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Floor Speech
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Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I come to the floor today to be able to talk about an issue that, apparently, there is a large belief among some that doesn't exist. So I wanted to be able to pull the veil back and to say this is actually an issue. And I can't believe I even have to have this conversation. And, in many ways, it is an incredibly difficult conversation to be able to have.
During the Presidential debate that happened just a few weeks ago now, there was a debate, ostensibly, between Vice President Harris and former President Donald Trump. It ended up being a debate between Vice President Harris, David Muir, Linsey Davis, all against Donald Trump.
There were multiple moments where the ABC moderators decided they were going to debate or correct Donald Trump when he spoke, and it became this very odd interchange that all America watched and thought: Well, that doesn't seem like a debate in that sense.
One of those moments was a really odd moment. There was a question about abortion to President Trump. That is a fair conversation for the moderators to bring up a question and to be able to talk about it. He has openly talked a lot about abortion. And, obviously, the vote that happened in the Supreme Court with the Dobbs decision has highlighted a lot of that conversation nationally since his Presidency.
President Trump, during that debate, talked about children who are aborted away the eighth or ninth month and then some even after. He mentioned that, to which the ABC News moderator, Linsey Davis, responded: ``There is no State in the country where it's legal to kill a baby after it's born'' and then immediately turned to Vice President Harris, where, literally, she jumped in to be able to debate the President and to try to ``correct'' him.
The problem is, there was no one to be able to moderate her in that debate and to make the simple statement, there are not only States in America where that can happen, there are States in America where that does happen.
In this simple map of the United States, this lists out the States where there are strong protections for a child after birth. Now, this is not an abortion; this is a botched abortion that has occurred. This is a woman who went in with the intent of having an abortion, late term. The child was fully delivered, and in medical practice in many of these States that are listed here, the child is fully delivered during the abortion. And if the child cries, breathes, the practice is to back away and to allow the child to slowly die on the table because the intent was an abortion. So everyone just steps back in the facility and watches the child die on the table, however long that takes.
Now, before people say that doesn't occur, eight States have a requirement--eight States have a requirement--that, in an abortion, if it is botched and the child is actually fully delivered, and they are still alive, they have to report it. And in eight States--only those States that actually do that--there were 277 cases of that.
Let me give you an example. This was several years ago. She is now a beautiful young woman, a young woman named Melissa Ohden. She actually didn't know until she was an adult that she was actually the product of a botched abortion. Her mom, who was a teenager, had been compelled to have an abortion by some family members around her. She didn't want to do it, but she did. It was a late-term abortion.
She went in to have the abortion, had the abortion, and after the abortion was over, one of the nurses looking through the ``medical waste'' that was there on the table, saw the young girl crying. She scooped up the infant, took the infant on her own to an emergency room. The emergency room personnel said: There is no way she will have a full, meaningful life. But they took care of her because she was in the emergency room.
I know Melissa Ohden. She is a remarkable lady--no disabilities, no other challenges other than the knowledge that she was supposed to ``have been aborted.'' But there she is alive.
There are a lot of women who are scattered around the country who are all finding each other online telling the story that they are a product of a botched abortion; that they were born alive, and they were given medical care when ``they weren't supposed to be there at all.'' They are now, through one rare benefit of social media, finding each other and connecting in conversation. Not only is this happening, it is happening all over the country.
I am fully aware that the ABC News moderator thinks this doesn't happen anywhere, but not only is it happening, it has happened before; it is happening probably today.
The question that this body has not resolved is, What are we going to do about it?
This is not about reducing abortion. Quite frankly, the bill that I am bringing and I want to bring for unanimous consent today won't reduce abortions at all in America.
I would tell you, it would be my preference to be able to stand for the value of every single child in America and to say there is not a child in America that is disposable; that children in America are all valuable--not some disposable, some valuable--all valuable.
This is not a question of are we going to legalize or not legalize abortion. This is about a fully delivered child crying on a table, if they will get medical care or if we will back up and watch them die. That is the question before us--and what we are going to do about that.
There has been a lot of conversation about this of late, in the last several years. Let me give you an example of several of these States. New York State recently passed a law that not only allows abortion all the way until the ninth month, but they protect--if a child is fully delivered and is breathing on the table, and it was a botched abortion, that they would be protected, quote-unquote, to be able to die there.
When this bill was passed, just a couple of years ago, in New York, the New York Legislature cheered--cheered--at protecting the rights of a child to lie on the table and die after a delivery. They lit up the Freedom Tower in New York City to celebrate the passage of that bill. That is in New York.
In Minnesota, 9 years ago, in a wide bipartisan vote, they determined that they should actually track how many of these botched abortions happen; that they should actually keep track of how many occur like this, that a child is actually born alive. It is rare, but they wanted just to be able to keep track of it with basic records.
So in a bipartisan vote in the Minnesota Legislature, signed by the Governor, they passed a law, 9 years ago, to track how often this occurs. In the State of Minnesota, they determined, over the next several years, that there were 24 children that were born alive during a botched abortion. Now, again, that is not many, but I bet it matters to those 24. But for those 24 children that Minnesota discovered, this is not really a myth. This is really occurring. They tracked it.
The Governor of Minnesota, the current Vice Presidential candidate on the Democratic side, worked to get a repeal of that law, and the simple repeal was: We don't want reporting anymore.
Literally, it was: We are finding out this is happening; so in Minnesota, we have declared we don't want to know that this is happening anymore.
That is unbelievable. That is old-school, put your hands over your ears and scream ``la, la, la, la'' kind of stuff. That is not what we should do as a nation. We should actually know about it and then determine, through debate in this body, what we are going to do about it.
Madam President, I am getting close to a conclusion here. May I ask unanimous consent to be permitted to speak just 3 more minutes, until we can wrap this up, and then prior to the scheduled rollcall vote, for Senator Britt to have 1 minute just to be able to conclude.
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Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, so here is the issue. We have brought this bill to the floor several times before. In fact, we have had some bipartisan support for this bill several times before. The bill is very, very simple. The bill says: When the doctor performs an abortion but the child is born alive, instead of actually born dead, that care would be provided to that child the same as any other child that is born.
Now, we are fully aware that many abortion clinics do not have a full hospital that is also attached to them. But we are also very aware that if there is a problem with the mom in an abortion clinic, they take her to a hospital. This is a simple statement to say: If a child is born alive, which we know 100 percent this has happened--even in States like Minnesota, that this is happening--what is America going to do with a fully delivered, crying baby on the table? Will they get healthcare or will they not get healthcare? That is all this bill does.
It doesn't reduce abortions, unfortunately. It doesn't do that. It doesn't change abortion processes across the country. It doesn't do that. It just says: When the abortion is unsuccessful and the child is actually delivered instead, we are going to get medical care to that child. That is what I bring in this, and it is absolutely, to me, the simplest of all possible statements to make.
204 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
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