[Pages S148-S151]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

ANNIVERSARY OF ROE V. WADE

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, today is the 37th anniversary of a double
tragedy for our Nation. On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court of the
United States twisted the Constitution to create a right to kill babies
before they are born. Since then, nearly 50 million babies have lost
their lives. That is more than 40 times the number of Americans who
died in all of our Nation's wars. Those babies were living human
beings, and they were killed by abortion.
Less than 25 years earlier, inspired by the experience of World War
II, the United Nations unanimously adopted the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. The United States voted for it, and it is said to be the
most widely translated document in the world. Its very first words
declare that ``recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and
inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation
of freedom, justice and peace in the world.'' Article 3 of the
Declaration states that ``everyone has the right to life.''
I belong to the human family because I am a living human being. So
does

[[Page S149]]

every Member of the Senate, every citizen of this country, every human
being on this planet. Each of us was no less a living human being, no
less a member of the human family, before we were born than we are now.
The facts did not change, but Roe v. Wade represented a radically
different set of values. In January 1983, President Ronald Reagan said
that the 10th anniversary of Roe v. Wade was a good time to pause and
reflect. He said that the real issue with abortion ``is not when human
life begins, but, What is the value of human life?'' That is still the
real issue today. Do human beings still have, in the words of the U.N.
Declaration, inherent dignity and inalienable rights? Or do we have, as
President Reagan described, ``a social ethic where some human lives are
valued and others are not''? I will ask to have printed President
Reagan's profound essay titled ``Abortion and the Conscience of the
Nation'' in the Record following my statement.
We have not done enough to address the reasons that many women feel
they have no alternative but abortion. I applaud the thousands of
selfless women and men who volunteer and give and work to help women
choose life. I understand that today there are more pro-life centers
than abortion clinics in America. But abortion is right or wrong not
because of why it is done, but because of what it is. Abortion is the
killing of living human beings.
A few years ago, Congress considered bills to ban the killing of
horses and to promote humane treatment of farm animals. A House member
who supported these bills and co-chaired the Congressional Friends of
Animals Caucus said: ``The way a society treats its animals speaks to
the core values and priorities of its citizens.''
I believe that the way a society treats babies also speaks to the
core values and priorities of its citizens. As President Reagan said,
we ``cannot diminish the value of one category of human life--the
unborn--without diminishing the value of all human life.''
The result of the Roe v. Wade decision is the first tragedy we should
mourn today. The second tragedy is the means the Supreme Court used to
achieve that result. The real Constitution, the one that the people
established, the one that is the supreme law of the land, the one that
protects liberty by limiting government, does not contain a right to
abortion. To achieve the result they wanted, the Justices effectively
created a different Constitution, and in so doing asserted control over
the charter that is supposed to control them. The Justices became
masters over the Constitution they had sworn an oath to support and
defend.
So the result of Roe v. Wade diminished the value of human life. The
means of Roe v. Wade diminished the value of liberty. The Supreme Court
attempted to impose upon the people a set of values that they still
reject. Most Americans still oppose most abortions, and last year more
Americans called themselves ``pro-life'' than the alternative label for
the time in the 15 years Gallup has asked that question. As President
Reagan said in 1983, ``despite the formidable obstacles before us, we
must not lose heart.''
Today, we are challenged to reach out and to give of ourselves to
help others. I championed the legislation to help make service a
national priority. In July 2008, before he was elected President,
Senator Obama said that when you serve, ``you are connected to that
fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness not just for ourselves but for all Americans. That's why
we call it the American dream.'' It might even be called the human
dream.
Is that still our dream today? What are our core values and
priorities? Do we still embrace those universal human values of
inherent dignity and inalienable rights for all members of the human
family? Today, Roe v. Wade still gives us an opportunity to pause and
reflect. That tragic decision, in President Reagan's words, ``has
become a continuing prod to the conscience of the nation.''
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
President Reagan's essay titled ``Abortion and the Conscience of the
Nation'' to which I referred.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[From the National Review, June 10, 2004]

Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation

Editor's Note: While president, Ronald Reagan penned this
article for The Human Life Review, unsolicited. It ran in the
Review's Spring 1983, issue and is reprinted here with
permission.
The 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe
v. Wade is a good time for us to pause and reflect. Our
nationwide policy of abortion-on-demand through all nine
months of pregnancy was neither voted for by our people nor
enacted by our legislators--not a single state had such
unrestricted abortion before the Supreme Court decreed it to
be national policy in 1973. But the consequences of this
judicial decision are now obvious: since 1973, more than 15
million unborn children have had their lives snuffed out by
legalized abortions. That is over ten times the number of
Americans lost in all our nation's wars.
Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted
by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one
disposed to agree with the Court's result, has argued that
the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a
right. Shortly after the Roe v. Wade decision, Professor John
Hart Ely, now Dean of Stanford Law School, wrote that the
opinion ``is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense
of an obligation to try to be.'' Nowhere do the plain words
of the Constitution even hint at a ``right'' so sweeping as
to permit abortion up to the time the child is ready to be
born. Yet that is what the Court ruled.
As an act of ``raw judicial power'' (to use Justice White's
biting phrase), the decision by the seven-man majority in Roe
v. Wade has so far been made to stick. But the Court's
decision has by no means settled the debate. Instead, Roe v.
Wade has become a continuing prod to the conscience of the
nation.
Abortion concerns not just the unborn child, it concerns
every one of us. The English poet, John Donne, wrote: `` . .
. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in
mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell
tolls; it tolls for thee.''
We cannot diminish the value of one category of human
life--the unborn--without diminishing the value of all human
life. We saw tragic proof of this truism last year when the
Indiana courts allowed the starvation death of ``Baby Doe''
in Bloomington because the child had Down's Syndrome.
Many of our fellow citizens grieve over the loss of life
that has followed Roe v. Wade. Margaret Heckler, soon after
being nominated to head the largest department of our
government, Health and Human Services, told an audience that
she believed abortion to be the greatest moral crisis facing
our country today. And the revered Mother Teresa, who works
in the streets of Calcutta ministering to dying people in her
world-famous mission of mercy, has said that ``the greatest
misery of our time is the generalized abortion of children.''
Over the first two years of my Administration I have
closely followed and assisted efforts in Congress to reverse
the tide of abortion--efforts of Congressmen, Senators and
citizens responding to an urgent moral crisis. Regrettably, I
have also seen the massive efforts of those who, under the
banner of ``freedom of choice,'' have so far blocked every
effort to reverse nationwide abortion-on-demand.
Despite the formidable obstacles before us, we must not
lose heart. This is not the first time our country has been
divided by a Supreme Court decision that denied the value of
certain human lives. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 was not
overturned in a day, or a year, or even a decade. At first,
only a minority of Americans recognized and deplored the
moral crisis brought about by denying the full humanity of
our black brothers and sisters; but that minority persisted
in their vision and finally prevailed. They did it by
appealing to the hearts and minds of their countrymen, to the
truth of human dignity under God. From their example, we know
that respect for the sacred value of human life is too deeply
engrained in the hearts of our people to remain forever
suppressed. But the great majority of the American people
have not yet made their voices heard, and we cannot expect
them to--any more than the public voice arose against
slavery--until the issue is clearly framed and presented.
What, then, is the real issue? I have often said that when
we talk about abortion, we are talking about two lives--the
life of the mother and the life of the unborn child. Why else
do we call a pregnant woman a mother? I have also said that
anyone who doesn't feel sure whether we are talking about a
second human life should clearly give life the benefit of the
doubt. If you don't know whether a body is alive or dead, you
would never bury it. I think this consideration itself should
be enough for all of us to insist on protecting the unborn.
The case against abortion does not rest here, however, for
medical practice confirms at every step the correctness of
these moral sensibilities. Modern medicine treats the unborn
child as a patient. Medical pioneers have made great
breakthroughs in treating the unborn--for genetic problems,
vitamin deficiencies, irregular heart rhythms, and other
medical conditions. Who can forget George Will's moving
account of the little boy who underwent brain surgery six
times during the nine weeks before he was born? Who is the
patient if not that tiny unborn

