Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey made the following comments on the House floor prior to today’s vote on Nancy Pelosi’s radical bill overturning every pro-life law nationwide and legalizing abortions up to birth:
This bill is far outside the American mainstream and goes far beyond Roe v Wade.
This bill constitutes an existential threat to unborn children and to the value of life itself.
For the first time ever by congressional statute, H.R. 3755 would legally enable the death of unborn baby girls and boys by dismemberment, decapitation, forced expulsion from the womb, deadly poisons, or other methods at any time until birth.
A significant majority of Americans are deeply concerned about protecting the lives of unborn children.
A 2021 Marist Poll found that 65% of Americans want Roe v. Wade reinterpreted to either send the issue to the states or stop legalized abortion.
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Of that 65% majority of Americans—40% of Democrats would “allow certain restrictions on abortions as determined by each state.”
If enacted, this bill will nullify every modest pro-life restriction ever enacted by the states including:
- women’s right to know laws in 35 states,
- parental involvement statues 37 states,
- pain capable unborn child protection laws in 19 states,
- waiting period laws in 26 states, and more.
70% of Americans, according to the 2021 Marist poll, oppose abortion if the child will be born with Down syndrome—with over half of those who identify as pro-choice (56%), opposed, or strongly opposed to abortion due to the expectation a child will be born with Down syndrome. Americans seek to “embrace” and not “erase” those babies identified as having an extra chromosome.
H.R. 3755 overturns state laws that protect children with Down Syndrome as well.
The U.S. Supreme Court majority in Roe v Wade wrote: “we need not resolve the difficult question of when human life begins.” Sidestepping that threshold question and giving no benefit of the doubt to the child, they went on to legalize and enable abortion on demand.
For decades, abortion advocates have gone to extraordinary lengths to ignore, trivialize and cover-up the battered baby-victim.
But today, thanks to ultrasound, unborn babies are more visible than ever before.
Modern medicine today treats unborn children with disability or disease as a patient in need of diagnosis and treatment.
Birth is an event—albeit an important one—but not the beginning of life.
Regarding international law, the bill falsely states that “Core human rights treaties ratified by the United States protect access to abortion”.
In fact, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the U.S. has ratified, is concerned about unborn children being killed. It states in Article 6 that “Every human being has the inherent right to life” and that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.”
It goes on to declare that the “sentence of death…shall not be carried out on pregnant women.” The ICCPR creates an exemption from execution for pregnant women, recognizing that their unborn children have an independent claim to legal protection, as do all unborn children.
The legislation under consideration by the House today is deceptively titled the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021. Abortion is not health care unless one construes the precious life of an unborn child to be analogous to a tumor to be excised or a disease to be vanquished.
