To promote accountability and transparency in future executive orders.

Mr. Speaker, I will be brief, and I will speak at the end of the Special Order as well if there is time.

Mr. Speaker, in 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court abandoned women and babies to what is now the multibillion dollar abortion industry, and almost 63\1/2\ million unborn children have been killed, a staggering loss of children's lives that is more than the entire population of Italy.

Now, by at least affirming the constitutionality of the Mississippi law after 15 weeks, which we are all hoping and praying for, the Supreme Court may finally take a powerful step towards inclusion, respect, and justice for the weakest and most vulnerable nearly 50 years after the infamous findings of Roe v. Wade.

Tomorrow thousands will march for life here in the capital and across the country.

I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Harris), who is a medical doctor, an anesthesiologist at Johns Hopkins, and co-chairman of the Pro-Life Caucus.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Fischbach), co-chair of the Pro-Life Caucus.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mrs. Fischbach for her powerful and eloquent witness for life, both in the legislature in Minnesota and now in the U.S. House.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot). I would note that he is the prime author of two breakthrough laws. One is called the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, which is law, and the Born- Alive Infants Protection Act.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Babin).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bergman), my friend and colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership.

I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson), a distinguished attorney before coming to Congress and number four in the line of leadership in the Republican Party.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership.

I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Joyce), a medical doctor. So many of our leaders in the pro-life effort both in this Congress and legislation across the country are medical doctors and healthcare professionals.

Thank you very much, doctor, for your leadership and eloquence.

I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Burchett).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cline).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his strong statement.

I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Keller.)

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for sharing that beautiful story about his son Freddie.

I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Allen), another good friend and colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for his comments.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her remarks and wish her congratulations.

I yield to the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Rosendale).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments and leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert), a good friend and colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman so much for sharing that.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Fulcher), my good friend and colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Latta), and I thank him for his leadership on his pending bill.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Palazzo), my friend and colleague and leader in the pro-life movement as well.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for reminding us that the Chinese Communist Party and North Korea both have policies like ours, especially as it relates to up-to-birth abortions.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership all these many years.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Van Duyne).

I now yield to the distinguished gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Harshbarger), who is also a pharmacist.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Aderholt), a friend and colleague for several decades.

I now yield to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Mann).

I now recognize the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson). As I said before, there are doctors who are outspoken in their defense of life, Dr. Thompson is one of those.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Fitzgerald), a good friend and colleague.

Mr. Speaker, today, after decades of noble struggle and sacrifice, pro-life Americans are hopeful that government- sanctioned violence against children and the exploitation of women by abortion may be nearing an end, although in a very real way the struggle to defend innocent human life now enters a critically important new phase.

Because of the Dobbs case, because the Supreme Court has finally seemingly accepted a relook at Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions, the Federal Government and the States-based suit have new authority to protect the weakest and the most vulnerable among us. Protection for unborn children is at a tipping point. In 2022, the Supreme Court can begin dismantling the culture of death that it has imposed on America.

Mr. Speaker, for decades and right up to this very moment, abortion supporters have gone through extraordinary lengths to ignore, to trivialize, and to cover up the battered baby victim. With stolid resolve, they defend the indefensible.

Why does dismembering a child with sharp knives, pulverizing a child with powerful suction devices, chemically poisoning a baby with any number of toxic chemicals--one method euphemistically called medical abortion--why does all of this fail to elicit so much as a scintilla of empathy, mercy, or compassion from the so-called pro-choice crowd?

Have the physical and emotional consequences of women been underreported? You bet they have. I have been in the pro-life movement for almost 50 years. Both my wife, Marie, and I do work with a lot of women who have had abortions. They tell us stories of agony that, just like the fact of the unborn child's worth and dignity, has been trivialized by the other side of this issue.

Mr. Speaker, why are children born alive during some late-term abortions not given the same standard of care and respect as premature infants born at that very same age? They are left to die, or they are just killed after they are born.

