"Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women, so said Alice Paul, author of the Equal Rights Amendment, and I agree. It is an exploitation of women for physical and emotional reasons."

"The sanctity of human life" by Rep. Mike Pence, Part 3...

"For that one reason among many, the United States will suffer unless there is placed into your government a group that fears the Lord if they cannot love the Lord. They will fear Him and find measures to stop the slaughter of the unborn." - Our Lady of the Roses, April 14, 1984

Rep. Mike Pence presented this address on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on October 21, 2003:

It is a privilege to come before the House tonight in a continuous series that this member of Congress had the privilege of beginning scarcely a month ago, but a series of speeches that I hope will periodically and intermittently be a part of the fabric of my congressional career for howsoever long the Lord permits me to serve here.
I simply call it the Case for Life, and it is my ambition from time to time to come onto this blue and gold carpet of this Capitol and speak to my colleagues, and anyone else who may be listening, on the moral and intellectual and historical arguments for the sanctity of human life; and to, perhaps, in some small way enliven the moral sensibility of a nation and be a part of an ongoing debate in America on this topic.

This is a debate that continues at this very hour in the other body of this Congress. At this very moment, I am pleased to say, as a pro-life member of Congress, that the United States Senate is at this very moment passing a conference report on the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. That legislation, as of today, will have three times passed the Congress since 1995 and will be delivered for the first time to the willing desk of President George W. Bush.

Unlike the veto stamp of President Clinton, which met the ban of partial-birth abortion not once but twice, President George W. Bush, upon returning from his tour of the Asia-Pacific Rim will, no doubt, in an emotional ceremony put his pen to this legislation and end a practice that has no place in civilized society.

So it is especially poignant for me, just a few steps down the hallway from that chamber, to rise tonight and continue my discussion of the case for life. And particularly tonight, Mr. Speaker, I feel prompted to speak about abortion and American women. You see, it has always been my belief, since first having my conscience enlivened on this issue, that there is not one victim of abortion, but there are two. There is undoubtedly the nascent human life that is ended abruptly and in darkness, but there is the other life that goes on, that pays a price that psychologists are talking about today, but many Americans simply choose to ignore.

"You see, it has always been my belief, since first having my conscience enlivened on this issue, that there is not one victim of abortion, but there are two. There is undoubtedly the nascent human life that is ended abruptly and in darkness, but there is the other life that goes on, that pays a price that psychologists are talking about today, but many Americans simply choose to ignore"

There are also other voices that I want to reflect on tonight as well, chiefly from our own history. As we think about the great American women who led this nation in increasing measure toward equal status for women in voting rights and in property and in station in our society, women like Susan B. Anthony, Emma Goldman and Elizabeth Cady Stanton come to mind.

I just came from a stroll in the Rotunda, Mr. Speaker, where I grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled the names of a few of those heroic women that actually appear on a statue at the very center of our Capitol. In the Rotunda, there is a statue that bears the likeness of the three great heroes of the suffrage movement. Two of them I would like to speak about tonight as we talk about great American women and abortion, but then also [I would like to] talk about what women of America today face in the struggle over the sanctity of human life.

One of the faces on that statue is Susan B. Anthony, a name that is almost like mom and apple pie for most Americans. Susan B. Anthony was born February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts. She was brought up in a Quaker family that had long activist traditions. Early in life, she developed a deep sense, historians tell us, of justice and what could only be described as moral zeal.

After teaching for 15 years, Susan B. Anthony became active in the temperance movement. Because she was a woman, she was not allowed to speak at rallies, and this experience, as well as her acquaintance with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, led her to help form what became the Women's Movement in 1852. Soon afterwards, she would dedicate her entire life to winning women not only the right to vote, Mr. Speaker, but Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were about winning women a seat at the civic table; the opportunity not to be viewed, as women were in some aspects of common law, as the property of their husbands, but rather to be seen as coequal heirs of everything that freedom offers.

Ignoring opposition and abuse, Susan B. Anthony traveled, lectured, and canvassed across the nation for the vote. She also campaigned for the abolition of slavery, women's rights to their own property and earnings, and even women's labor organizations. In 1900, she achieved a major victory in convincing the University of Rochester to admit women for the first time in their storied history.

Susan B. Anthony, who never married and was remembered as an aggressive and compassionate person with a keen mind and the ability to inspire, remained active in the movement that she began until her death in March of 1906.

Susan B. Anthony was pro-life. Let me read, if I may, from her publication, The Revolution, on this topic, published July 8, 1869. Susan B. Anthony wrote, "No matter what the motive, love or ease or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed"-referring to abortion. She went on, "It will burden her conscience in life; it will burden her soul in death. But, oh," she wrote, "oh thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime."

So wrote Susan B. Anthony, words that we will reflect on before I take my seat tonight. Brokenhearted words of the suffering of the unborn innocent and also of the suffering of the American woman who would burden her conscience in life and burden her soul in death, but of the guilt of the man who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to perform the abortion.

