March for Life
Floor Speech
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Mr. FITZGERALD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in defense of life.
This Saturday, as many of the previous speakers had alluded to, is the 49th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. As such, it is a fitting time to talk about this administration's radical anti-life policies for which some of us were caught off guard when President Biden was running for the Presidency.
Over the past year we have watched President Biden and the Democrats continually push what I would consider an anti-life full agenda. First, they gutted the Hyde amendment, a longstanding provision of appropriations bills that prevents taxpayer funding for abortions and has saved an estimated 2 million lives.
Then the Biden Administration's Department of Health and Human Services changed the rules to essentially require healthcare providers to perform abortions, despite any moral objections they may have.
Finally, my Democrat colleagues passed a radical bill that removes existing limits on abortion and allows abortions on demand, no matter the age of the fetus.
Mr. Speaker, I will always push back on their anti-life stances with a clear and strong message of full opposition. I believe that every human life is precious and should be protected at every stage. Throughout my career, I have always stood for life. I will continue to fight against this administration's anti-life policies.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, today, after decades of noble struggle and sacrifice, pro-life Americans are hopeful that government- sanctioned violence against children and the exploitation of women by abortion may be nearing an end, although in a very real way the struggle to defend innocent human life now enters a critically important new phase.
Because of the Dobbs case, because the Supreme Court has finally seemingly accepted a relook at Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions, the Federal Government and the States-based suit have new authority to protect the weakest and the most vulnerable among us. Protection for unborn children is at a tipping point. In 2022, the Supreme Court can begin dismantling the culture of death that it has imposed on America.
Mr. Speaker, for decades and right up to this very moment, abortion supporters have gone through extraordinary lengths to ignore, to trivialize, and to cover up the battered baby victim. With stolid resolve, they defend the indefensible.
Why does dismembering a child with sharp knives, pulverizing a child with powerful suction devices, chemically poisoning a baby with any number of toxic chemicals--one method euphemistically called medical abortion--why does all of this fail to elicit so much as a scintilla of empathy, mercy, or compassion from the so-called pro-choice crowd?
Have the physical and emotional consequences of women been underreported? You bet they have. I have been in the pro-life movement for almost 50 years. Both my wife, Marie, and I do work with a lot of women who have had abortions. They tell us stories of agony that, just like the fact of the unborn child's worth and dignity, has been trivialized by the other side of this issue.
Mr. Speaker, why are children born alive during some late-term abortions not given the same standard of care and respect as premature infants born at that very same age? They are left to die, or they are just killed after they are born.
President Biden understands the gruesome reality of abortion and this injustice. At least he once did. As Senator Biden wrote to constituents in explaining his support for the Hyde amendment, for example, prohibiting taxpayer funding for elective abortions, he said it would protect both the woman and her unborn child. He stated at the time he had consistently, on no fewer than 50 occasions, voted against Federal funding of abortions. Further, those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be compelled to pay for them.
Today, the President has weaponized the entire Federal bureaucracy to aggressively promote abortion on demand at home and overseas, including full court press to force taxpayers to fund abortions on demand including the repeal of the Hyde amendment.
Last September, the House passed a bill, the abortion on demand until birth act. Of course, it had a different name that just cloaked the misery that it would impose. That bill would not only codify late-term abortions, it would also nullify nearly every modest pro-life restriction ever enacted by the States including a woman's right to know laws in 35 states, parental involvement statutes in 37 states, pain-capable unborn child protection laws in 19 states, sex-election abortion bans in almost a dozen states and waiting periods in 26 states. By his words and his deeds, the President has become the abortion President. I think he wants to own that.
Mr. Speaker, this all comes at a time when ultrasound imaging has made unborn babies more visible, with a greater clarity than ever before. Breakthrough research has now found that unborn children can feel pain at a gestational age of 15 weeks and maybe earlier.
Today modern medicine treats an ever-increasing number of unborn children with disability and disease as patients in need of diagnosis and life-enhancing treatments before birth. Unborn babies are society's youngest patients and deserve protection, not death by abortion. Science informs us that birth is merely an event--albeit a very important one--in the life of the child. It is not the beginning of his or her life.
As most people know, after the ultrasound the grandparents, the parents, and the friends get pictures of the child in utero. The ultrasound pictures are the first baby pictures that are now plastered on all of our refrigerators in great expectation for that event called birth.
The right to life is the first human right, and it must be guaranteed to everyone regardless of race, age, sex, disability, stage of development, or condition of dependency. Life is not just for the planned, the privileged, or the perfect.
We need to protect these innocent children.
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