Regarding National Media Coverage of Philadelphia Murder Trial

Floor Speech

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Mr. HARRIS. Thank you very much. I would like to thank the gentleman from New Jersey for bringing this subject to the attention of the American people because this is a subject that's not going away.

What we're talking about today, of course, is a trial going on in Pennsylvania, little heard about in the press, but one that's very significant. Because when it's coupled with what the gentleman from Pennsylvania and the gentleman from Louisiana spoke about, the overarching medical ethics question, it's something that we have to come to deal with. Because, Mr. Speaker, it is true that apparently in Dr. Gosnell's mind there was little difference between a late-term abortion and killing a baby after birth. And make no mistake about it, these children were killed. Because the trial right now is for seven cases of murder on those newborns. Interestingly, it was only discovered because of the death of the mother. And to show how flippantly many States have dealt with the issue of regulating clinics like that, we would never have known unless this mother died.

In my home State of Maryland, two deaths have recently occurred; and only as a result of those deaths has the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene decided that, yes, maybe we actually should regulate clinics where this kind of surgery is done. And, in fact, they have closed four of those clinics until they can bring them up to standards that we would consider modern medical practice.

But let's pay attention--because my specialty is anesthesiology--to what was going on in that clinic in Pennsylvania. Dr. Gosnell hired a surgical technician. This is someone he hired to clean instruments. He had that person administer anesthesia to those poor women going to that clinic thinking they were going to get good medical care. This is someone whose training was in how to clean a metal instrument and now administering life-threatening drugs. And, Mr. Speaker, we know they're life threatening because the misuse of those drugs resulted in that woman's death. In fact, three drugs administered--Demerol, a powerful narcotic; Valium, a powerful sedative; and promethazine, another sedative--administered by someone whose training was to clean medical instruments. And that is what's considered acceptable practice in many States in the country because many States choose not to regulate clinics where these abortion procedures are done.

But let's make no mistake about it. It wasn't just the killing of the mother that's at issue here. It's the grotesque procedure that was done in that clinic by the doctor and the people he trained to end the lives of those babies who were born alive. We might think this is a terrible thing. In fact, that grand jury thought it was a terrible thing. They, in fact, indicted on seven counts of murder. They called it ``murder.''

But the gentleman from Pennsylvania and the gentleman from Louisiana bring up an article published just last year in the Journal of Medical Ethics by professors from Italy and Australia. These are fairly civilized countries. The title of the article is fascinating. If the gentleman doesn't mind, I'm going to go through some of this because America has to understand what this moral discussion going on worldwide is. I will tell you I'm shocked because 10 years ago--I'm shocked now that this article is published, and 10 years ago, it wouldn't even be thinkable. The title is, ``After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?'' And it's about committing what this author calls after-birth abortion, which is currently called euthanasia or murder, or infanticide in our current speech. But these authors propose a new term: after-birth abortion. We're going to make this sound better because we know abortion is legal so we're just going to call this after-birth abortion. What it is is justification for killing a child after birth when no abortion was intended.

Mr. Speaker, this is just the next step to what Dr. Gosnell did. Dr. Gosnell killed a child after an abortion was intended. We think that's bad. A grand jury thought it was bad. There's seven indictments for murder in Pennsylvania. These medical ethicists propose that even if it wasn't an intentional abortion, that mother went and had her baby and decided that her daughter just wasn't going to fit in with the family, literally, and that it was okay to kill that baby. And if you don't believe me, ladies and gentlemen, just go and Google it. Read the article yourself. It's chilling.

Some people say, Well, maybe the child is born disabled or born with some terrible illness or something that's very painful and maybe we're just doing a good thing for the child. But the authors say these include cases where the newborn is not disabled. And I'm going to read from these word-for-word because I want to get this right and, Mr. Speaker, I want America to understand what's at stake here.

They make the argument that the fact that a fetus or a newborn has the potential to become a person who will have an acceptable life is no reason for prohibiting an abortion, or in this case, killing that child after birth. They argue that--and I'm going to quote:

When circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.