Susan B. Anthony, memorialized in marble in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol, a woman whose name is synonymous with the voting rights and the equal status that women of 21st century America enjoy, was pro-life. She understood the moral consequences of the act on an American woman and the deplorable position of a man who would force the outcome.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton also appears on the monument in the Rotunda. And she, like Susan B. Anthony, her friend and colleague and co-laborer for women's issues in America, was pro-life. Elizabeth Cady, the daughter of Daniel Cady, a lawyer and a politician, was born in Jonestown, NewYork, November 12, 1815. She studied law under her father, who became a New York Supreme Court judge, and during that period of time she became a very strong advocate for women's rights.

In 1840, Elizabeth married the lawyer Henry B. Stanton. The couple became active in the American antislavery movement, and later that year Stanton and Lucretia Mott traveled to London as delegates to the World Antislavery Convention. Both women, history records, were furious when they, like the British women at the convention, were refused the permission to speak at the meeting to denounce slavery.

Stanton later recalled, "We resolved to hold a convention as soon as we returned home and form a society to advocate the rights of women." And so she did. But it was not until 1848 that Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls. Stanton's resolution, that it was "the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves the sacred right to the elective franchise," was passed, and this became the focus of the group's campaign for years to come.

Susan B. Anthony was pro-life. Let me read, if I may, from her publication, The Revolution, on this topic, published July 8, 1869. Susan B. Anthony wrote, "No matter what the motive, love or ease or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed"-referring to abortion. She went on, "It will burden her conscience in life; it will burden her soul in death. But, oh," she wrote, "oh thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime."

In 1866, Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone established the American Equal Rights Association. The following year, the association became active in Kansas, where Negro suffrage and women's suffrage were to be decided in a popular vote, although both ideas were sadly rejected at the polls. Stanton was a historian, a scholar, and one of the founders of the American Woman Suffrage Association formed in the 1880s and from which the suffragette movement was born that ultimately resulted in the passage and adoption of the 19th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America.

This great American woman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, is by all definitions a hero of American women. Like Susan B. Anthony, her friend, who also appears on that extraordinary monument in the Rotunda, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was pro-life, and unapologetically so. Think about these two women who appear on a miniature version of Mount Rushmore right here in the Capitol. We have three women who essentially represent a life-size smaller version of Mount Rushmore for women's issues in America. They were women committed to equal rights, to the right to vote, and they were women committed to the right to life.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton classified abortion as a form of infanticide. She wrote in a letter to Julia Ward Howe, which is recorded in Howe's diary on October 16, 1873, [now] at the Harvard University library. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote, "When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton in essence saw a connection, Mr. Speaker, between that vile reality that was part of American life that the woman herself was property and the belief that an unborn child within the woman was property as well. She saw them as equal evils, related together; and so they are. On 12 March, 1868, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote, "There must be a remedy even for such a crying evil as this," referring to abortion, "but where shall it be found, at least where it begin, if not in the complete enfranchisement and elevation of women."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton looked at abortion that was a reality in America in 1868 and said the antidote to end this evil is to raise women up. She saw abortion as a natural consequence of the subordination of women in our society. It is an astounding historical fact and a dark irony, Mr. Speaker, when one thinks of the extraordinary sacrifices and advancements of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the great American women who won women their equal status in our society, that that same momentum would be used in 1973 to rejustify the practice of abortion, which those same heroic American women loathed to the depths of their being.

Think about those words. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the three heroes of the women's movement in America who is memorialized in this Capitol building in stone. In the Rotunda where only Presidents, Alexander Hamilton, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. are memorialized, there are also these three women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton saw a relationship between reducing women to property and reducing the unborn children growing within them to property.

Let me read these words again. She said, "There must be a remedy for even such a crying evil as this, but where shall it be found, at least where it begin, if not in the complete enfranchisement and elevation of women." A powerful thought that the heroes of the suffragette movement would look to future generations and say that the abortions that were taking place in the middle 19th century would some day go away, we would no longer treat unborn children as property if we could achieve the day when women were not viewed as property.

Alice Paul is credited as one of the leading figures responsible for the passage of the 19th Amendment, which is the women's suffragette amendment extending to women the right to vote in the Constitution of the United States of America. Alice Paul was raised as a Quaker, attended Swarthmore College and worked at the New York College Settlement while attending the New York School of Social Work. She left for England in 1906 to work in a settlement house movement there for three years. She was chair of a major committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association within a year, in her mid-20s.

In England she had taken part in the women's suffragette movement, even participating in hunger strikes to make her point. She brought back this sense, some would say, of militancy, I would say more generously of urgency, to the women's movement in America. It was that urgency that characterized the life of Alice Paul.

Her emphasis on a federal constitutional amendment for suffrage was at times at odds even with some within the women's movement; and after the 1920 victory for the federal amendment, Alice Paul became involved in the struggle to pass an Equal Rights Amendment, which actually passed this Congress in the year 1970, was sent to the states, and it failed. Paul died in 1977 in New Jersey with the heated battle of the Equal Rights Amendment having brought her international acclaim.

