Issues of the Day
Floor Speech
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Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend and colleague for yielding and for his leadership on behalf of human rights. We have worked on issues in Sudan and other issues over the years. I want to thank him for being such a compassionate person.
Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday evening, I attended a premiere of the new film, ``Unplanned,'' which opens this weekend in over 1,000 theaters. The movie is extraordinarily well written, well directed, and well acted. Ashley Bratcher is spectacular as Abby Johnson, the key character in the film.
``Unplanned'' tells a largely untold story, a very difficult story, and is packed with insight and a profoundly important message that America and the world needs to hear.
Based on the life of Abby Johnson and her book, ``Unplanned,'' the film chronicles Ms. Johnson's work at Planned Parenthood as a student activist, followed by almost 8 years at a large Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas, where over 20,000 abortions were performed.
Working as a counselor and then as actual director of that clinic, Abby says that 10 minutes of participation in an ultrasound-guided abortion shook the foundation of her values and changed the course of her life. She writes in the book, which is powerfully portrayed in the film:
``The details startled me. At 13 weeks, you could clearly see the profile of the head, both arms and legs, and even tiny fingers and toes. With my eyes glued to the image of this perfectly formed baby, I watched as a new image emerged on the video screen.''
``The cannula, a straw-shaped instrument attached to the end of a suction tube, had been inserted into the uterus and was nearing the baby's side. It looked like an invader on the screen, out of place. Wrong. It just looked wrong.''
She goes on to write, and you can see this portrayed on the screen:
``My heart sped up. Time slowed. I didn't want to look, but I didn't want to stop looking either.''
``At first, the baby didn't seem aware of the cannula. The next moment was the sudden jerk of a tiny foot of the baby as it started kicking, as if trying to get away from the probing invader. As the cannula pressed in, the baby began struggling to turn and twist away.''
``And then the doctor's voice broke through, startling me. ``Beam me up, Scotty,'' telling the assistant to turn on the suction.''
The abortion clinic director went on to write:
``I had a sudden urge to yell, ``Stop,'' to shake the woman and say: ``Look what is happening to your baby. Wake up. Hurry. Stop.''
``But even as I thought those words, I thought of my own hand and saw my own hand holding the probe. I was one of them, performing this act of abortion.''
Again, her eyes shot back to the screen, and she writes:
``The cannula was already being rotated by the doctor, and now I could see the tiny body violently twisting with it. For the briefest moment, it looked as if the baby was being wrung like a dishcloth, twirled and squeezed. And then the little body crumpled and began disappearing into the cannula before my eyes.''
``The last thing I saw was the tiny, perfectly formed backbone sucked into the tube, and then everything was gone.''
Abby Johnson writes:
``The image of that tiny, dead baby, mangled and sucked away, kept replaying in my mind.''
``What was in this woman's womb just a moment ago was alive. It wasn't tissue. It wasn't cells. This was a human baby fighting for life, a battle it lost in the blink of an eye.''
She writes in the book:
``What I have told people for years as a Planned Parenthood leader, what I believed and taught and defended, is a lie.''
Mr. Speaker, someday--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--the weakest and the most vulnerable--could have so aggressively promoted death to children by abortion.
They will demand to know why dismembering a child like the one that Abby Johnson witnessed--pulverizing an infant with suction or chemically poisoning a baby with any number of toxic chemicals failed to elicit empathy, mercy, or compassion for these victims.
No one is expendable or a throwaway, Mr. Speaker. Every human life has infinite value. Birth is merely an event; it is not the beginning of life. Abortion is violence against children and it is violence against women.
The movie ``Unplanned'' not only moved me, as I believe it will move others, but it also inspired me, as I believe it will inspire others, to care even more for both victims of abortion, the mother, and the child, to love them both, to reach out to post-abortive women. And there are ministries all over this country that say, Yes, an abortion has been procured, but we love you and we want to see you reconcile and find peace and joy again.
This movie makes clear that we need to continue to reach out to the people inside the abortion industry, in the sincere hope that they, like Abby Johnson, will recognize that there is nothing compassionate, benign, or nurturing about abortion.
Abby Johnson has formed a ministry, a nongovernmental organization. It is called And Then There Was None. It is designed to assist abortion clinic workers out of the industry. To date, approximately, 500 abortion clinic workers have left that field of work including seven abortion doctors who now nurture life, rather than kill it.
Abby Johnson is a courageous, selfless woman who spreads truth and compassion. She speaks truth to power. ``Unplanned'' is a truly amazing movie.
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Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I do believe that there are deep concerns about the loss of life and what it means demographically, both here and all over the world. I mean, in places like China, sex selection abortion has claimed the lives of so many of the girl children that there are tens of millions of men who will never marry because the women simply have been exterminated through sex selection abortion.
I have held a number of congressional hearings--I have chaired them-- where we have talked about the disparity between boys and girls. One estimate posited there are 62 million missing girls in China alone.
One of my witnesses said that if you look at all the women that have been killed in Asia through sex selection abortion alone, and it is worldwide, it equals, equates with the number of all the women and girl children living in the United States of America. I mean, that is a horrific crime, in my opinion, against women. And the disparity in male to female that is a consequence leads to other horrific consequences, like human trafficking.
