first child was born. And I picked 
up that little baby--actually, he wasn't little. He was just a little 
bit short of 9 pounds. But I looked at him, and I was in such awe of 
the miracle of that little boy, that little baby boy named David. There 
was an aura about him. He was a product of Marilyn and me from our 
love. And there he is, a miraculous little child in my hands, warm and 
squirmy and soft and beautiful and a miracle. It is different if it is 
somebody else's child, I suppose, because it hadn't hit me like that. 
But there was an aura about this little baby, and you could have 
convinced me he was the second coming of Jesus Christ, himself.
  And I looked at him and I thought, how could anyone take this little 
miracle's life? How could they kill this baby now? He is minutes old. 
How could they take his life the minute before he is born? No one could 
do that--well, almost no one. Could they take his life the minute after 
he was born? Or could they take it the minute before he was born? Or 
could someone take his life an hour before he was born or a day? Or 
could they take it a week before he was born or a month or one 
trimester or two trimesters or 8 months or 36 weeks or 37 weeks before 
he was born? What changed? What changed throughout that time?
  In a matter of minutes, it all fell into place for me. From the 
moment of conception he was formed in his mother's womb, and from that 
point on he is growing on the genetic configuration that he is, blessed 
with a soul placed in him at that moment. That little boy grew from 
that point on, and now he is the father of three of my grandchildren. 
They are all miracles to me. And our other sons are all miracles to me, 
and our other grandchildren are all miracles to me.
  But I can't conceive of doing anything except sacrificing, if I 
needed to, my life to protect them because they are unique human 
beings, worthy of all of the protection that society can give them, 
just like every American is; and, in fact, everybody on this planet is 
seen in God's eyes.
  There has to be a moment that our lives begin. We have to choose that 
because we can't have an immoral position coming out of law that says, 
well, it is up to the mother to decide whether this baby is going to 
have an opportunity to fill its lungs full of free air and scream for 
its own mercy. They can't do that from the moment of conception, but 
they can do that from the moment of birth. And if we could hear that 
inner womb scream at that moment of abortion, we would plug our ears in 
terror and fright at the crime that abortion is.
  So it is our moral obligation to protect all human life from the 
moment of conception until natural death. That is what this bill does, 
H.R. 490, the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017.
  The polling that we have here says clearly that the American people 
agree. And it is not only, Mr. Speaker, the American people--well, it 
is actually in the polling. But I separated them out into categories so 
we could understand how people think about this and how they think 
about it from the categories of being Republicans and Democrats and no 
party or Independents.
  As you can see, among the Republicans, 86 percent agree that, if a 
heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected. That is 86 to 6 
percent disagree. Eighty-six percent of Republicans, that is about as 
high a number as you see on anything.
  I should run a little measure sometime when you ask, does the Sun 
come up in the east. That is probably about only a 97 percent issue. 
But it is 86 percent want to protect a baby with a heartbeat--
Republicans.
  Democrats, still that landslide majority of 55 percent of Democrats 
want to protect a baby from the moment a heartbeat can be detected--25 
percent

[[Page 2762]]

say no, 55 percent say yes. It is more than a 2-to-1 support among 
Democrats to support the language that is in this bill for H.R. 490, 
the Heartbeat Protection Act.
  And then when you go among Independents, they are a little more pro-
life than Democrats are. I shouldn't be surprised at that. Sixty-one 
percent of Independents want to protect a baby from the moment that 
their heartbeat can be detected.

