Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, last week, the Trump administration proposed new rules to finally bring Federal policy back in line with Federal law. This should not be controversial in a republic committed to the rule of law. But this new policy touches the question of abortion, which tempts all three branches of our Federal Government to turn truth, justice, and the law inside out in the service of violence. President Trump, to his credit, is resisting those temptations and affirming what the law should do--affirming the fact that the law should do what the law says.

The particular law in question is the Public Health Service Act. Every year, it allocates hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to public health centers across the country. Under the 1970 statute, no Public Health Service dollars ``shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.'' That is, the bill was expressly written to fund healthcare for lower income communities, including family planning services, but not to fund or facilitate abortion, which, of course, is the opposite of healthcare.

Yet in the 1980s, the General Accounting Office found that abortion providers were colocating their nonabortion and abortion-providing services and just keeping two different sets of books. This put patients, policymakers, and taxpayers in an impossible position. So regulations correcting this obvious abuse of the law were implemented; then they were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Subsequent Democratic Presidents rescinded these regulations, leaving the abortion industry free to indulge its ever-growing appetite for Americans' blood and treasure. This is the unacceptable status quo that the Trump administration would correct.

By reinstating some of those prior regulations, President Trump is following through on his campaign promise to the American people to get taxpayer money out of the abortion industry. This is to his great credit. Wherever you stand on the question of legalized killing of unborn children, it is essential that we draw the line at taxpayer funding of it.

The new rule would indeed reduce the flow of Federal dollars to abortion providers, including the billion-dollar behemoth of the grisly industry, Planned Parenthood. Even a modest step in this direction--in this case, about 15 percent--is to be commended.

In addition to incremental reform, this new rule is also a clarifying asset. After all, it does not deny Planned Parenthood or any colocated clinics anything. It doesn't deny anything to them. It simply offers them a choice, and given Planned Parenthood's protestations that abortions are just a tiny fraction of what Planned Parenthood does, the choice should be easy enough.

If, despite their billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies and private donations, Planned Parenthood and its accomplice organizations can't afford two local facilities--one for abortion and one for nonabortion care and counseling--they will just have to choose which clinic to keep open. They will have to decide--or, perhaps, just publicly admit--what business it is that they are really in: healthcare or abortion, life or death. Of course, we already know the answer. That is why Planned Parenthood is widely expected to lead a lawsuit to block the regulation just as soon as it is implemented.

As the New York Times recently put it, abortion is to Planned Parenthood what the internet is to Facebook; that is, like justice and the rule of law are to the American Republic.

Our abortion-on-demand legal regime today is doubly unjust, first, because it was created by judges rather than elected lawmakers and, second, because it denies the undeniable humanity of the unborn. President Trump's new policy would improve the law on both counts. First, it would bring the administration of the law back into line with Congress's clear, statutory text. Second, it would signal that in this White House, the protection of innocent human life will be the guiding principle that it should be in any civilized society.

The new rule will protect Americans' right to protect themselves and the unborn from taxpayer-funded abortions and, hopefully, create just a little more space for the weakest and the most vulnerable among us to grow, to thrive, and to hope that we will one day see that inevitable day not so far from now when our laws and our hearts answer the immutable call of justice, love, and respect for the dignity of the human soul.

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