[[Page S150]]

human being who can feel pain when he or she is approached by
doctors who come to kill rather than to cure?
The real question today is not when human life begins, but,
What is the value of human life? The abortionist who
reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all
its parts have been torn from its mother's body can hardly
doubt whether it is a human being. The real question for him
and for all of us is whether that tiny human life has a
God-given right to be protected by the law--the same right
we have.
What more dramatic confirmation could we have of the real
issue than the Baby Doe case in Bloomington, Indiana? The
death of that tiny infant tore at the hearts of all Americans
because the child was undeniably a live human being--one
lying helpless before the eyes of the doctors and the eyes of
the nation. The real issue for the courts was not whether
Baby Doe was a human being. The real issue was whether to
protect the life of a human being who had Down's Syndrome,
who would probably be mentally handicapped, but who needed a
routine surgical procedure to unblock his esophagus and allow
him to eat. A doctor testified to the presiding judge that,
even with his physical problem corrected, Baby Doe would have
a ``non-existent'' possibility for ``a minimally adequate
quality of life''--in other words, that retardation was the
equivalent of a crime deserving the death penalty. The judge
let Baby Doe starve and die, and the Indiana Supreme Court
sanctioned his decision.
Federal law does not allow federally-assisted hospitals to
decide that Down's Syndrome infants are not worth treating,
much less to decide to starve them to death. Accordingly, I
have directed the Departments of Justice and HHS to apply
civil rights regulations to protect handicapped newborns. All
hospitals receiving federal funds must post notices which
will clearly state that failure to feed handicapped babies is
prohibited by federal law. The basic issue is whether to
value and protect the lives of the handicapped, whether to
recognize the sanctity of human life. This is the same basic
issue that underlies the question of abortion.
The 1981 Senate hearings on the beginning of human life
brought out the basic issue more clearly than ever before.
The many medical and scientific witnesses who testified
disagreed on many things, but not on the scientific evidence
that the unborn child is alive, is a distinct individual, or
is a member of the human species. They did disagree over the
value question, whether to give value to a human life at its
early and most vulnerable stages of existence.
Regrettably, we live at a time when some persons do not
value all human life. They want to pick and choose which
individuals have value. Some have said that only those
individuals with ``consciousness of self'' are human beings.
One such writer has followed this deadly logic and concluded
that ``shocking as it may seem, a newly born infant is not a
human being.''
A Nobel Prize winning scientist has suggested that if a
handicapped child ``were not declared fully human until three
days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the
choice.'' In other words, ``quality control'' to see if newly
born human beings are up to snuff.
Obviously, some influential people want to deny that every
human life has intrinsic, sacred worth. They insist that a
member of the human race must have certain qualities before
they accord him or her status as a ``human being.''
Events have borne out the editorial in a California medical
journal which explained three years before Roe v. Wade that
the social acceptance of abortion is a ``defiance of the
long-held Western ethic of intrinsic and equal value for
every human life regardless of its stage, condition, or
status.''
Every legislator, every doctor, and every citizen needs to
recognize that the real issue is whether to affirm and
protect the sanctity of all human life, or to embrace a
social ethic where some human lives are valued and others are
not. As a nation, we must choose between the sanctity of life
ethic and the ``quality of life'' ethic.
I have no trouble identifying the answer our nation has
always given to this basic question, and the answer that I
hope and pray it will give in the future. American was
founded by men and women who shared a vision of the value of
each and every individual. They stated this vision clearly
from the very start in the Declaration of Independence, using
words that every schoolboy and schoolgirl can recite:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights, that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We fought a terrible war to guarantee that one category of
mankind--black people in America--could not be denied the
inalienable rights with which their Creator endowed them. The
great champion of the sanctity of all human life in that day,
Abraham Lincoln, gave us his assessment of the Declaration's
purpose. Speaking of the framers of that noble document, he
said:
This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of
the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble
understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures.
Yes, gentlemen, to all his creatures, to the whole great
family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped
with the divine image and likeness was sent into the world to
be trodden on . . . They grasped not only the whole race of
