All Lives Matter

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. WAGNER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, my friend, Congressman Duffy, for leading this effort and leading this Special Order today.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my continued outrage at, now, two abhorrent videos that have been released in the last week in which two Planned Parenthood senior doctors describe the process by which they and their coworkers kill unborn children and harvest their organs for sale.

Like many Americans, I was shocked not only by what I learned about Planned Parenthood's standard practices, but by the cold, callous indifference in which its medical leadership detailed the barbaric murder of society's most vulnerable children.

In the United States, we provide protections for the least among us in numerous ways from medical research, to welfare programs, to healthcare assistance; yet here, we stand on the floor of the United States House of Representatives to discuss whether the sale of human body parts harvested from aborted children violates basic human dignity and perhaps even the law.

Mr. Speaker, the question that strikes me today is not whether this practice is immoral or illegal--for surely no Member of Congress or of humanity can, in good conscience, claim that we support these heinous activities--instead, I am left considering what could we have done or perhaps what should we have done to protect women and innocent children from this outrageous practice. I am left to think what kind of Nation allows these heinous acts to continue.

We are the United States of America, a country founded on the belief that each individual holds dignity and worth in the eyes of our creator. If Planned Parenthood is discovered to have been altering abortion procedures so as to sell human baby hearts, livers, lungs, brains, and other organs, then they have violated their own guidelines as well as Federal laws from partial-birth abortion to the sale of human organs. It will be up to Congress to intervene on behalf of the thousands of unborn children.

Mr. Speaker, it is clear to me that there is a prevailing attitude inside Planned Parenthood that is so disgusting, so horrifying, and so disturbing that it warrants a congressional investigation and action.

I thank House leadership and our chairman for opening up this investigation and for following our request into this unconscionable activity now.

I want to thank the Members of the Missouri State legislature, my own home State of Missouri, who have committed to investigating Planned Parenthood in the State of Missouri, assuring Missourians that our laws prohibit these unthinkable acts, and hold Planned Parenthood accountable for any wrongdoing.

Mr. Speaker, we have a duty as elected Representatives to the United States to stand up for the most vulnerable among us, to lend a voice to the voiceless, and stand up for injustice. I will continue to fight for the day when abortions and the atrocities associated with it are not only illegal, but unthinkable.'

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source