Like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton before her, Alice Paul was pro-life. Alice Paul said famously, and remember now, this is Alice Paul, born January 1885, died 1977, essentially the author of the Equal Rights Amendment, seen even as a young woman as one of the principal driving forces behind the constitutional amendment which won women the right to vote; Alice Paul was pro-life. It is an astonishing thing to think about, that the author of the Equal Rights Amendment, which I scarcely doubt I would have supported for a variety of cultural arguments, but someone who undoubtedly would be a hero of feminists to this day, and Alice Paul said, "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women."

Let me say again, hoping that somewhere in America those words land with a thud in the conscience of a feminist, that these women who are rightly remembered as heroes of the women's movement in America, a woman in Alice Paul who even in her 20s was seen as a driving force behind the constitutional amendment that won women the right to vote, seen as instrumental in the passage of the 19th Amendment, and then would go on, however I might disagree with her, to be the author of the Equal Rights Amendment which passed this Congress in 1970, some 33 years ago.

Alice Paul would say, "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women."

Like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul knew and spoke the truth. And so it ever was of women who achieved great distinction in the cause of women's rights in America from the 19th century through the 20th century, until 1973 when women's issues became simply another way of speaking about the right to have an abortion.

It is an extraordinary irony of history, Mr. Speaker, to think that a women's movement that was born on names like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, that was born on the moral consciousness of women, who said I am not property to be owned by a man, and who understood that an unborn child within them likewise should never be seen as property, that that same women's movement in 1973 would be hijacked by those whose moral view of the sanctity of human life is diametrically opposed to those who founded the women's movement in America.

Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women, so said Alice Paul, author of the Equal Rights Amendment, and I agree. It is an exploitation of women for physical and emotional reasons. Let me speak to those tonight as I conclude this portion of the Case for Life, abortion, and American women.

There are many who believe that abortion is safe in America. But truthfully, despite the use of local anesthesia, a full 97 percent of women that have abortions report experiencing pain during the procedure, which more than a third describe as intense, according to medical studies, severe or very severe. Compared to other pains, researchers have rated the pain from abortion as more painful than a bone fracture, about the same as a cancer pain, although not as painful as amputation, according to medical experts.

There are some, including former President Bill Clinton, who used to repeat the mantra that it was his goal that abortion would be safe, legal and rare; but abortion is not safe for women, Mr. Speaker. Complications are common. According to medical experts, bleeding, hemorrhaging, laceration of the cervix, menstrual disturbance, inflammation of reproductive organs, bowel and bladder perforation, and serious infection are commonplace in the aftermath of the most routine abortions in America. Even more harmful than the short-term pain, which women describe as severe, are the potential long-term physical complications that we never talk about in America.

And when I say "we," I mean those who support the right to an abortion and even those of us in the pro-life movement. I will never forget President Clinton's surgeon general saying, so thoughtfully, that one particular denomination of Christianity needed to get over [its] 'love affair with the fetus.' So said Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders. Despite the horrific aspects of her comment, the truth is that even we, in the pro-life movement, have not thought enough about the other victim of abortion as well, for there are, as I said at the opening of this Case for Life, two victims. We grieve the loss of unborn life, but we need to speak more boldly about the impact on American women, physical and emotional, that abortion extracts.

Among those long-term physical complications, Mr. Speaker, for example, overzealous curettage, a medical procedure, can damage the lining of the uterus and lead to permanent infertility. Overall, women who have abortions face an increased risk of tubal pregnancy and more than double the risk of future sterility.

Perhaps the most important are that all the risks of these sorts of complications, along with the risk of future miscarriage, increases with each subsequent abortion. I am not altogether sure that women who make their way into clinics know that with each abortion they risk infertility, sterility or when the time comes that they decide to say yes to life, that they may be greeted with the heartbreak of miscarriage in increasing measure.

More controversially, according to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, there is strong evidence that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. A study by the institute of more than 1,800 women in 1994, which was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found that overall women having abortions increased their risk of getting breast cancer before the age of 45 by 50 percent. For women under 18 with no previous pregnancies, having an abortion after the eighth week increased the risk of breast cancer, according to this medical study, by 800 percent.

Women with a family history of breast cancer fared even worse. All 12 women participating in the study who had abortions before 18 and had a family history of breast cancer themselves contracted breast cancer before the age of 45. I say this as someone who has consistently supported research with the National Institutes of Health to confront breast cancer. I have had dear friends beset by this scourge and disease and I do not mean to speak in any way insensitively about it or in any way to associate breast cancer with abortion, that one fits the other, but rather simply to cite the research, that we can hear the truth echoing perhaps from this place tonight that according to the medical community and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, there is strong evidence that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer and women should know that.

"Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women, so said Alice Paul, author of the Equal Rights Amendment, and I agree. It is an exploitation of women for physical and emotional reasons."

There are also psychological consequences to American women for abortion. It seems to me that this may have been in the mind of Alice Paul, the author of the Equal Rights Amendment, when she said, "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women." Because it seems to me it is altogether convenient for men for a woman to have an abortion. Men have a rather unlimited capacity to compartmentalize and move on, but what the medical community is finding out is what most men have known throughout the eons, that women by and large have better hearts than we do, have a greater moral sensitivity than we do, and it is reflected in the research of what has come to be known as postabortion syndrome, which is rising to epidemic levels in America.