man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the
farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their
children and their children's children, and the countless
myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages.
He warned also of the danger we would face if we closed our
eyes to the value of life in any category of human beings:
I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of
Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon
principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If
one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it
does not mean some other man?
When Congressman John A. Bingham of Ohio drafted the
Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee the rights of life,
liberty, and property to all human beings, he explained
that all are ``entitled to the protection of American law,
because its divine spirit of equality declares that all
men are created equal.'' He said the right guaranteed by
the amendment would therefore apply to ``any human
being.'' Justice William Brennan, writing in another case
decided only the year before Roe v. Wade, referred to our
society as one that ``strongly affirms the sanctity of
life.''
Another William Brennan--not the Justice has reminded us of
the terrible consequences that can follow when a nation
rejects the sanctity of life ethic:
The cultural environment for a human holocaust is present
whenever any society can be misled into defining individuals
as less than human and therefore devoid of value and respect.
As a nation today, we have not rejected the sanctity of
human life. The American people have not had an opportunity
to express their view on the sanctity of human life in the
unborn. I am convinced that Americans do not want to play God
with the value of human life. It is not for us to decide who
is worthy to live and who is not. Even the Supreme Court's
opinion in Roe v. Wade did not explicitly reject the
traditional American idea of intrinsic worth and value in all
human life; it simply dodged this issue.
The Congress has before it several measures that would
enable our people to reaffirm the sanctity of human life,
even the smallest and the youngest and the most defenseless.
The Human Life Bill expressly recognizes the unborn as human
beings and accordingly protects them as persons under our
Constitution. This bill, first introduced by Senator Jesse
Helms, provided the vehicle for the Senate hearings in 1981
which contributed so much to our understanding of the real
issue of abortion.
The Respect Human Life Act, just introduced in the 98th
Congress, states in its first section that the policy of the
United States is ``to protect innocent life, both before and
after birth.'' This bill, sponsored by Congressman Henry Hyde
and Senator Roger Jepsen, prohibits the federal government
from performing abortions or assisting those who do so,
except to save the life of the mother. It also addresses the
pressing issue of infanticide which, as we have seen, flows
inevitably from permissive abortion as another step in the
denial of the inviolability of innocent human life.
I have endorsed each of these measures, as well as the more
difficult route of constitutional amendment, and I will give
these initiatives my full support. Each of them, in different
ways, attempts to reverse the tragic policy of abortion-on-
demand imposed by the Supreme Court ten years ago. Each of
them is a decisive way to affirm the sanctity of human life.
We must all educate ourselves to the reality of the horrors
taking place. Doctors today know that unborn children can
feel a touch within the womb and that they respond to pain.
But how many Americans are aware that abortion techniques are
allowed today, in all 50 states, that burn the skin of a baby
with a salt solution, in an agonizing death that can last for
hours?
Another example: two years ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer
ran a Sunday special supplement on ``The Dreaded
Complication.'' The ``dreaded complication'' referred to in
the article--the complication feared by doctors who perform
abortions--is the survival of the child despite all the
painful attacks during the abortion procedure. Some unborn
children do survive the late-term abortions the Supreme Court
has made legal. Is there any question that these victims of
abortion deserve our attention and protection? Is there any
question that those who don't survive were living human
beings before they were killed?
Late-term abortions, especially when the baby survives, but
is then killed by starvation, neglect, or suffocation, show
once again the link between abortion and infanticide. The
time to stop both is now. As my Administration acts to stop
infanticide, we will be fully aware of the real issue that
underlies the death of babies before and soon after birth.
Our society has, fortunately, become sensitive to the
rights and special needs of the handicapped, but I am shocked
that physical or mental handicaps of newborns are still used
to justify their extinction. This Administration has a
Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop, who has done perhaps
more than any other American for handicapped children, by
pioneering surgical techniques to help them, by speaking out
on the value of their lives, and by working with them in the
context of loving families. You will not find his former
patients advocating the so-called ``quality-of-life'' ethic.

