Women's Healthcare

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I rise today for every child who has been denied the chance to live; the little boys and the little girls who never got the chance to breathe a breath of air, to live life; never got the chance to grow up to be athletes, doctors, poets, or inventors; never got the chance to live their own unique lives.

This year marks the 47th tragic anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that forced on all 50 States abortion on demand and has tragically led to the loss of life of over 60 million unborn children. Since that decision, so much life has been lost. So many unborn and even newborn babies have suffered.

In recent years, we have seen the Democratic Party not listening to the concerns of a great many people of good will on both sides of the party but, rather, radicalize. We have seen leading contenders for the Presidential nomination in the Democratic field declare that pro-life Democrats are no longer welcome in the party. We have seen far too many Democrats embrace extreme positions on abortion--abortion up until the moment of birth and even, horrifically, after that.

I think the radicalization of today's Democratic Party was made crystal clear for a great many Americans with the radio interview that Virginia Governor Ralph Northam did on January 30 of last year. In that interview, Governor Northam was speaking in favor of a bill that would allow abortion when a mother was already in labor.

Stop and think about this for a moment. There have been debates about abortion for a long, long time. A mother in labor, in the process of delivering a child, this bill would allow a doctor to kill that child instead of delivering the child in the midst of labor. For a great many people, even Americans who identify as pro-choice, the idea of killing a child while the mother is in labor delivering the infant is horrifying beyond words. But Governor Northam didn't end there. He wasn't content simply with saying that abortion should be allowed even in the midst of birth. He went further. He said on that radio interview:

The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that's what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.

Now, so nobody is lost on what Governor Northam was saying, he was describing something that has euphemistically been called post-birth abortion. He was describing his view of the right way to approach delivering a child, which is a child who is delivered, who is outside the womb, who is breathing and crying and living. That is an infant. And Governor Northam calmly, with virtually no emotion whatsoever, described comforting that infant and then having a conversation about whether to deny that child the necessary care to live or simply to callously let a newborn infant die.

For virtually every American, that is a concept that is so extreme, that is so radical, that--other than elected Democrats who have decided to embrace a radical view of abortion in all circumstances--almost every other American would be, rightly, horrified by the notion of a doctor allowing a newborn infant outside the womb to die. That was Governor Northam's position.

Well, tomorrow the Senate has an opportunity to speak out against those extreme, radical positions, to say this isn't OK, to draw a line, to find what should be some degree of common ground. We are going to be voting on two bills in the Senate tomorrow: the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act and the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

I am proud to be an original cosponsor of both pieces of legislation. Those are both commonsense pieces of legislation that would work to restore fundamental rights for the unborn and for newborn babies. They are simple pieces of legislation.

The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act requires doctors to provide medical care to infants who survive attempted abortion procedures. It would help make sure that, when an infant has already been born, when the infant is alive, is breathing, is crying, is outside the womb, that that child receives the medical attention he or she needs.

The second bill is the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act that would ban late-term abortions that result in pain and suffering and agony for an unborn child.

What you will not hear from congressional Democrats is that after 5 months, an unborn child's toes and eyelids and fingers and eyelashes have already formed. He or she has a heartbeat and can feel pain, and science confirms this. We know that these late-term abortions, embraced by more and more radical partisans, produce pain and suffering and agony. We should not be a part of allowing the deliberate infliction of pain on a little girl or a little boy.

These two proposals, in any sane and rational world, would be agreed to unanimously. If you look at the last 3 years, we have seen enormous victories when it has come to defending life, when it has come to confirming 192 new Federal judges committed to following the law in the Constitution; when it has come to restricting taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in this country; when it has come to defending the religious liberties of Americans all across this country, including the Little Sisters of the Poor. We are making major steps in the right direction, but we can go further. We can agree on these commonsense provisions. We can also test whether Senate Democrats agree with their colleagues running for President, whether Senate Democrats agree with the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who has said: If you are a pro-life Democrat, get out of the party; you are not welcome.

I can tell you in Texas, I certainly welcome pro-life Democrats to speak up for their values and defend their values, and we should come together behind commonsense propositions that say we should not be committing procedures that result in pain and agony and suffering, that science demonstrates causes that suffering, and we should not be allowing newborn infants to die because medical care is denied to those children.

This should bring us together. I urge our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to stand together for life--every life, as a precious, unique gift from God. Every life, whether the child has a disability, whether the child is valued or not, that child should be valued, should be protected because that child is precious.

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