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Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, it is toward the end of June, and 250 years ago today Thomas Jefferson was in the third floor of a rented space in Philadelphia, literally by himself, working at a desk that he had built himself writing a declaration--250 years ago literally today he was by himself writing away on that.

Within about 4 days from now 250 years ago, the Committee of Five-- the four others that worked with him--all determined: No, this is the document that we are going to present to the Continental Congress. It is kind of remarkable to be able to think about that kind of history.

They determined that they were going to end that simple statement at the introduction to say:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, [that] they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

It was a much-debated statement, and they made several different changes to it, but that same statement 250 years later still rings true as a core value of who we are as Americans.

Today I rise to be able to mark the fourth anniversary, though, of the Dobbs decision--a decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the issue of abortion and when life begins and who we are going to be as a people on this issue of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness back to the elected representatives from the States and to the people.

Today we are remembering 60 million children who died under the 49- year time period under Roe v. Wade and the conversation that is still happening all over the country. We the people are still having a dialog about the value of every human person and whether life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness still applies to everyone. Does it apply to only people that are a certain height, a certain weight, a certain age? Or does it apply to every single person?

I am one of those crazy people that actually believe that children are valuable--all of them. And I know it is much maligned in our culture currently, and it is very vogue to be able to say some children are valuable and some children are disposable and those children that are disposable, we shouldn't even discuss. But, honestly, I think we should continue the conversation, the dialogue that has been going on for 250 years, to determine: Does life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness apply to all of us? Are all people created equal, or are some people more equal than others?

Just because a child cannot defend themselves, just because a child doesn't weigh very much yet doesn't mean it is not a child.

Science would say that life begins at conception when the cell division happens. Every single cell in the woman's body has the exact same DNA except when she is pregnant--then there are certain cells in the womb that have different DNA. Do you know why? Because it is a different person.

And there is cell division happening in the woman's body because she is alive, and there is cell division happening in that child's body because so are they, and they are a uniquely different God-created person. They are not inconvenient. They are a child. And we are still having this conversation as a country to try to determine what are we going to do about that.

So me and my colleagues have come to the floor today on the fourth anniversary of the Dobbs decision and said: Let's keep the dialogue going. Let's keep talking about this issue of when a child is a child. Do they have to be a certain weight? Do they have to be a certain age? Do they have to be a certain height? Or is it when basic science would say that child is a child?

What is interesting about this is I am not even bringing a bill tonight to be able to deal with the issue of abortion of a child. I am actually bringing a bill tonight to be able to talk about conscience of individual healthcare providers.

You see, most doctors and healthcare professionals share a common science-based belief that a child in the womb is just like the children they care for outside the womb. The only difference is time.

A child at conception and a child outside the womb are no different. It is just 40 weeks older. That is it. I am 40 weeks older than I was 40 weeks ago. That child is 40 weeks older from conception to birth, but it is still the same child.

The millions of Americans who believe this same truth, we have conscience protection laws on the books, and we have had them on the books for a long time. In fact, there are 25 Federal conscience protection laws right now that are already the law of the United States. Many of these have just flatout not been controversial. Let me give you a couple of them.

The Church amendments. These laws protect the conscience rights of individuals and entities that object to performing or assisting in the performance of an abortion or a sterilization against their religious or moral convictions. When that passed Congress--right after Roe v. Wade--when that passed Congress, it passed 92 to 1. It was not controversial.

In 2004, when Congress created the Weldon amendment--which is in all of our annual appropriations bills still. The Weldon amendment bars the Federal Government and State and local government recipients of Federal funds from discriminating against healthcare entities that refuse to provide, pay for, provide coverage, or refer for abortions. It wasn't controversial. It passed overwhelmingly. It still continues.

The conscience protection bill that I bring tonight is also very straightforward. It is already in Federal law that individuals have the right of conscience. The challenge is, those individuals only are protected in the right of conscience if the Federal Government actually goes and prosecutes individuals that violate their conscience. So if the executive branch chooses not to enforce the law--they just ignore it, though it is federally against the law but no one prosecutes--then nothing happens and that individual has rights that are actually not protected by their own government.

This conscience protection bill is very simple. It says if their rights of conscience have been violated, according to Federal law, that individual has a private right of action to bring their own suit. If the Federal Government won't defend their rights under Federal law, they have the ability to be able to bring it on their own.

This is a very simple, straightforward bill. It doesn't change anything about abortions. We will have the exact same number of abortions the next day after this passes that we did today--exactly the same. But what it does is it says to a person that literally it violates their own conscience to be mandated to perform an abortion but yet their company that they work for is forcing them to be able to carry this out against their own conscience--this allows them to be able to object and to be able to say: Someone else here needs to perform this; I should not be required, for the fear of my own employment, to be able to take care of living, healthy people or hurting people that I am also being required to take the life of a child at the same time when that violates my conscience.

So this is a straightforward bill that, again, won't limit abortion at all but will protect the rights of individuals to have their own rights of conscience.

1756; further, I ask unanimous consent 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.

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