As my good friend knows, I am the prime author of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and four other laws that combat human trafficking, including the most recently signed, the Frederick Douglass anti-human trafficking law signed by President Trump just a few months ago. I am the author of those bills; and we watch very closely what is happening all over the world.
In places like China, trafficking has increased because of the missing daughters who have been killed, simply because they happened to be girls and women, young women, young females.
On this floor of the House, as the gentleman knows, because he voted, as did I, we had a bill to ban sex selection abortions. And to this day, I am shocked and dismayed how many of our colleagues--and I respect our colleagues on both sides of this issue--didn't see that discrimination begins in the womb, when a woman is singled out, a girl, girl child, simply because she is a girl and is killed for that reason.
Sex selection abortion is almost never--although it is occasionally for the boy child, it is the girl child who suffers. So when we look back, when our future generations look back, they will also note that discrimination. Why did that bill not become law?
It seems to me there are at least 20 nations around the world where there are disparities; India and China are among the worst, but it is a huge problem. And we need to look at protecting unborn children as a human rights issue.
Killing an unborn child in the womb is the only human rights abuse that dares call itself a human right; and there are people, purveyors of abortion, who do that on a regular basis. They keep saying it is a right; a right to dismember a child; the right to chemically poison a child.
As the gentleman knows, because he was, again, one of the sponsors of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which I have re- introduced in this Congress--Trent Franks had introduced it in previous--passed three times here on the House floor. It says that children at least 20 weeks, and maybe earlier, but at least at 20 weeks, need to be protected because they suffer excruciating pain when they are being dismembered, for a couple of minutes. We are not sure exactly how long, but the evidence is very, very clear that they suffer as they are being killed by abortion.
And that legislation passed with good numbers, good--a large number of Members of the House, but it is not law yet.
So, you know, I think when we look back, we are going to say we had all these opportunities. And now the most recent--and I appreciate my friend from Texas yielding this time--the most recent outrage is what is happening with regards to children who are born alive and then are killed after birth.
We just had the mayor--not the mayor--the Governor of New York eviscerating protections for children who survive abortions.
Years ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer did a piece, a big piece, a big article called ``The Dreaded Complication.'' And the dreaded complication were those children who somehow evaded the dismemberment process or some other part of that process and emerged alive. It was usually a hysterotomy abortion in most cases, but other cases as well, to go on and breathe and gasp and cry. And these very weak and vulnerable children should be protected.
We have a bill that has been introduced, the Born-Alive Protection Act. We have asked, as just a few hours ago from this floor many times--I did it as well--asking that our friends in the majority would allow this bill to come up, so at least when these children are born alive, the same regimen of care, the same due diligence would be given to that boy or girl, gasping for breath, to ensure that they are protected and get resuscitation.
Why, in these abortion clinics, are they allowed to die due to exposure, or sometimes to additional effort to just kill them?
This legislation has had a large number of cosponsors in the House and Senate. The Senate had an opportunity to take it up and it was voted down, sadly, by other friends on the other side of the aisle. And again, we reach out to our friends on the other side of the aisle to say this is a human rights issue.
Born alive? I did a speech in 2012 on what is called after-birth abortion. Two ethicists wrote this piece--and I would invite anyone who wants to, read it; it is on my website.
Two ethicists wrote this piece about how we ought to kill babies after birth because, really, they are not really different than the child before birth. They can't dream; they can't talk; they don't have cognitive abilities that say, a 4-year-old or a 5-year-old might have.
You know, birth is an event that happens to all of us. It is a continuum of life, and abortion is violence against children. But after-birth abortion also is violence against children.
Let me just conclude. Many people, like Alveda King, Dr. Martin Luther King's niece, she has had two abortions. And she has said, how can the dream survive--that is to say, her great uncle's dream, I have a dream--if we kill the children and hurt and wound the women?
The pro-life movement, and I have been in it for 47 years, care for both, mother and child; love them both. And, again, this new movie, ``Unplanned,'' chronicles a woman, Abby Johnson, who was right there with the strongest of the pro-abortion activists in this country, including counseling women to get abortions.
And then she was director of a clinic in Texas, as I said earlier, in the gentleman's home State. Then, when she saw that child killed, in real time, on an ultrasound, it shattered the myth that somehow that child is not human and not alive, and she walked out the door and never came back.
There were people praying for her from the 40 Days for Life, a very, very humane organization of men and women who pray for the clinic personnel; they pray for the babies; they pray for the moms. That is their agenda, care, love, compassion.
She then, later on, and as depicted in the movie, was at--you know, trying to reach out to some women as well, so they wouldn't make this irreversible decision.
So I want to thank the gentleman again. But, you know, someday we will recognize that these children--and you know, this millennial generation and others that are coming along, you know, first baby pictures now for parents and grandparents are of ultrasound imaging of their children. That is what goes on the refrigerator. The newborn pictures go on, too, with great smiles and great joy when the child is born. But we now know, before birth when he or she is a girl or a boy. We know just so much, and we have that picture, which is the first baby picture.
And to think--and this is what got to Abby Johnson--she watched as that child was dismembered right in front of her. She was holding the probe; and it just dawned on her, the blind spot was lifted, and she realized, I am participating in the killing of a baby. And she left that clinic, and now she is one of the most courageous pro-life leaders in the country and the world.
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