President Biden understands the gruesome reality of abortion and this injustice. At least he once did. As Senator Biden wrote to constituents in explaining his support for the Hyde amendment, for example, prohibiting taxpayer funding for elective abortions, he said it would protect both the woman and her unborn child. He stated at the time he had consistently, on no fewer than 50 occasions, voted against Federal funding of abortions. Further, those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be compelled to pay for them.

Today, the President has weaponized the entire Federal bureaucracy to aggressively promote abortion on demand at home and overseas, including full court press to force taxpayers to fund abortions on demand including the repeal of the Hyde amendment.

Last September, the House passed a bill, the abortion on demand until birth act. Of course, it had a different name that just cloaked the misery that it would impose. That bill would not only codify late-term abortions, it would also nullify nearly every modest pro-life restriction ever enacted by the States including a woman's right to know laws in 35 states, parental involvement statutes in 37 states, pain-capable unborn child protection laws in 19 states, sex-election abortion bans in almost a dozen states and waiting periods in 26 states. By his words and his deeds, the President has become the abortion President. I think he wants to own that.

Mr. Speaker, this all comes at a time when ultrasound imaging has made unborn babies more visible, with a greater clarity than ever before. Breakthrough research has now found that unborn children can feel pain at a gestational age of 15 weeks and maybe earlier.

Today modern medicine treats an ever-increasing number of unborn children with disability and disease as patients in need of diagnosis and life-enhancing treatments before birth. Unborn babies are society's youngest patients and deserve protection, not death by abortion. Science informs us that birth is merely an event--albeit a very important one--in the life of the child. It is not the beginning of his or her life.

As most people know, after the ultrasound the grandparents, the parents, and the friends get pictures of the child in utero. The ultrasound pictures are the first baby pictures that are now plastered on all of our refrigerators in great expectation for that event called birth.

The right to life is the first human right, and it must be guaranteed to everyone regardless of race, age, sex, disability, stage of development, or condition of dependency. Life is not just for the planned, the privileged, or the perfect.

We need to protect these innocent children.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Kansas farmers for their long hours during this year's wheat harvest and for their work to produce food for people all over the world.

With more than 15,000 wheat farms across the State and 5 million acres of wheat in the Big First District alone, Kansas leads the Nation in wheat production, is the largest exporter of hard red winter wheat, and is aptly named the breadbasket of the world.

The United States exports that wheat to more than 100 countries around the world, and some of that wheat from Kansas ends up abroad under the U.S. food assistance programs, like Food for Peace. In fact, it was the Kansas Farm Bureau who began sending surplus grain to those in need around the world, continuing U.S. leadership in addressing world hunger.

As I reflect on my own time on our family farm in Quinter, Kansas, I am reminded that harvest season is about more than just harvesting the crop. For Kansas farm families and communities, harvest is about coming together.

Harvest is when we share tractors and other equipment with our neighbor when theirs gets stuck. Harvest is when a grandmother takes food to the field so the rest of her family doesn't have to leave the field for a lunch break. It is when a father takes his child out on the combine to show him how the work is done. And it is when we reflect on our advancements in agriculture, thanks to land-grant universities, like the wheat breeding research at Kansas State University, yielding high-quality and plentiful harvests around the world.

Wheat harvest is a time for Kansas to be proud of the great strides they take to feed, fuel, and clothe the world. At the end of the season, we look back and know that each agricultural success is inexplicably tied to our Kansas values of faith, family, community, and grit. While we are at work here in Washington, they are back at home making the world go round, and for that we owe farmers our sincerest thank you.

The Right to Life is Self-Evident

Mr. Speaker, I also rise today in support of one of the most basic functions of any government, the right to life.

Our Founding Fathers wrote 245 years ago, ``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.''

To them, the right to life was so overly obvious that they called it self-evident.