Clinical research provides a growing body of scientific evidence that having an abortion can cause psychological harm to some women. Psychologist Wanda Franz, Ph.D., in the March 1989 congressional hearings on the impact of abortion, said, "Women who report negative aftereffects from abortion know exactly what their problem is. They report horrible nightmares of children calling to them." When they are reminded of the abortion, Franz testified, the women re-experience it with terrible psychological pain. They feel worthless and victimized because they failed at the most natural of human activities, the role of being a mother.

I think in my own heart of conversations with women of my generation who have become active in the pro-life movement but who have found in their faith the grace and the healing to move beyond that choice. And I think of a woman who said in my presence once, some 20 years after having an abortion, that not a day went by that she did not think [about] how old that child would be. They do not tell you that in the lobby at the abortion clinic, Mr. Speaker, but they should. The exploding incidence of postabortion syndrome has even caused major medical associations in this country to recognize it. Women suffering postabortion stress may experience drug and alcohol abuse, personal relationship disorders, sexual dysfunction, communication difficulties and even in some cases attempt suicide. Postabortion syndrome appears to be a type of pattern of denial which may last for five to 10 years before emotional difficulties surface.

Now that clinicians have established that there is an identifiable pattern to PAS, postabortion syndrome, they face a new challenge. What is still unknown is how widespread psychological problems are among women who have had abortions. The Los Angeles Times did a survey in 1989 and found that 56 percent of women who had abortions felt guilty about it. And 26 percent, quote, mostly regretted the abortion, in a poll done by the Los Angeles Times. Clinicians' current goal now is to conduct extensive national research studies to obtain data on the size and scope of postabortion syndrome.

When one thinks, Mr. Speaker, of 1.5 million women undergoing abortions every year since 1973, it is almost overwhelming to think of the heartache that must grip the quiet moments of millions of women in our land. And because I am not standing in my home church, Mr. Speaker, I will not tonight explain to them that there is a way out under it, that there is grace and there is forgiveness and there is healing, and in a church near to them they can find it. It will always be my prayer as the Case for Life series goes forward in this chamber that any women who have experienced this under the sound of my voice would never in any way feel judged by this sinner, but that they would know that there is healing and there is grace in a God of mercy, and they would know there is a nation that urgently needs them to take a stand and to tell the truth to the next generation of women about the cost of an abortion, not just the ending of an innocent human life and every potential that it would ever have but, Mr. Speaker, about the breaking of a heart.

Oftentimes, as I stand before groups of young women in the prime of their life, I am asked about my position on abortion. My pro-life views are fairly widely known in Indiana. I always make the point to offer young women in the room a promise, and it is a good place for me to close this installment of the Case for Life tonight as I think about Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony who believed that abortion was the ultimate exploitation of women. I will look at these young women, oftentimes in a high school classroom, sometimes in a small church group, and I will look around the room knowing just statistically speaking that there may be some young women in that room who are faced with an unwanted pregnancy and are faced with a choice between bringing that unborn baby to term or ending its life in the womb.

I always look at those young women and I say, "I want to make you a promise that the other side can never make." I say, "If you are faced with an unwanted pregnancy and you make the decision, however difficult, with your family's assistance or a crisis pregnancy center near you to take that baby to term, and even if you turn that baby over to another family for adoption, versus if you choose to end that life in the womb, if you choose life, I will promise you from the moment they hand you that wiggling little baby in the operating room, whether you raise it or you give it up, there will never be a day in your life but that you know that you did the right thing. And the other side cannot make that promise."

And if the statistics that we heard tonight, the physical cost and the emotional cost of abortion, are not jarring, perhaps that challenge would be, Mr. Speaker. My prayer is that as we think about the great women of American history, the great women of the suffragette movement [who] won women the right to vote, [who] wrestled equal status for women in our society, people like Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul and others, when I think about the tender and wonderful women of my family and of America, I have hope for the cause of life. Because I cannot help but believe that women who could take American society from a medievalist view of women as property and have the moral courage to win the right to vote and to win equal standing in the public square because of their courage and their conscience, that those same American women and their daughters and their granddaughters will not someday lead us back to the truth that life is sacred, to the truth that echoes through history in those ancient words, "See, I set before you today life and death, blessings and destruction. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live."

It is my belief that it will be when that day comes, that abortion comes to an end in America, it will be the women of America who lead us home, just as it was the women of America who led us to a more just society and to an equal station in our culture for women.

With that, I would conclude my part of this Case for Life series, Mr. Speaker, and yield for whatever approach he would choose to make to this issue to a man who while he has served in Congress for over 20 years, his vibrancy and vitality is intimidating to most of us who serve with him.

