Rep. Chris Smith Addresses 35th Annual March for Life
(excerpts)
Mr. Speaker, Today, 35 years after the infamous Supreme Court
decisions legalizing abortion on demand throughout pregnancy, we
mourn the estimated 50 million innocent girls and boys whose lives
were cut off by abortion - a staggering loss of children’s lives,
equal to six times the total number of people living in my home
state of New Jersey.
Someday future generations of Americans will look back on us and
wonder how and why such a rich and seemingly enlightened society, so
blessed and endowed with the capacity to protect and enhance
vulnerable human life, could have instead so aggressively promoted
death to children and the exploitation of women by abortion both
here and overseas.
They will note with keen sadness that some of our most prominent
politicians and media icons often spoke of human or civil rights,
while precluding virtually all protection to the most persecuted
minority in the world today, unborn children.
Why does dismembering a child with sharp knives, pulverizing a child
with powerful suction devices or chemically poisoning a baby with
any number of toxic chemicals, fail to elicit so much as a scintilla
of empathy, moral outrage, mercy or compassion by America’s liberal
elite?
Abortion destroys the life of our “brothers and sisters” and the
pro-abortion movement is the quintessential example of an “Empathy
Deficit.”
Human life begins at the moment of fertilization. Every second
thereafter is simply a stage of development. By day 22 after
fertilization the heart is beating and brain waves can be detected
at 44 days. By week five tiny hands and feet begin to develop and by
week 7 the baby is already kicking and swimming in the womb.
Ultrasound technology gives us a window into the robust lives of
unborn children showing them even in the earliest weeks of
pregnancy, moving, turning, and stretching. We now know that in the
second trimester babies have the capacity to feel pain.
Future generations will wonder why it took so long for Congress,
the President and the courts to stop just one hideous painful method
of death, partial-birth abortion.
Abortion can never be construed as a human right, even if Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch say it is. It is a human rights
abuse against the weakest and most vulnerable - treating these young
persons as a sexually transmitted disease, a parasite, a piece of
junk to be destroyed. And the whole notion of wantedness and
unwantedness turns a child into an object. Unborn babies have
dignity, inherent value and infinite worth. Because these kids are
so defenseless, politicians and jurists must now, at long last, rise
above perceived political self-interest, surface appeal arguments
crafted by pro-abortion focus groups and pollsters, and a raft of
junk science to protect the fundamental human rights of unborn
children.
Let’s be blunt. Abortion is violence against children. It is extreme
child abuse. It is cruelty to children. Sadly, abortion is not only
legal until birth but the daily perpetrators of this terrible
injustice are massively subsidized by liberal politicians who enrich
the abortion industry with taxpayer funds.
Generations to come will reflect with dismay and incredulity that,
notwithstanding modest pro-life legislative gains in Congress and
the States, in 2008 the largest abortion provider in the nation,
Planned Parenthood, continued to receive huge amounts of taxpayer
funds. As I said recently on the floor of the House of
Representatives, it’s time to take a second look at Planned
Parenthood, “Child Abuse, Incorporated”, for the millions of
children it has killed and continues to kill, all the while
receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from local, state, and
federal governments.
For the abortion industry, business is good. In 2005 Planned
Parenthood alone increased the number of abortions it performed in
its so-called family planning clinics by 10,000 for a total of
nearly 265,000 abortions. With its nation-wide clinic building boom
well underway that number of slaughtered babies will likely rise to
300,000 per year or more.
Human rights defenders worthy of the name must at a minimum move to
abolish government subsidies for those who destroy children. We must
also tenaciously fight for the day when every life, born or unborn,
is respected and protected by law.
There are at least two victims in every abortion (Three when twins
are involved). It’s time to recognize and accept the inconvenient
truth that abortion exploits women. Women deserve better than
abortion. Nonviolent, humane solutions need to be found for women
facing the challenge of an unexpected pregnancy without adequate
financial resources or emotional support. A woman’s unborn child may
be easily scraped from her womb, but the memory is not so easily
scraped from her heart and mind - some women experience severe
psychological consequences including clinical depression.
Dr. Alveda King, niece of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has
had two abortions. Today, she has joined the growing coalition of
women who deeply regret their abortions and are “Silent No More.”
Out of deep personal pain and compassion for others, they challenge
us to respect, protect and tangibly love both the mother and the
child. The women of Silent No More give post-abortive women a safe
place to grieve and a roadmap for reconciliation. And to society at
large, these brave women compel us to rethink and reassess the
far-too-cheap sophistry of our abortion culture. Reflecting on her
uncle’s famous speech, Alveda King asks: “How can the ‘Dream’
survive if we murder the children?”
Future generations will look on those who March for Life with
gratitude for their unwavering resolve to protect both women and
unborn children from abortion. Thirty-five years after Roe, pro-life
ranks have swelled with abortion survivors - courageous
post-abortive women, fathers grieving the loss of their son or
daughter, siblings who mourn the abortion death of a brother or
sister and students who miss every third classmate denied a chance
to live. Through their efforts, combined with the dedication of
pro-life advocates of all ages, and united in prayer and fasting,
America’s dark night of child slaughter will soon come to an end.
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