[[Page S151]]

I know that when the true issue of infanticide is placed
before the American people, with all the facts openly aired,
we will have no trouble deciding that a mentally or
physically handicapped baby has the same intrinsic worth and
right to life as the rest of us. As the New Jersey Supreme
Court said two decades ago, in a decision upholding the
sanctity of human life, ``a child need not be perfect to have
a worthwhile life.''
Whether we are talking about pain suffered by unborn
children, or about late-term abortions, or about infanticide,
we inevitably focus on the humanity of the unborn child. Each
of these issues is a potential rallying point for the
sanctity of life ethic. Once we as a nation rally around any
one of these issues to affirm the sanctity of life, we will
see the importance of affirming this principle across the
board.
Malcolm Muggeridge, the English writer, goes right to the
heart of the matter: ``Either life is always and in all
circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is
inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in
some the other.'' The sanctity of innocent human life is a
principle that Congress should proclaim at every opportunity.
It is possible that the Supreme Court itself may overturn
its abortion rulings. We need only recall that in Brown v.
Board of Education the court reversed its own earlier
``separate-but-equal'' decision. I believe if the Supreme
Court took another look at Roe v. Wade, and considered the
real issue between the sanctity of life ethic and the
quality of life ethic, it would change its mind once
again.
As we continue to work to overturn Roe v. Wade, we must
also continue to lay the groundwork for a society in which
abortion is not the accepted answer to unwanted pregnancy.
Pro-life people have already taken heroic steps, often at
great personal sacrifice, to provide for unwed mothers. I
recently spoke about a young pregnant woman named Victoria,
who said, ``In this society we save whales, we save timber
wolves and bald eagles and Coke bottles. Yet, everyone wanted
me to throw away my baby.'' She has been helped by Save-a-
Life, a group in Dallas, which provides a way for unwed
mothers to preserve the human life within them when they
might otherwise be tempted to resort to abortion. I think
also of House of His Creation in Catesville, Pennsylvania,
where a loving couple has taken in almost 200 young women in
the past ten years. They have seen, as a fact of life, that
the girls are not better off having abortions than saving
their babies. I am also reminded of the remarkable Rossow
family of Ellington, Connecticut, who have opened their
hearts and their home to nine handicapped adopted and foster
children.
The Adolescent Family Life Program, adopted by Congress at
the request of Senator Jeremiah Denton, has opened new
opportunities for unwed mothers to give their children life.
We should not rest until our entire society echoes the tone
of John Powell in the dedication of his book, Abortion: The
Silent Holocaust, a dedication to every woman carrying an
unwanted child: ``Please believe that you are not alone.
There are many of us that truly love you, who want to stand
at your side, and help in any way we can.'' And we can echo
the always-practical woman of faith, Mother Teresa, when she
says, ``If you don't want the little child, that unborn
child, give him to me.'' We have so many families in America
seeking to adopt children that the slogan ``every child a
wanted child'' is now the emptiest of all reasons to tolerate
abortion.
I have often said we need to join in prayer to bring
protection to the unborn. Prayer and action are needed to
uphold the sanctity of human life. I believe it will not be
possible to accomplish our work, the work of saving lives,
``without being a soul of prayer.'' The famous British Member
of Parliament, William Wilberforce, prayed with his small
group of influential friends, the ``Clapham Sect,'' for
decades to see an end to slavery in the British empire.
Wilberforce led that struggle in Parliament, unflaggingly,
because he believed in the sanctity of human life. He saw the
fulfillment of his impossible dream when Parliament outlawed
slavery just before his death.
Let his faith and perseverance be our guide. We will never
recognize the true value of our own lives until we affirm the
value in the life of others, a value of which Malcolm
Muggeridge says: . . . however low it flickers or fiercely
burns, it is still a Divine flame which no man dare presume
to put out, be his motives ever so humane and enlightened.''
Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a
free land when some men could decide that others were not fit
to be free and should therefore be slaves. Likewise, we
cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that
others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to
abortion or infanticide. My Administration is dedicated to
the preservation of America as a free land, and there is no
cause more important for preserving that freedom than
affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings,
the right without which no other rights have any meaning.

____________________