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Floor Speech
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Mr. LANKFORD. I have been on this floor I actually don't know how many times talking about the value of every single child.
The conversation today is not just about the right to travel and the right to healthcare. It is deeper than that. It is the right to live.
The conversation today is not just about women. There are two people in this conversation--a child with 10 fingers and 10 toes and a beating heart and DNA that is uniquely different than the mom's DNA or the dad's DNA. They have a nervous system. They feel pain. There is a child in this conversation as well.
In my conversation when I have come to the floor over and over again, it has been to say that at some point our Nation should look at basic science and to say when you have DNA and you have a functioning nervous system and you have cell division, in every health book everywhere in the country, they call that life, but for some reason, on this floor, it is just tissue.
I actually come to be able to thank millions of women and millions of men who for five decades have not written off children, who have walked out, who have marched, who have silently prayed, who have gathered in places and said: When are we going to recognize what is self-evident? That child in the womb is a child, and that child may be inconvenient, but that is a child. When are we going to recognize that basic thing?
For 50 years, that conversation has gone on with the simple statement of, at what point will we be able to speak out for the value of every person, and I do mean every person, including the mom?
It has been interesting to be able to hear all the misinformation in the past couple of weeks. I have read story after story and seen all these breathless news reports about how women with an ectopic pregnancy will not be able to get care; they will be doomed to die--except there is no State law that would prohibit someone getting treatment that is lifesaving for an ectopic pregnancy in any State. I have seen all these breathless reports about how there will be miscarriages and you won't be able to get care--except that is not true in a single place, not one. This over and over riling people up.
What I have seen are 50 churches that have been attacked. What I have seen are 57 crisis resource centers for pregnancy resource that have been attacked and firebombed. I have seen that. Now, we don't seem to discuss that here on the floor. No one is actually saying that all this conversation, all this misinformation, all this noise is actually leading to actual violence across the country. Everyone is like: Oh, no, no; that is not related. Oh really? So when a pregnancy resource center is firebombed and spray painted on the side of it ``If abortions aren't safe in America, neither are you''--we should probably just ignore that? Because that is what is actually going on across the country right now as well.
To be very clear, no State has banned interstate travel for adult women seeking to obtain an abortion. No State has done that. Now, am I confident there are some people who are out there talking? Yes. But there are also in this Senate 5,000 bills that have been filed. And how many of them are actually going to move--as it is in every legislature across the country, and everyone in this body knows it. Everyone knows it. But this seems to be just trying to inflame, to raise the what-ifs.
It has been interesting to me that there is another bill that is actually being discussed that would literally--if you are a pregnancy resource center dealing with crisis pregnancies, if you don't perform abortions, they would call that misinformation. In the other bill that is being discussed right now, they would fine you $100,000.
I can't even begin to explain my emotion when I think, if you take the life of a child, there is pressure to say: We want Federal funding to take the life of a child. If you protect the life of a child, we are going to fine you $100,000. Is that really where we are? Is that really what this debate has become?
This administration has quickly become the most pro-abortion administration in American history and has rapidly moved to accelerate abortions across the country, while millions of other Americans just ask a simple question: Does that child in the womb have the right to travel in their future? Do they get to live?
Some would say: No. They are terribly inconvenient. They need to die.
Others would say: Why don't we actually live by our values, including the right to life?
So while there is conversation about how to put a piece of legislation out that may very well protect individuals who are being trafficked to go to other States to get an abortion or all kinds of other issues that are there, I come back to the most basic thing: There is a child in this conversation, and maybe this body should pay attention to children as well and to wonder what their future could be to travel in the days ahead as well.
I look forward to the day when we are talking more about that little girl and less about misinformation.
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