                              {time}  1645

  This is a huge issue for America. America is not yet informed enough 
about this legislation that is available. And sometimes we get stuck in 
a rut and we decide, well, we have been working on the sex-selective 
legislation or the pain-capable legislation, or we have been trying to 
get Planned Parenthood defunded--which this Congress must do--and we 
need to do it perpetually, not just annually.
  Those are all things that we need to be working on, but it is time 
now for this Congress to swing for the fences, to move legislation that 
is based upon a clear and distinct principle of life. If that heartbeat 
of that little baby's heart, that innocent little baby can be detected, 
we have a moral obligation to protect that baby.
  Then how do we measure the end of life? And how has it been from time 
immemorial? When the heart stops? When the heart can no longer beat?
  Yes, we measure brain waves and we do other things. But when that 
heart stops and it can't be started and we can't sustain life, we call 
that death. And when an abortion is committed, that little baby's heart 
is beating. And you know that the abortion stops a beating heart. That 
is on posters by the Knights of Columbus and others all over this 
country. Abortion stops a beating heart.
  We need to protect the lives of all of those little babies with 
beating hearts. We can detect them now with the ultrasound and the 
science that we have. It is time for this Congress to move.
  In our March for Life here that I mentioned a little earlier, Mr. 
Speaker, when we have hundreds of thousands of people that come out 
here and gather on The Mall and then march to the Supreme Court 
building to plead for the court to protect innocent, unborn human life, 
what is happening is America is waking up. America is feeling the 
guilt, and we pray for the mothers who have had abortions. But America 
is also understanding that there is a life that begins at the moment of 
conception.
  So of all of the families that have first bonded with this little 
unborn baby by seeing the ultrasound--sometimes by framing it, as 
exists in my Sioux City office for Joseph Dean Anderson's ultrasound--
but millions of those cases across the country are raising the 
awareness of the American people, and it is not just the mother and the 
father that see that ultrasound.
  They see it in realtime, and they hear the sound for real. It is not 
just a picture that goes up on the wall that is framed, but it is a 
living, breathing, moving organism where you can see that innocent 
little baby squirming and moving around inside in the amniotic fluid, 
and you can see the expressions on their face and the movement that is 
there. That this is a real human being and you want to get your hands 
on that little baby and hold them and love them, but you have to wait 
until they grow enough that you can do that.
  But family after family has this, and little brothers and sisters are 
shown that ultrasound and they say: This is your little brother or 
little sister that we expect on such and such date--we have become 
pretty close with that date. And so kids, brothers and sisters, the 
siblings are recognizing their brother or their sister, acknowledging 
that they are an innocent unborn human being well before they are born. 
And they grow up knowing this.
  Now, for the 44 years since Roe v. Wade, we have millions of millions 
of pro-life people and millions and millions of anti-abortion people 
who understand this. They grew up understanding this. And no one can 
any longer tell them that it is just a blob of a tissue and that it is 
not alive.
  I recall a World War II veteran, one who I admired and respected. He 
has passed away now, as many of them have. His name was Vic Lunsman. We 
were having this discussion while we were talking about building 
terraces and tiling, and he said: When the pro-abortion people say that 
this baby is not alive--if this baby is not alive, why then do you have 
to kill it? Why do you have to kill it?
  I thought he put that into a package about as compressed as it could 
be. We know that abortion ends an innocent life of an innocent human 
being that is created in the same image that we are recreated in, in 
God's image. And now we know from 16 days on that--it is not just that 
we know that there is a heartbeat, but we can hear it. We can hear the 
beat, beat, beat, beat, beat of that little heart. And to think of that 
little heart struggling for life; to think of that baby squirming to 
try to avoid the abortionist; to think of that baby feeling the pain; 
to think of that baby being aborted because the mother or the father 
wanted a boy or a girl; or because somebody told them that that baby 
wasn't going to be exactly perfect, none of that measures up against 
innocent, unborn human life, sacred life, that life that we have to 
protect from the moment of conception to natural death.
  That is what is wrapped up in this heartbeat bill. And if we had the 
science to prove the moment of conception, I would be standing here 
with a moment of conception bill. We don't have that science today, but 
we do have the science of detecting a heartbeat.
  And we know the sound of a beating heart is the sound of life. And if 
you can detect a heartbeat, if you can hear that heart beating in any 
of us, you know that person is alive; you know there is a spirit within 
us; you know that our soul is still within our body; and you know that 
there is a hope for us--at least whoever that might be whose heart we 
are listening to--to get up and to move about, to live, love, laugh, 
learn, reproduce, and contribute, to glorify this Earth in a way that 
we are challenged to do.
  Yet, 60 million babies have been denied that opportunity and have 
been denied that gift of life.
  What might they have done? What might they have done for America? 
What might they have done for the world? How many Presidents, how many 
Mother Teresas, how many Billy Grahams? How many people have lost their 
life before they ever had a chance to breathe and fight for it that 
might have solved the problems that we are facing today here in this 
United States Congress?
  We can't deny that potential. We carry that guilt today, but the best 
we can do is end it as soon as we can end it. And we would end 90 to 95 
percent of the abortions in America with H.R. 490 the Heartbeat 
Protection Act.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to remind you here in this Congress that this is 
a bill that has strong support in the polling that we have rolled out 
here. Eighty-six percent of Republicans say that if a heartbeat can be 
detected, the baby should be protected. Fifty-five percent of Democrats 
agree that if a heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected. 
Sixty-one percent of Independents say that if a heartbeat can be 
detected, the baby is protected. And of those who oppose it--at least 
those who oppose it vigorously--only 6 percent of Republicans, 25 
percent of Democrats--and I am going to suspect that a fair amount of 
these 25 percent of Democrats, Mr. Speaker, are more for political 
reasons and that they wouldn't be able to sustain themselves in a moral 
debate on the topic. I think that may or may not be the case for the 27 
percent of no parties.
  But to put this back into summary, Mr. Speaker, here are easier 
numbers to remember: 69 percent of the American people, with only a 3.1 
percent margin of error, believe that if a heartbeat can be detected, 
the baby is protected. That is 7 in 10 Americans that take that stand. 
And that is one of the strongest pieces of support you can get for any 
bill that would ever come to this floor or any discussion that we ever 
have if you get up to that level of

