Abortion

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, for nearly 50 years, Roe v. Wade has been a disaster for our country and its citizens. Sixty million unborn lives have been lost to abortion, and our politics have been distorted by a ruling that deprives the American citizen--the voter--of the right to determine questions on which there is constitutional ambiguity.

The Senate confirms individuals to the judicial branch to be judges. They are to judge, not to legislate. Listening to those whom we represent and proposing legislation on their behalf is our job here in the Capitol and the job of our representatives in State legislatures throughout all 50 States. The separation of these powers is crucial to how our democracy functions.

Yet previous iterations of the Supreme Court have seen fit to usurp this legislative power, particularly as it relates to abortion.

In doing so, a majority of these unelected judges and Justices have relied upon specious jurisprudence to eviscerate State laws that protect the unborn.

You don't need to take the word of a conservative Republican from Kansas. Writing when she was a circuit court judge, the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained:

Roe v. Wade . . . invited no dialogue with legislators. Instead, it seemed entirely to remove the ball from the legislators' court.

One more liberal law professor acknowledged that ``Roe short- circuited the democratic deliberation that is the most reliable method of deciding questions of competing values.''

These assessments are exactly right. The fallout of Roe, and affirmed by Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, is obvious. A vacancy to the Supreme Court has become a cage match--a fight here in the U.S. Senate. Someone as eminently qualified as Amy Coney Barrett should have been confirmed unanimously.

Today, many of my Democratic colleagues support packing the Supreme Court with more Justices because they believe the Court will block their agenda, which is ironic because for nearly a half century, virtually every State ever to provide protection to unborn babies has been foiled by the judicial branch. Something terribly wrong has happened to our democracy when so much energy is focused on the Court.

Again, quoting then-Justice Ginsburg on Roe's attempt to put the issue of abortion to bed, she said in 1985, the Court's ``heavy-handed judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict'' and in 1993 declared that the ruling ``prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue.''

Given these examples of our polluted discourse, no one can reasonably say that the politics of abortion have improved since then. In fact, it has only gotten much worse.

What has improved, however, is our understanding of the science of embryology. Regrettably, it is not enough to say a unique human life begins at the moment of conception for it to receive protection. But we know when unborn babies feel pain; we know when they can survive outside the womb; and a remarkable 4D ultrasound reveals what we already knew: These unborn babies are fully human and deserve the right to life, and yet our legal regime denies them that right.

Because of Roe, a child in America can be terminated for any reason-- any reason--up to the moment of its birth. That places the United States in the company of China and North Korea. Surely, a democracy founded on the belief that all people ``are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness'' has a greater respect for human life than these brutal communist regimes.

Tomorrow's Mississippi case will test that proposition. However, there is no doubt that the reversal of Roe will not end the practice of legal abortion. Several States have already enacted permissive abortion laws that would remain even on Roe's demise.

The point here is that my effort and the effort of my colleagues and millions of other Americans to defend life will continue regardless of how the Supreme Court rules in the coming months, including in my State of Kansas. These efforts will depend on civil persuasion of our neighbors and responsive State and Federal legislators. We will need legislation that protects the unborn and assists new families in caring for their child.

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear the most significant abortion case in the last 30 years. Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. This case provides the Court the opportunity to relinquish the legislative power it has assumed and return it to the people and their representatives. The Court will be better for it, and so will our politics. And most importantly of all, millions of future voices will get to have their say in the process too.

I now yield the floor to my colleague, the Senator from Nebraska, Senator Fischer.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source