The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) has been an advocate of the cause of life since before Roe v. Wade, and he brings an energy and a commitment to this cause like no other, and I am deeply humbled that he would join me in this series of a Case for Life, and I yield gratefully to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey:

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) for his leadership in realizing that we need to accelerate our efforts to inform, to enlighten, and hopefully to motivate America to stand up on behalf of life, to let women know that there are alternatives. We spoke the other day, actually the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) and I and a few others, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks), and we cosponsored a forum on women who had had abortions. As a matter of fact it was called Women Deserve Better, and we were able to hear from four very brave women, including Jennifer O'Neil and Melba Moore and others, who told their stories of having had abortions and the horrific consequences to their emotions, to their bodies, to their psychological health as a direct result of that abortion.

And the abortion lobby would like to have us believe that this is something that is benign, and it is anything but. It is an ugly, very destructive act that is committed upon her unborn child, and women are the co-victims of every abortion. We know that the baby is either chemically poisoned, or he or she is dismembered as a result of the abortion; but we also know that the woman carries with her a terrible price that goes on year in and year out, and regrettably the abortion lobby enables that and somehow suggests that she ought to be happy with that decision.

What we are trying to say is that there is reconciliation. The Women Deserve Better campaign is trying to reach out to those women who are suffering in carrying the burden of that abortion and to say that there is hope, there is reconciliation, and there is life after an abortion; but they need to come to terms with it. And I would encourage all those women who are perhaps listening to be in contact with the Women Deserve Better organization or to talk to some others who have direct experience, have experienced an abortion themselves and can bring, like I said, some reconciliation to them because, again, there needs to be that, I think, individually and collectively in America, if we are to go forward.

Let me also point out, as my good friend and colleague I am sure pointed out, today is truly a historic day having seen the Senate pass by a very wide margin a ban on the gruesome act known as partial-birth abortion where a baby is partially delivered only to have his or her head punctured with scissors in the back of the head and the brains of that tiny innocent baby snuffed out, vacuumed out to complete this horrific procedure known as partial-birth abortion.

Partial-birth abortion, I would respectfully submit, is but the tip of an ugly and unseemly iceberg. Just below the surface, the surface appeal of choice, is a reality almost too horrific and cruel to contemplate, let alone face. Yet we persist in our allusions and denial as a country ever enabled by clever marketing, bias news reporting, and the cheap sophistry of choice. Let us be clear, and I do not think we can say this often enough, abortion is child abuse and it exploits women. Women deserve better than having their babies stabbed or cut or decapitated or poisoned. Women deserve nonviolent, life-affirming positive alternatives to abortion.

Thirty years after Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the companion decision, the national debate on partial-birth abortion has finally pierced the multiple layers of euphemisms and collective denial to reveal child battering in the extreme. The cover-up is over, and the dirty secret concerning abortion methods is finally getting the scrutiny that will usher in reform and protective statutes. I would say to my colleagues that there is nothing compassionate, there is absolutely nothing benign about stabbing babies in the head with scissors so that their brains can be sucked out. That is child abuse. And yet over on the Senate side today and previously here in the House, we had members for whom I have an enormous amount of respect defending the indefensible.

We reach out to them and say, look at what you are saying. If [someone] did this, if she were a young mother and [she] had a little baby girl, a young child who took her doll and took a pair of scissors and stuck those scissors into the back of the head of that baby, [she] would get counseling. [The mother] would say no, my daughter should not be play-acting that kind of activity. And yet there are members of this chamber who embrace, enable, facilitate, and defend that indefensible act on a tiny living baby girl or baby boy.

As the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) knows and as my colleagues know, the loss of human life to abortion in this country has been staggering; 44.4 million babies have been killed by abortions since Roe v. Wade. And, yes, there were tens of thousands killed even prior to it in those states where abortion had been legalized like New York, like Hawaii, like Oregon, but 44.4 million kids. That is one out of every three of this generation missing. I say to my colleagues, the next time they are in a classroom, look around at the desks, count one, two, then the missing child; one, two, the missing child. This generation, perhaps more than any other in our own history, perhaps any other's history, is missing children who by ''choice'' have been destroyed by an abortionist.

Let me just conclude. On the WorldNetDaily site, there was an article on October 17, and I will just read part of it: "Attendees of a national conference for abortion providers watched and listened with rapt attention as the inventor of the partial-birth abortion procedure narrated a video of the grizzly procedure, and then they burst into applause when the act was over and the unborn child was destroyed.

The disturbing and eye-opening event featuring abortion doctor Martin Haskell, addressing members of the National Abortion Federation, was actually captured on audiotape, calmly and dispassionately describing each step of the process up to and including the insertion of the scissors into the base of the baby's head, followed by the sound of the suction machine sucking out the baby's brain. Dr. Haskell walks his audience through the procedure that opponents hope will finally be banned," that is us, "during this congressional session. At the end of the procedure," the article goes on to say, "after the late-term fully developed unborn child's life has been violently and painfully terminated, the audience breaks into applause."

That is sick, I say to my colleagues. These are the providers of abortion. These are the ones that our friends on the other side of this issue will defend passionately. They broke into applause as that baby met his death. That is what partial-birth abortion is all about. It is a horrific, grisly procedure. We are all about life, life affirmation. Thank God we have a President who respects the dignity and the value of each and every life and will sign this legislation into law, unlike his predecessor, Bill Clinton, who on two occasions vetoed this legislation.

