An Unborn Child is A Human Life
Floor Speech
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Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I believe everyone has the dignity, value, and potential. There is no right more fundamental than the right to life. Our Founders engraved it in the Constitution. We are made in God's image, and we carry in our hearts that spark of creation that served as the bedrock upon which our country was founded.
Documents like the Constitution do not grant rights, they protect rights. The Dobbs v. Jackson decision will go down in history not only as the end of one era but the dawn of another more hopeful one.
The decision that the Court made was based on the 14th Amendment and the civil rights of a woman and her reproductive rights. The decision was controversial. It is not in the Constitution, and it was a terrible decision. It was decided based on the civil rights of the mother.
We know that the child has a heartbeat in 6 weeks and can feel pain at 15 weeks which was the Mississippi law that it was contested on. And we know a child born at 24 weeks will survive.
My question is: When does that child enjoy the same rights under the 14th Amendment as the mother?
Is it at conception?
Is it at 6 weeks, the heartbeat, which Georgia law is based on?
Or is it the Mississippi law or when that child is born maybe prematurely at 24 weeks?
This is God's Word. God told Jeremiah that He knew him before He webbed him in the womb.
What my colleagues are proposing tomorrow on the House floor goes far beyond Roe. This legislation, if codified into law, would require healthcare providers at the command of the mother to rip a full-term baby from the womb while the mother is in labor; if the baby likely survives, orders the child to be killed.
This is unconscionable and barbaric and must be stopped. Only eight nations, as has been said earlier, allow this barbaric practice; two of them are North Korea and China. We are not in good company here.
I cry out to my colleagues to stop this insanity. Let us all enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--even the defenseless unborn.
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