Unanimous Consent Request--S. 3173
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, in a message to Congress on July 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln wrote that the leading object of government was to ``elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.''
It is no coincidence that he gave this message on the anniversary of our Nation's birth. Lincoln was echoing the profound legacy of our founding--a legacy that shaped our Nation and thereafter rippled across not only the Western Hemisphere but the entire world.
When the Founders broke off from the yoke of British tyranny, they declared all men to be endowed with certain inalienable rights--rights that come not from the State, a church, any man or woman, or even from a government, but, rather, from God himself.
The first of these inalienable rights was life. Never was any nation in the history of human beings born of a higher principle or a deeper connection to human happiness and flourishing. Here, the people would rule. Here, government would serve the people and not the other way around. Here, for the first time ever, each person, no matter his or her station in life, was endowed with these rights and entitled to their equal protection.
Today, 159 years since Lincoln's message to Congress and 244 years since the Founders' message to the world, here we stand sworn, still, to fulfill their promise.
As far as we have come during that time period, we still have so far to go. Today, our government--founded to protect Americans' rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--threatens unborn Americans on all three counts. The Supreme Court imposes and Congress subsidizes the most radical abortion policy in the Western world.
Since 1973, more than 60 million little lives, innocent lives, have been lost. The children lost to abortion cannot be seen, they cannot be heard, but the loss of every single one of them is felt. Mothers have been robbed of their children. There are gaping holes left throughout our Nation, in our families and in our communities--gaping holes that only those unique, unrepeatable souls could have and would have otherwise filled.
For more than four decades, we have failed American women and their unborn children. Today, we have a chance to do better, to aspire for more, not to settle for mediocrity or tyranny but to celebrate and embrace life and liberty. We have a chance to stand up for the very weakest and most vulnerable among us, the ones still being knit together in their mothers' wombs, the ones we know respond to human touch by the age of 8 weeks, who feel pain by the age of 20 weeks, and who recognize the sound of their mother's voice before they are even born.
Science and medicine are only confirming what we know deep down--that unborn human beings are, in fact, just like us. Every day, more scientific evidence confirms our moral intuition that a person is a person no matter how small that person happens to be.
The so-called Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act that was before us earlier this week would have banned abortions for babies more than 20 weeks of age, upholding in law what science already confirms; that is, that these babies feel every bit of their life as it is being ended. This should not have been a controversial bill.
Still less controversial should have been the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act takes no position on abortion, and it takes no position even on the rights of the unborn. It simply says that in this country, the United States of America, when a child is born, even if by accident, even in the most dangerous place in the world for an infant--that is, a Planned Parenthood clinic--he or she becomes a citizen of the United States under our Constitution, entitled to the full and equal protection of our laws. It says that when a child intended to be aborted is, in fact, instead born alive, he or she cannot simply be ``disposed of'' in the back room of a clinic or a hospital, as if it were nothing more than medical waste. This bill merely outlaws the murder of the innocent in the first moments of life; that is, the first moments of life outside the womb.
It is a tragedy, a blight, and a poor commentary of frightening reflection not only upon this country but on this very legislative body that these measures failed this week. A minority of this body chose to reject both the scientific facts of human biology and the essential moral principle of human dignity.
When someone talks about not accepting science, I hope they will remember what happened this week. I hope they will remember that against all medical and scientific evidence, to say nothing of what people know morally, intuitively, and within their own hearts, this body failed to protect the most vulnerable among us.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time in our Nation's history that we have sometimes looked at the people according to a really evil logic of utility and power, and it is not the first time that we have tried to dehumanize human beings. It is not the first time we have tried to pick and choose who is wanted and who is valuable in society, penuriously doling out rights to exist and to be free on the basis of that arbitrary and unjustifiable determination.
Nonetheless, thankfully, if there is one thing that we know about our country, it is that the American people have a way of bending the arc of history toward life or, as Winston Churchill is credited for saying, the American people will always do the right thing after they have exhausted every other alternative.
We have a long, proud history as Americans of standing up for the weak, for the innocent, and especially for the vulnerable. We have made mistakes--grave, grave mistakes--but the right thing to do is always the right thing to do, and we come around in the end. It is one of the things that differentiates us from other societies. We aspire toward that which is good.
Today there is reason to hope. Abortions in my home State of Utah have been steadily declining over the past four decades, with fewer than 3,000 happening in 2017. Six States are now down to just one abortion clinic: Kentucky, West Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Mississippi, and Missouri. This past year, Alabama passed a law banning elective abortions in most circumstances, and just last month hundreds of thousands of Americans marched joyfully once again through Washington, as they have year after year after year, for those who cannot, for those who are rendered absent by this barbaric practice.
The tide is turning, and today we have another chance to right these same wrongs. Through my bill, the Abortion Is Not Healthcare Act, we have the chance to stop the tax deductibility of abortions which are currently categorized as medical care by the IRS.
The purpose of healthcare is to heal, is to cure. It is not to kill. Let us be serious. Whatever else abortion may be, of course, elective abortion is not healthcare. That is why physicians literally take an oath to do no harm.
The government should not offer tax benefits for a procedure that kills hundreds of thousands of unborn children each year, nor should taxpayers have to subsidize it. This bill would end this preferential tax treatment and clarify that this gruesome practice is not healthcare.
We also have the chance to permanently stop the use of our foreign aid money from funding or promoting abortions overseas. The Protecting Life in Foreign Assistance Act will save countless lives across the globe and affirms the truth that the lives of all unborn children, regardless of where they might happen to be from, have dignity and worth. Today we can stand to allow all human beings--no matter what their age, their appearance, or their abilities--a fair chance in the race of life.
