Abortion

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee had a hearing to discuss two of our Democratic colleagues' biggest headaches: the Supreme Court of the United States and State laws that protect the right to life.

This wasn't the first time we have seen an attack on both waged by Members of the Senate. Last year, the majority leader, Senator Schumer, walked across the street to the Supreme Court and threatened two Supreme Court Justices by name based on an abortion case that they were considering.

Sadly, it seems that our Democratic colleagues have simply given up when it comes to protecting innocent life. In 2020, February 2020, the Senate voted on a bill that would outlaw elective abortions after 20 weeks, when science tells us that a fetus can actually feel pain. Had this bill become law, it would have put U.S. domestic policy in line with that of most of the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, we happen to be in a small category, including North Korea and communist China, when it comes to the ability to get an abortion well into the period of gestation, including up to late-term abortions. As it stands today, the United States is currently one of only seven countries to allow elective abortions after 20 weeks. As I said, those seven countries include the Communist Party China and North Korea. But our Democratic colleagues filibustered that bill too.

Then came one more opportunity to protect the most vulnerable among us. The Senate voted on legislation requiring doctors to provide lifesaving care to infants who survive abortions, just like any other newborn child would receive. That sounds like common sense, right? Well, if you ask the American people, they say yes. More than three- quarters of the American people, when it comes to polling, said they support providing medical treatment for babies who survive abortions. But there are no Federal laws requiring healthcare providers to care for these children just as they would any other infant in their care. And, yes, you guessed it--Democrats blocked that bill too.

The attack on innocent life has been years in the making, but we have never seen anything quite like the latest endeavor that has come from the House of Representatives. The so-called Women's Health Protection Act is actually ``Nancy Pelosi's Abortion Protection Act.''

This isn't just about messaging. The Senate version of the bill is cosponsored by all but two of our Democratic colleagues. Clearly, the provisions included in this bill don't represent the beliefs of just some small subset of the Democratic Party. Apparently, it is mainstream within the Democratic Party.

But it is clear that this is a no-holds-barred attack on the right to life. One of the most outrageous and unprecedented aspects of the bill is it limits State laws limiting abortion even after viability. This goes far beyond where the Supreme Court went in Roe v. Wade. It also undermines another landmark abortion case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In Casey, the Supreme Court abandoned the trimester framework of Roe, replacing it with a viability standard to determine a State law's constitutionality. Even the author of Roe v. Wade and of Casey agreed that this viability standard was largely arbitrary. But this decision came in 1992, when a baby was considered viable after 23 or 24 weeks. But the marvels of modern medicine continue to challenge this estimate. Last June, a baby was born at 21 weeks and 2 days, and this past summer, he celebrated his first birthday.

The extreme legislation attacking the right to life coming out of the House and now embraced by Senate Democrats would undercut the Supreme Court's ruling in Casey v. Planned Parenthood and would invalidate State laws that limit abortions after 20 weeks, which is now the consensus period of viability.

A number of States have passed laws to restrict access for different gestational periods--for example, in Massachusetts and Nevada, for example, abortions are restricted after 24 weeks. In California, Washington, and Illinois--they are among the many States that restrict abortions after viability. But the Democratic proposal is so extreme, it would invalidate the laws passed in each of these blue States.

If this proposal, the Pelosi abortion bill, became law, it would allow healthcare providers to perform abortions at any point so long as it is done to preserve the mother's health. This actually undermines the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that said it is constitutional to limit so-called partial birth abortions as a barbaric practice that does not have constitutional protection.

But the provision that would allow abortion at any point in the pregnancy so long as it is done to preserve the mother's health--that doesn't mean the pregnancy actually threatens the life of the mother. Let's be clear on that point. If a single healthcare provider determines that the birth of the baby would impact on the mother's mental health, an abortion would be legal at any point in the pregnancy up to birth.

This is way out of step with where most Americans are. A poll this last summer found that 65 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be illegal during the second trimester, the second 3-month period of pregnancy. An abortion opposition, I should say, to a third- trimester abortion is even stronger. These are the so-called late-term abortions where the fetus is fully formed and even viable outside of the mother's womb. Eighty percent of Americans oppose third-trimester abortions but not Pelosi's abortion act, embraced by all but two of the Democrats here in the U.S. Senate.

The American people clearly do not want abortion laws that put us in the same league as China and North Korea--two of the world's most aggressive human rights abusers. Until 2016, China had a strict one- child policy. Families who didn't comply with that policy could be fined, lose their jobs, and the baby would even be the subject of a forced abortion. And it became common in China, as a result of this limitation on pregnancy, for families to prefer a son and undergo gender-selection abortions. If you are pregnant with a female child, well, abortion is fair game because they preferred to use abortion as a means to select the gender of their child.

Democrats' legislation doesn't simply remain silent on gender- selective abortions; it goes so far as to prohibit States from outlawing abortion as a method of gender selection. Not only that, it undermines State efforts to protect unborn babies with disabilities or Down syndrome. Unborn children being killed solely on gender or disabilities is a devastating problem in other countries. We cannot allow such a grotesque practice to become mainstream here in the United States. We are better than that.

The list of atrocities included in this legislation is a long one. It requires healthcare providers who hold deep religious objections to abortion to violate their own deeply held religious beliefs and kill unborn babies. It invalidates informed consent laws, which require healthcare providers to share accurate information with their patient about the baby and whether specifically the child can feel pain. It gives the Attorney General of the United States sweeping authority to block State laws that try to protect innocent human life. So this radical proposal from the House, now embraced by all but two of our Senate Democrats, would overturn existing State laws and allow abortions on a scale our country has never seen before.

I think it is a sad commentary on the conscience of America when all but a handful of our Democratic colleagues are fighting to implement these radical policies. But we cannot and we will not stay silent at a time when our most vulnerable are being attacked in such a manner. We have a moral imperative to defend those who cannot defend themselves, born or unborn, to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Babies with heartbeats, fingerprints, taste buds--they deserve to have protection of the law too. The Declaration of Independence, after all, says that we hold these truths to be self- evident, that all are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, including the right to life. I have always been proud to defend that right, and at no time in my lifetime has it ever needed more defense than right now in the face of these outrageous proposals.

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