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“ABORTION” mentioning James Lankford was published in the Senate section on pages S167-S169 on Jan. 27.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
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The publication is reproduced in full below:
ABORTION
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, if you buy a new GM car, a Nissan, Honda, Kia or Toyota, even a Hyundai, you will notice they have started installing a new feature in their cars. It is a reminder, when you turn off the engine, to check your backseat.
Quite frankly, I rented a car not long ago, and it started dinging, and I kept trying to figure out what I had done and kept looking around until I saw the little monitor on the dashboard. It just said, ``Check the backseat,'' which I thought was great because the makers of those cars all believe every child is precious and they shouldn't be harmed.
We have all heard stories like this, but I distinctly remember last summer seeing in the news a story about an infant who died because they were left in a hot car. That is why these carmakers are making this feature now.
I remember, as I saw the story on the news, just the reports and how angry people were in the community. And they were angry at the store, and they were upset on the news. They couldn't believe that a mom had left a child in the backseat of a car and they had slowly died in the heat, because no one wants to see a child harmed. Everyone believes that every child is precious.
I remember, when I saw the story on the news last summer, turning to my wife and saying: I can't figure out our culture sometimes because that same mom and that same baby could have gone into an abortion clinic just a few months before and that child's life could have been ended, and it wouldn't have made the news. In fact, no one would have flinched.
In fact, the very same people who were furious at that mom for leaving her child in the hot car to die would have argued for her right to destroy that exact same child--in fact, would have called it her reproductive right or even the new euphemism out there, ``reproductive care.'' Same child, same mom--nothing was different but a few months in time.
``Reproductive care'' seems like such a nice little euphemism, but what it really means is paying someone in a clinic to reach into the womb with a surgical instrument, to pull the arms and legs off of a child in the womb so that they will bleed to death in the womb and then suction out the little boy or girl's body parts one at a time.
That is what ``reproductive care'' means, and I don't understand why that is normal but leaving a child in the backseat of a hot car is a tragedy.
Maybe it is because, as a nation, some people are afraid to answer the most obvious question: Is that a baby? That is the most obvious question. That face, that nose, those two eyes, that mouth, that chin, those fingers--is that a baby? That is really the only question: Is that a child?
Maybe there is a second question that needs to be answered: Are all children valuable, or are only some children valuable?
We seem to have a great deal of debate today in our society--and we should--about facts. People say we can't seem to agree on the same set of facts and truth. You can't have your facts and my facts; we just only have facts. The media, Big Tech, activists have all decried our loss of ability as a nation to just accept clear facts in front of our face--the obvious truth.
So let me ask the question again: Is that a baby? Yes or no? Because if we are all supposed to say, ``Let's at least agree to the most basic of facts,'' how about that one? Is that a human child with a future and a purpose and a name? Are all children valuable or are only some?
Gold is valuable. It doesn't matter its size. I have gold in my wedding ring. Many people have gold in their wedding rings. If we found a small piece of gold on the floor, it would be valuable. It wouldn't matter its shape. It wouldn't matter its size, small or large. We don't discriminate. Gold is valuable because everyone universally recognizes its worth. Every single Senator in this room recognizes the worth and value of gold. It is around $1,800 an ounce right now to be able to get gold. We all seem, no matter how small or large, to agree gold is valuable, but we can't seem to agree that all children are valuable. Literally, gold is more precious to some people in this room than children are.
Children aren't valuable only sometimes or only certain children. Children are valuable. It can't be just that if a mom or dad wants a child, they are valuable and, if they don't want a child, they are not valuable; they are disposable. The mom or dad gets to choose who are precious and who is medical waste.
Is that a child? That is really the only question that has to be answered, because everything else flows from that.
There are political conversations in this room about the value of children, and every time it comes up, it gets noisy. People will say: Well, you don't fund enough money for education or childcare or healthcare in communities. So you don't love children.
I would say I have voted for the exact same bill you did last year, for billions of dollars for assistance in childcare, billions of dollars for early childhood education, elementary and secondary education, higher education. We did additional assistance for SNAP benefits last year and assistance of benefits for moms in need, increased healthcare for all communities, for federally qualified health centers to make sure we get healthcare to every single community. I voted on those exact same things multiple other people did in this room. I care about children outside the womb.
But those questions really aren't the question. They are distractions to the question. And I get it, because if I ask, ``Is that a child?'' people will respond: Well, do you spend enough for childcare or healthcare? And I still say: Wait. Stop and answer my first question. Is that a child?
Maybe I should ask a more basic question: Does everyone in this room believe in the principle that we should do unto others as we would want done unto us? What would you have wanted done to you when you were in the womb?
I don't address this issue lightly. This is a difficult issue for some people. I don't think an abortion is a flippant thing, that anyone walks into an abortion--I don't mean anyone who had an abortion is somehow gleeful about it. Quite frankly, I can't imagine that anyone who had an abortion would ever forget the sights and sounds and the smells of an abortion, knowing that a helpless child is dying at that moment.
I grieve for the moms and dads who will never ever forget that they went into a clinic and paid someone to get rid of their child in the name of reproductive care. I can't imagine what their emotion is. But we as a society have to answer this question still for every child who has yet to come.
Forty-eight years ago this week, the Supreme Court made a decision that has now resulted in the deaths of 62 million children in America--
62 million. That is hard to fathom. Unlike so many other Supreme Court decisions, America has not forgotten about this one. Our culture has not just moved on and accepted it.
Every year since 1974--the first year after the Roe V. Wade decision--individuals from across the country have gathered in Washington, DC, in defense of the unborn. Friends, families, church leaders, community folks--they have all marched in the rain, in the sleet, the snow. It is cold every year this week in January, but they come.