I want to thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), my friend, for having these times on the floor so that we can begin the process of educating America. Much work needs to be done, and for those people who watch C-SPAN, know this: We care about life, the unborn, the newly born, all of those who are weak and disenfranchised. Many of us are the leaders on human rights, religious freedom, Trafficking Victims Protection Act, and a whole host of other important legislation designed to protect the innocent from the strong, the weak, and the vulnerable from those who would do them harm. That is what it is all about. Government is for the weakest and the most at risk. The unborn in our society are the weakest and the most at risk. Again I thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), and I yield back to my good friend and colleague.

Mr. PENCE:

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for his passion, for his generous remarks, and for his dogged determination in this issue.

We come to the close of this Case for Life much as we began, and it is always remarkable to me how sometimes God bookends things in ways that we could never have planned. Because we heard the gentleman from New Jersey begin his remarks by simply using a phrase I heard him use many times on floor, but I know he did not hear me use tonight. He said, "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women," which were precisely the words of Alice Paul, who in her 20s was a driving force behind winning women the right to vote in America; a woman who was the driving force behind even another great signature item of the feminist movement in America, the Equal Rights Amendment. She said, "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women."

I close with the words of Susan B. Anthony, who now every time I walk through the Rotunda and I look at those heroes of the suffrage movement carved in stone, I will think of it, if the Speaker will forgive me, as much a memorial to their moral courage as to their political accomplishment because these women were simultaneously about the elevation of women to equal political status, but they were also women committed to the sanctity of human life. Susan B. Anthony, and I close, said of abortion: "No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save the suffering of the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life. It will burden her soul in death. But, oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the deed."

Susan B. Anthony, without whom American women would have not a fraction of the status and the political power they have today, was a woman committed to the sanctity of human life. And as we go forward and as American women, in particular, listen in on our conversations on this Capitol floor, it is my hope that another generation of courageous and visionary American women of courage and conscience will lead us back to that profound moral truth echoed through the ages to choose life.

With that I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Ferguson), another of my colleagues in this series, a man who brings with him an enormous pedigree in the right-to-life movement.

Mr. FERGUSON:

Mr. Speaker, I am a little out of breath. I just got over here from my office. I was watching the debate and the conversation in my office, and I wanted to participate for a couple of different reasons. Number one, I wanted to pay tribute to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), who really is showing tremendous leadership and vision in helping to use this forum and use this opportunity to refocus our nation's attention on an issue which is as fundamental to us and to our lives and to our society as any that we take up in this House and in these halls of Congress. I am proud to call him a friend, and I am so pleased and proud of his leadership on this issue.

I also want to pay tribute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), who has been fighting these battles for almost 25 years. He has brought passion and intelligence and commitment to an issue in trying to educate people around the country and around the world about the value of human life and this, unfortunately, very slippery slope which we have proceeded down in the years since Roe v. Wade and even since before that.

Earlier today I was here on the floor and we were debating Medicare and talking about health care and talking about innovation and talking about trying to provide new health opportunities for our seniors, for people around this country. So much of the Medicare debate has been about medicines, it has been about medical devices, it has been about providing care to people who we care about.

One of the thoughts that I had as my friend the gentleman from New Jersey was talking about the millions and millions and millions of people who have been lost over the years to the terrible tragedy of abortion, I am thinking about that one out of three desks in the classroom. I used to be a teacher, and I was thinking back to those classrooms, one out of three desks where a child has been lost to abortion.

But it got me thinking about those who have been lost in another way. Think about the cures and the innovations, all the good that could have come from these millions and millions of human beings, these people who would be with us today, who would be participating. Researchers and scientists. They would be teachers, they would be moms, they would be dads. Thinking about the enormous good that would come from these individuals, these human beings who would be here to grow their hearts in love, to show love to other people, and compassion; the incredible insights they would be able to share with us.

The philosophers, the theologians, the priests, the ministers, the rabbis, those who would seek to make our society better and stronger, more compassionate and loving. All that has been lost. So much of that has been lost. Of course, we are blessed with people today who are able to share these things with us.

But think of what has been lost by those who have not been able to be with us today and whom we have lost over the years to the terrible tragedy of abortion. It is sad, but I think it also should instill in us a new commitment, a new understanding and perhaps a new perspective as to how important this issue is.

It is not just important in the ways that we know it is, the fundamental values that we all stand for as Americans, that we are fighting for around the world, but it is important, too, because we could be so much better, were it not for those who have been lost.

With that, I yield back to my friend the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. PENCE:

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Ferguson), who, along with his wife, Maurine, has been a champion for life in and out of the Congress for many years.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Aderholt), a moral leader in the United States House of Representatives.

Mr. ADERHOLT:

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

First of all, let me say it is a great day in the House, it is a great day in the United States Senate and it is a great day in the United States of America. I say to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), as we have said and talked about on many occasions, a lot of times we hear the courts speak on different issues. Well, today we have had an opportunity to hear the people speak, that this is an issue that we should not put up with in this nation.