Mr. Speaker, let me remind you that in the United States, sex-selection abortion is legal in many States, in China. And if we don't think this is a slippery slope, remember what's happened in China over the past decade. They've decided under their one-child policy that if you have a live birth of a second child, it's legal to kill that child for the sole purpose of it being a second child. And, Mr. Speaker, as we know, occasionally the girls were killed, if they were the first child, knowing that you can only have one child and the family wanted a boy. So in China it's gone past sex-selection abortion to sex-selection infanticide. But that's exactly what this article speaks about.

This article, again, was written by professors from Italy and Australia, published in a prestigious journal that ethically justifies killing a child after birth because, well, Mr. Speaker, for any reason. Because they argue that child has no right to grow up. And if you don't believe me, they go on to say that this is not an actual person. It's a potential person. It's not an actual person.

So they say if a potential person like a fetus or a newborn does not become an actual person because you don't allow it to grow up like you or I, then there is neither an actual nor a future person who can be harmed--I'm not sure I understand that--which means there is no harm at all. So killing the fetus or the child, there's no harm at all.

But they go on to say this, which is amazing and this is why people have to understand how foreign a thought this is to many of us, ``So if you ask one of us if we would have been harmed had our parents decided to kill us when we were fetuses or newborns, our answer is no.''

What, Mr. Speaker? They're suggesting that if someone came up to me and said, would I have been harmed if my parents had decided to kill me when I was a newborn, my answer should be no? How many people do they really think you can go up to and ask, if your parents had killed you as a newborn, would you have been harmed? Do they really think people are ready to say, no, no harm, no foul; I wasn't a person, that's all right, that's totally ethical.

They create an ethical framework completely consistent with abortion policy throughout most of the United States, and that is, that a late-term, third-trimester fetus has no rights as a person, and only merely extend that logic to the period after birth. That's all they're doing.

So although this may sound grotesque and shocking that they suggest that there is no moral problem with killing a newborn, it's merely an ethical, logical extension of the way we have been treating fetuses since 1973.

It gets worse. Because the gentleman from Pennsylvania suggested, well, there are plenty of people who would adopt this child. They go on to say that it's actually better in many cases to kill the child than to put it up for adoption. This is stunning. The reason they say that is that we need to consider the interests of the mother, who might suffer psychological distress for giving her child up for adoption. They suggest there would be no psychological distress for that woman to have carried that child for 9 months, given birth to a normal baby, decided they don't want it, and agree to have someone kill it? It's stunning. It's striking.

Let me tell you, and I'll close on this, because we're shocked by this. But let me tell you something, we can't argue with nature. We can't argue with what nature tells us. It answers the question: Why in the world is the younger generation more pro-life than my generation? It comes up in poll after poll after poll. How in the world can that be? We have an enlightened younger generation? Isn't it enlightened to think about this ethical framework? How can this be?

Mr. Speaker, let me suggest how this can be. This is the first generation where two things hold true: They fully understand what makes a human a human because they learned genetics and chromosomes, and they know that every single person is unique from every other person ever, based on science.

There's one other thing they know, Mr. Speaker. This is the first generation where they know that they could have been aborted legally. The first generation where they actually answer those ethicist questions: Would harm have been done to me if I would have been killed as a fetus? Their answer, resoundingly--because that's why the polling shows this--is they know the answer is yes. We are harming a human in the decision to take its life. That is true whether it is at 3 months, 6 months, 8 months. Because they know that was them as an embryo and a fetus at 3 months, and that was them at 6 months, and that was them at 9 months. And if they were in Philadelphia, in Dr. Gosnell's clinics, that would have been them 1 minute after birth or 5 minutes after birth. They know that under that construct of ethics by those professors in Italy and Australia, published in Journal of Medical Ethics, they're proposing that could have been them at 1 day, 1 week. Because those professors actually go on to say we can't really set what the deadline is for how long it's ethical. Mr. Speaker, that younger generation is smarter than my generation on this issue.

I want to thank again the gentleman from New Jersey for bringing this issue up. This is something that is so troubling, we have to come to grips with this. We have to understand the slope we are on when we neglect to treat every human being as one worthy of protection.

I thank the organizer of this Special Order.

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