[[Page 2763]]

7 out of 10, and only 18 percent disagree vigorously.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I hope that the people that listen in on this 
conversation between us have contemplated the central points that I 
have put into this debate and this discussion here this evening, and I 
hope they have thought about the principles that are involved. I hope 
they are able to carry this message along to their children and 
grandchildren, and into our schools and our classrooms, our churches 
and our synagogues all across this land, this profound belief that if 
Americans share; that we believe that human life is sacred and it needs 
to be then sacred in all of its forms.
  The second question is: At what moment does life begin?
  There is only one moment in the full development of a full human 
being, and that is the moment of conception. The closest we can 
scientifically get to proof of that conception is the sound and the 
detection of that heartbeat, which we all recognize to be the sound of 
life. That sound of life, that beat of that heart cannot be 
extinguished by a moral human being who believes that a human life is 
sacred in all of its forms, and knows that it begins at the moment of 
conception. And then we can measure the heartbeat and protect that baby 
from the moment that that heart has begun to beat.
  Any doctor that fails to follow the directive in this legislation, in 
H.R. 490, any doctor that fails to search for a heartbeat and conducts 
an abortion without--or conducts an abortion in spite of that beating 
heart is facing a fine and a prison term up to 5 years, or both.
  That is a respect for human life. By the way, we hold the mother 
harmless. She is also protected from any touch of this law. It is only 
the abortionist that is the subject of this piece of legislation that I 
have introduced. But it aims to protect human life from at least the 
moment that the heartbeat can be detected; the baby is protected. And 
this will gain momentum as we go forward.
  The American people will understand what this means. I am hopeful 
that across our churches, across our schools, across our families, they 
begin to talk about the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017. And our 
little kids that grow up, as mine did--having once seen the film, that 
families grow up respecting the heartbeat of innocent, unborn human 
life.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your attention this evening. I yield back 
the balance of my time.

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