I believe we will be judged by how we treat those who are the most vulnerable in society. For that reason, it is especially exciting to be here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives in the United States Capitol when this legislation has passed.

Certainly, I was pleased to join 161 of my House colleagues in cosponsoring this legislation. This is the fifth Congress during which this debate has taken place. I am thankful we have done the right thing to outlaw this procedure once and for all, and look forward to President Bush having a signing ceremony and inviting all the members of Congress who are very interested in this issue to be there. Because I think this will be a great day for America and I think it will be a great day for not only this administration when he signs that, but also the United States Congress.

Mr. PENCE:

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Ferguson), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) and the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Aderholt), for joining me in this case for life.

"How can a great country like the United States fall, you say, My child? You ask Me in your heart. I read your heart. I will tell you why. Because they have given themselves over to satan. When a country has lost its morality and seeks the pleasures of the flesh, giving over, themselves over, to all manner of abominations, like homosexuality, and condoning this up the highest courts of the land, then that country shall fall." - Our Lady of the Roses, November 1, 1985

Our Lady of the Roses' Awesome Bayside Prophecies... https://www.tldm.org/Bayside/
These prophecies came from Jesus, Mary, and the saints to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, NY, from 1968 to 1995:

SIN OF OMISSION
"The sin of omission shall condemn many to hell, be they layman or Hierarchy. I repeat: not the sin of commission, but the sin of omission will commit many to hell. Among them there will be also mitres." - Our Lady, October 6, 1980

THE UNITED STATES SHALL BE FIRST STRUCK
"One of the reasons the Eternal Father chose your city and your state for My appearance was because of abortion, the murder of the holy innocents. Your nation, without repentance, shall be the first struck." - Our Lady, March 15, 1978

THE UNITED STATES SHALL FALL
"How can a great country like the United States fall, you say, My child? You ask Me in your heart. I read your heart. I will tell you why. Because they have given themselves over to satan. When a country has lost its morality and seeks the pleasures of the flesh, giving over, themselves over, to all manner of abominations, like homosexuality, and condoning this up the highest courts of the land, then that country shall fall." - Our Lady of the Roses, November 1, 1985

DOCTORS
"Doctors now are profaning their profession, those who have given themselves over to destroying human life in abortions." - Jesus, June 6, 1987

FOULEST OF DEEDS
"Our hearts are torn because of the wanton murder of the young by evil man. Abortion, My children, is murder, the most foulest of deeds, that is punishable by death! And what is worse than death of the soul?
     "I say unto you, as your Mother, that any man or woman who performs or takes part of this abomination of the murder of the unborn shall be given a heavy penance upon earth, or if this penance is not given upon earth, that person found guilty in the eyes of his God shall suffer eternal damnation in the fires of hell." - Our Lady, December 28, 1976

DESTROYED
"All who become part of or condone abortion, the murder of the young, shall be destroyed!" - Jesus, June 2, 1979

HUMAN LIFE IS SACRED
"The Eternal Father command that you stop these murders at once! You will not destroy the lives of the unborn. Human life is sacred in the eyes of your God. No man has the right to destroy a life. The Father, He sends this life to you, and only He will decide when it will return back to the Kingdom.
     "Do not, My children, be deceived by the words of the evil ones about you who cry to you of no space left for man. There is space, for My Father has a plan for every life He sends." - Our Lady, August 5, 1971

WILL NEVER BE CONDONED
"You will remember, My children and My child, to guard the young. Your clergy have fallen into darkness. Abortion will never be condoned. But We must have others who fervently will go forward and bring out to the minds of those who have actually seduced the country and the children--bring them the knowledge of Heaven, hell and purgatory. Then they will not have free license to sin." - Our Lady, May 28, 1983

GOVERNMENT
"For that one reason among many, the United States will suffer unless there is placed into your government a group that fears the Lord if they cannot love the Lord. They will fear Him and find measures to stop the slaughter of the unborn." - Our Lady, April 14, 1984

NUNS
"That is what makes My heart ache, My child. That is one of the reasons Theresa is crying constantly when she looks into the convents and sees what is going on. Many now believe in abortion, the murders of the children; and many have committed this act upon themselves." - Jesus, October 1, 1988

SIXTY MILLION
"I say this for this reason: the Eternal Father is much disturbed at the numbers of abortions being committed throughout your country and the world. These numbers go upwards to fifty to sixty million in one year throughout the world." - Our Lady, June 18, 1986

TREATED AS GARBAGE
"O My child, My tears fall upon you all when I see all of the innocent little babies being slaughtered . . . cast into garbage pails like nothing but dirt and scum. They are living human beings! And all murderers shall get their just recompense." - Our Lady, March 18, 1983

BOMBS IN THE UNITED STATES
"These interlopers upon the serenity of the United States have dark skins.... With their plans there will be bombs placed in strategic places and many shall die at the hands of these ruffians....
     "One big reason for permitting this disaster in New York would be the abortion mills throughout the city and the country." - Jesus, October 1, 1988