We have only to remain loyal to that bedrock principle that we claim to defend in the Declaration of Independence: the inalienable, fundamental right to life, the equal dignity, the immeasurable worth of all human life.
3173 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to address these important issues today. I thank my friend and colleague from Oregon for outlining his reasons for objecting to this legislation. I feel the need to respond to a few things that he said because they call for an immediate response.
First, he noted that there were two votes cast earlier this week that he described as part of an ongoing pattern, an ongoing campaign among Senate Republicans that, according to my colleague, are anti-woman. This is offensive on a variety levels--first when you consider that the abortion is no respecter of persons. It is not just male babies aborted; it is also female babies. There are parts of the world where abortion of female babies occurs in much higher numbers--in many cases because they are female babies.
Abortion is itself--elective abortion is an act of violence against a human form, against a human life, albeit a life in utero.
I remember a few months ago we were holding a hearing, of all things, addressing issues relating to wild horses and burros in the Western United States. Certain wild horse populations have grown out of control. They have devastated rangelands. They have depleted resources available to them, and many of them are starving, malnourished, and suffering.
There have been programs that have sought not only to help them in one way or another but also to sterilize them. I never thought I would be part of a significant hearing addressing the nonsexy topic of equine contraception, but in this instance we had one. One of our witnesses, who was from an organization devoted to preventing cruelty to animals, explained that one of the most effective techniques of horse birth control involves the sterilization procedure. I asked why that was not the preferred method. She said because, in many instances, it can result in the loss of the unborn horse. I asked her why that mattered. She said: Well, because it is a life, notwithstanding the fact that it hasn't been born. It is cruel to the unborn baby horse. It is cruel to the foal. If it is cruel to the foal, why isn't it cruel to the baby, whether it is a male baby or a female baby? This is not anti-woman.
There was also the suggestion that the campaign somehow involves a Republican in every exam room, and that, according to those who advocate pro-life positions, it would relegate healthcare to the healthy and wealthy. Well, this gets back to the very point I was making. An exam room--actual healthcare--involves protecting and preserving human life. Elective abortion, by contrast, has one object; that is, the termination of a human life--an unborn, in utero human life but a human life just the same.
You can say whatever you want about it but to call it healthcare, to me, is counterintuitive--not just to me but to many, many Americans who find the practice abhorrent and are shocked by the thought that the U.S. Government would be subsidizing it, whether through its tax policy or through more direct forms or, as we see today, both.
As to the suggestion that politicians ought to stay out of this issue, well, let me ask you this: What about the idea that politicians and, therefore, lawmakers ought to stay out of other issues involving violence to a human being? There was a day and age in this country where people would say that lawmakers ought to stay out of other issues involving violence, of domestic violence: That is a family matter, after all. Politicians ought to stay out. The law should have nothing to do with that. Well, it involves violence to another human being.
To say simply that politicians and, therefore, lawmakers and, therefore, the law ought to stay out of a topic means to suggest that it is somehow beyond the reach of the law. If we have reached, if we ever do reach the point where we can't say no human being can kill another human being, we have really, really big problems.
We are not talking here about an exam room. We are not talking about procedures designed to promote, to heal, and to prolong life. We are talking about a procedure to end life. This is, itself, not a bill that talks about the appropriateness or lack thereof of elective abortion. This simply says that, given how many Americans feel about this, as many of us in this very room feel about abortion, we shouldn't be subsidizing it, and we shouldn't be pretending it is something it is not.
Finally, let me remind this body and anyone who may be watching from outside this body that, of the legislation we voted on this week, one of those pieces of legislation didn't even involve abortion at all. It didn't regulate any facet of abortion. It dealt only indirectly with the topic of abortion, but it had nothing to do with the performance or availability of an abortion itself.
It simply said that, when a baby is born, following or in the middle of a failed attempt at an abortion, if that baby is born alive, notwithstanding the attempt by the abortionist to kill the baby, that baby shouldn't simply be neglected. In any other circumstance, a human being, particularly a vulnerable, brandnew newborn baby--an infant--to neglect the baby and allow that baby to die of exposure, to not administer lifesaving care or nutrition or sustenance to that baby, to neglect the baby and allow that baby to die of exposure would be a crime. In some circumstances, it may well be murder. In others, it would be a serious criminal form of deliberate child neglect.
So, to suggest that a baby is somehow different as a result of a subjective intent of the abortionist to kill the baby and that we shouldn't make sure that baby is properly cared for following its birth is barbaric. Look, I get it. Not everybody shares my viewpoint with regard to when human life begins. I get it. Not everybody shares my view with regard to abortion policy. Now, I will defend to my dying day my views on these issues, and I will not shrink from them, but regardless of whether you agree with me on that, I seriously question how anyone would credibly maintain that a human being born alive following a failed abortion attempt shouldn't be given the same protection under the law as any other human being.
In other words, the humanness of a baby shouldn't depend on that baby's ``wantedness.'' The fact that anyone wanted to kill that baby before the baby was born doesn't give anyone the right to kill the baby with impunity.
That is what they voted down this week. Let's not pretend that this is about exam rooms. Let's not pretend that this is about actual healthcare. Let's not pretend that this is somehow an anti-woman strategy.
By the way, many women I know--most, I would say--actually find quite offensive the suggestion that to be in favor of protecting babies is somehow anti-woman. This is offensive. It is sad to me, more than anything.
This was a lost opportunity that we had this week to protect the dignity of human life, not just unborn human life but human beings who have been born.
One day we will look back and see this week through sad eyes in much the same way we now look back on other episodes in American history where we have failed to accord the full dignity to a human life that each human life truly deserves.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source