Transcript:
“Mr. Speaker, for the sake of all of those who founded this nation and dreamed of what America could someday be, and for the sake of all those since then, who have died in darkness so Americans could walk in the light of freedom, it is so very important that those of us who are privileged to be members of this United States Congress, pause from time to time and remind ourselves of why we are really all here.
Thomas Jefferson, whose words marked the beginning of this nation, said, “The care of human life and its happiness, and not its destruction, is the chief and only object of good government.” The phrase in the 5th Amendment capsulizes our entire Constitution. It says, “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” And the 14th Amendment says no State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Mr. Speaker, protecting the lives of all Americans and their Constitutional rights is why we are really all here.
Yet today, Mr. Speaker, a great Shadow looms over America. More than 18,000 very late-term abortions are occuring in America every year placing the mothers at exponentially greater risk and subjecting their Pain Capable unborn babies to torture and death without anesthesia or Federal protection of any kind in the land of the free and the home of the brave. It is the greatest human rights atrocity in the United States today.
Almost every other major civilized nation on earth protects Pain capable unborn babies at this age, and every credible poll of the American people shows that they are overwhelmingly in favor of protecting them. And yet, we have given these little babies less legal protection from unnecessary cruelty than the protection we have given farm animals under the Federal Humane Slaughter Act.
Mr. Speaker, it seems we are never quite so eloquent as when we decry the crimes of past generations, but we often become staggering blind when it comes to facing and rejecting the worst of atrocities in our own time. But Mr. Speaker, I would submit to you that the winds of change are now beginning to blow and that the tide of blindness and blood is finally turning in America. Because, today we are poised to pass The Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act in this chamber.
And no matter how it is shouted down, or what distortions, deceptive what-ifs, distractions, diversions, gotchas!, twisting of words, changing the subject, or blatant falsehoods the abortion industry hurls at this bill and its supporters, this bill is a deeply sincere effort, beginning at their sixth month of pregnancy, to protect both mothers and their pain capable unborn babies from the atrocity of late-term abortion on demand, and ultimately, it is one all humane Americans can support if they truly understand it for themselves.
Mr. Speaker, this is a vote all of us will remember forever and it will be considered in the annals of history, and I believe the counsels of eternity itself. But it shouldn’t be such a hard vote. Protecting little pain capable unborn children and their Mothers is not a Republican issue, or a Democrat issue, it is a test of our basic humanity and who we are as human family.
It is time to open our eyes and allow our consciences to catch up with our technology. It is time for members of the United States Congress to open our eyes and our souls and remember that protecting those who cannot protect themselves is why we are really all here.
And it is time for all Americans, Mr. Speaker, to open our eyes and our hearts to the humanity of these little pain capable unborn children of God and the inhumanity of what is being done to them.”
Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act 