HOLY SPIRIT
"At the time of conception, the Holy Spirit makes the child, and the breath of the Almighty gives it life." - Our Lady, June 18, 1991

LIMBO
"And what, My children, are We going to do with all the aborted babies? O My child, I know you feel as I do, for I can see the great distress on your face. What are We going to do, My child? Do you understand when they come to Us, they must go to Limbo? They are in Heaven, a happy place, but they cannot see God." - Our Lady, October 2, 1987

SORROWFULLY
"Sorrowfully, the penance that is to come upon the world for the murders of the unborn shall be a chastisement far greater in severity than man has ever witnessed in the past nor ever shall pass through again. Your world is plunging into a deep chasm of suffering and destruction." - Our Lady, May 20, 1978

OATH
"Your once loyal to the oath of a doctor, your once loyal doctors are now butchers! For money they kill the young!" - Our Lady, February 10, 1978

WOE TO THE WOMAN
"Know, My child, this simple lesson, that in these days of the latter times, women will seek to cast off their role as mother and a woman. Women will cast it off under the direction of satan, and murder her children. Woe to the woman who does not repent of this vile abomination! She has walked the road to eternal damnation and hell. Repent, O woman, or forever be lost!" - Our Lady, March 18, 1975

Directives from Heaven... https://www.tldm.org/directives/directives.htm

D23 - Abortion PDF
D28 - Hell PDF
D158 - America the Beautiful PDF
D167 - The Family - Part 1 PDF
D168 - The Family - Part 2 PDF
D179 - Women's Liberation PDF
D224 - Restore America to One Nation Under God PDF

Articles...

"The sanctity of human life" by Rep. Mike Pence, Part 1
https://www.tldm.org/news7/Pence1.htm

"The sanctity of human life" by Rep. Mike Pence, Part 3
https://www.tldm.org/news7/Pence3.htm

The parallels of slavery and abortion issues, Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade decisions
https://www.tldm.org/News7/ParallelsSlaveryAbortion.htm

Abortion and the conscience of the Nation, by President Ronald Reagan
https://www.tldm.org/News7/AbortionReagan.htm

Mother Teresa's letter to the Supreme Court on abortion
https://www.tldm.org/News7/AbortionMotherTeresa.htm

Pope says abortion to lead to downfall of democracies
https://www.tldm.org/news4/abortion.htm

Abortion: the ultimate exploitation of women
https://www.tldm.org/News6/exploitation.htm

Archbishop Chaput says abortion is "central social issue of this moment" in U.S. history
https://www.tldm.org/news6/Chaput3.htm

Spanish Bishop calls abortion "the greatest crime ever committed in history"
https://www.tldm.org/News7/AbortionGreatestCrime.htm

Virginia Bishop calls abortion "greatest moral evil of our age"
https://www.tldm.org/News7/Schmitt.htm

Archbishop Chaput says those who support abortion "rights" cannot be Catholic
https://www.tldm.org/News7/Chaput.htm

Mexican cardinals says that those who promote abortion cannot be Catholic
https://www.tldm.org/news7/MexicanCardinal.htm

Even elimination of poverty cannot justify one abortion, says Bishop Sheridan
https://www.tldm.org/News7/Sheridan3.htm

You wouldn't even ask
https://www.tldm.org/news7/Pavone1.htm

Archbishop Chaput says Catholics refusing to defend morality "demonstrating cowardice"
https://www.tldm.org/news7/Chaput3.htm

Abortion and the contraceptive mentality
https://www.tldm.org/news4/contraception_abortion.htm

Outside Links…

Abortion:

The beginning of the end of abortion, WorldNetDaily, November 13, 2004
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41431

Sin to vote for pro-abortion politicians? Fr. Matthew Habiger
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ISSUES/SINTOVOT.HTM

2002 Canonical Petition to Excommunicate Culture of Death "Catholics"
http://www.cathfam.org/cfexcom/Excom.html

“Whoever is not with Me, is against Me,” Archbishop William Levada
http://www.ewtn.com/library/BISHOPS/LEVADA.HTM

Declaration on procured abortion (CDF, November 18, 1974)
http://www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/CDFABORT.HTM

The Gospel of Life, Pope John Paul II, March 25, 1995
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/JP2EVANG.HTM

Contraception:

Faithfulness to the Divine Plan in the Transmission of Life Pope John Paul II's General Audience (8 August 1984)

Humanae Vitae Pope Paul VI - Encyclical - On the Regulation of Births (25 July 1968)

Contraception Versus Abortion: A Comparison and Some Implications, By Msgr. Vincent Foy, PhD.

Contraception and Catholic Teaching, Donald DeMarco, Ph.D.

God and the Pill, Terence J. Hughes

Abortifacients, Charles M. Mangan

Contraception: Fatal to the Faith and to Eternal Life, John A. Hardon, S.J.

Is Contraception Gravely Sinful Matter? by Fr Lino Ciccone CM (from L'Osservatore Romano, 4 December 1996)

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