This year will be different. Due to COVID-19 and the ongoing security concerns in Washington, DC, marchers are staying home, and they are engaging virtually. Maybe this is one more moment where even more people can get involved online, because I expect the rally this year will draw an even larger number of people--students, families, people, quite frankly, from all over the world--to ask a simple question: Will we recognize the most obvious thing in front of our face--that is a baby.
President Biden this week celebrated the passage of Roe v. Wade by declaring that he wants to pass a Federal law requiring abortion to be provided in every single State in America. It is not just trust a Court decision from 1973; he wants us to proactively require in statute that every State demand abortion in their State and that Federal taxpayers, with hard-earned tax dollars, should actually be required to pay for those abortions all over America.
It wasn't long ago that Senator Biden was saying things like, taxpayers shouldn't be required to pay for abortion; they shouldn't be required to pay for something that they find so morally objectionable. It wasn't that long ago that Senator Biden was talking about abortion being safe, legal, and rare. But now, as President, within the first week, he is moving as fast as he can to promote abortion and demand taxpayers pay for it.
In fact, painfully so, President Biden's nomination for the Secretary of Health and Human Services has actually no healthcare experience at all. It was a little surprising to a lot of us when we saw it because we are used to seeing the leader of Health and Human Services be a physician or scientist, which would make sense in the time of an enormous global pandemic to have a physician leading Health and Human Services. But he actually nominated someone whose biggest qualification is that he is one of the most radical advocates for abortion in the country. He did it as a House Member. He did it as an attorney general in California. And clearly the promise was made that he will do it if you put him in Health and Human Services.
Let me just give an example of what I am talking about for Mr. Becerra. I can't process some of these things. Mr. Becerra, when he was the attorney general for California, actually went to Mississippi to be able to lead a suit against Mississippi--another State, obviously--
because that State was talking about limiting abortion to only the earliest days. Their belief was, after a child feels pain, we should at least not tear a child limb from limb in the womb when their nervous system is developed. Mr. Becerra led a coalition of State attorneys general to fight Mississippi and say: You can't protect children that way.
He actually argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit against the Little Sisters of the Poor, trying to require that group of nuns to provide birth-control services--literally attacking the Little Sisters of the Poor to kind of push this whole agenda.
When he was a Representative in the House of Representatives, he voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. So if a child, in a botched abortion, is actually delivered instead of destroyed, he wanted to say, no, even after they are fully delivered, that child can still be destroyed, even though they are fully delivered, which would make sense because he also, as a Representative, fought against the partial-birth abortion ban. It was a rare procedure, but it was a procedure where they would deliver the child--all but the head--and then penetrate the head with scissors and kill the child. He fought against that.
He fought against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which really is odd to me. All it did was criminalize--if someone attacked a pregnant woman and killed her child, they could also be liable for that death as well. He also didn't want to recognize the child as a child even if the mother saw the child as a child.
He also fought against crossing State lines for minors, saying they shouldn't have to get their parents' permission if they crossed State lines to go get an abortion somewhere else.
As the attorney general in California, he fought to require churches to pay for abortion care in their healthcare plans when it directly violated their religious belief.
Unbelievably so, he also fought to be able to require pro-life medical claims, where you could go and say: I don't want an abortion, but I do want a sonogram. I want to be able to get some more information about this child.
If you went into one of those pro-life centers and got a sonogram, he fought to require there to be a poster on the wall that would say: If you would rather have an abortion, here is the place that you would go.
This is beyond just protecting abortion; that has moved to promoting abortion, encouraging the death of children.
It got even so bizarre that in California, when there was a video taken of a Planned Parenthood group of folks who wer trafficking the body parts of children and it was caught on video, instead of confronting the folks who were trafficking the child body parts, he went after the folks who took the video, the whistleblowers, and exposed them.
This is not an attack on Mr. Becerra. It is just a shock to me that all of those things seem normal. I don't understand that culturally. I don't understand how the person who is being appointed to lead Health and Human Services can say that children are subhuman: I don't have to recognize that as human, although I am leading Health and Human Services. That is apparently optional tissue, not a human child.
I believe that children are human and that we should honor every child's life. It should be baseline for us to be able to say that if a child is actually delivered in a botched abortion and has been fully delivered outside the womb, we should help that child get medical care. I don't understand why that is so hard.
I don't understand why it is so hard to say that some people are actually appalled by the taking of a child's life. Don't force them, with their tax dollars, to pay for it. I don't understand why that is controversial.
I don't understand why it is controversial that when a child can feel pain in the womb, we shouldn't dismember a child in the womb. I don't understand why that is controversial.
I don't understand why it is controversial to some that if a healthcare provider who has sworn to protect life--that that person shouldn't be compelled to take life in an abortion procedure by their employer. I don't understand why that is controversial, but for some reason, it is.
Among our most basic rights in America are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One of the most basic things that come out of our founding documents says these things are referred to as ``self-
evident.''
Facts are facts, especially when those facts have a face. How can you look at that picture and say that is not a human child? How can we not acknowledge the simple facts?
I do understand for some people this is very difficult because they fought for years for abortion, and they don't want that to change because if it changed, they would have to admit there have been the deaths of millions of children on their watch. That is not a simple thing to admit. But please do not tell me you are following the science, because that child has 10 fingers and 10 toes and a beating heart and a functioning nervous system. That child has DNA that is different from the mom's or the dad's. That is not random tissue; that is a separate person, and science would confirm that. So please don't follow tell me you follow the science wherever it goes because some facts are obvious, and the science is clear.
This all gets resolved when we answer one simple question: Is that a child or not--because everything else goes from that.
For those of you joining the March for Life online this week, good for you. Keep going. Don't give up. Defend the facts that are self-
evident. Speak out for those who can't speak for themselves because millions of future Americans are counting on it, and they are watching for someone to admit the facts--the facts that have a face.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
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