But, today, in America, some policymakers insist on denying the right to life to millions of Americans. Instead, they diminish that right through murderous abortion policies, policies that fail to recognize life until a child lets out his or her first cry in the delivery room, policies that justify abortion based on the belief that any unborn child may have Down syndrome, and policies that funnel taxpayer dollars to funding abortions and abortion services.

Today's technology and science has shown us proof of life inside the womb. We see 3D ultrasounds of a baby sucking her thumb and moving around. We know unborn babies can experience pain as early as 12 weeks. At 20 weeks, we can reveal if a baby is a boy or a girl.

Yet some of our country's leaders still proceed to support policies that devalue and eliminate the innocent child's life. For decades, these elected officials have spent more time protecting the right of potentially endangered species, like the lesser prairie-chicken or sea turtle eggs, than they do protecting unborn babies, human babies.

But not to me. I strongly believe life begins at conception. I believe every life matters. I support adoptions, foster care, and crisis pregnancy centers that work tirelessly to care for mothers and their babies. I have cosponsored pro-life legislation, including H.R. 18, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, permanently prohibiting Federal funding for abortions and abortion services. I even introduced my own, H.R. 714, which would require the executive branch to notify Congress and the American public before issuing any new executive order pertaining to pro-life provisions and the right to life guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Devaluing the life of unborn children has desensitized our Nation, and I pray we soon wake up and realize the horrors it has done. It is time to stop using taxpayer dollars to fund abortion services and focus on lifesaving resources that value the life of both the mother and the child. The right to life is self-evident, and I will fight to protect it at all costs.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I may have a slightly different tone here. I was born in an unwed mother's home in downtown L.A., and so were all my siblings. In my late thirties, I got an email out of nowhere, and it said: Hi, David. I am a friend of your sister's. Here is your information. Here is your birth mother.

We had a family discussion. I sent a very carefully worded note, and a couple of weeks later, I got this phone call, this tiny voice crying--and I am crying now also on the phone. And she is saying: I go to mass almost every day. On your birthday, I am terrified. Are you having a good life? How has your world been?

And I am crying on the other side, basically saying: Look, I have had a great life. I got adopted by a family that brought me to Arizona. I get to live in the Phoenix area. I have a wonderful brother and sister, who were also born in the unwed mother's home.

It became an amazing experience. My mom, who is right here, and this is my birth mom right here, they became best of friends. I have never told this part of the story here, but my birth mom--both of them have now passed away--had an early type of Alzheimer's, a type of dementia. But my mom here had sent her all sorts of photos of me being a child. So when you go into the house that they had there in California, there would be my two 6' tall blonde half sisters and then pictures of me as a baby growing up.

In her mind, I was always there. I was always part of the family. The dear Lord does heal.

But one of her best friends at the funeral turned to me and said: David, did Mary Lynn ever tell you the story of when we were in the car on the way to Tijuana to go get an abortion?

As they got closer and closer to the border, she began to cry. Then they got closer, and she started to hyperventilate. Eventually, she became so crushed with fear and sadness and terror, the girls turned around and went back and talked to her mother. A few months later, I was born at that Holy Family Unwed Mothers Home.

Now I am this age, and I have an adopted little girl, who is the third generation adopted in our family.

For those of us who passionately care about life, I think it is important we also tell the stories of how grateful some of us are to be alive; the amazing life my little girl is having and how grateful I am to her birth mom for giving us the greatest gift my wife and I have ever had; and understanding that the ultimate definition of love is life. Maybe others out there can have the amazing experience I have had with meeting my birth family and my family and my siblings' birth families. It is just one amazing experience of joy of life.

That needs to be what, I think, we focus on. There is good here if we just change our hearts and our minds.

Mr. Speaker, I want to recognize my colleagues this solemn day. It is the day we commemorate the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. I have said it before and continue to say, as I have many times, I am pro-life. I am pro-family. I am pro-child. I join my colleagues and constituents in Alabama's Fourth Congressional District in remembering the, literally, millions of babies that have been aborted since that 1973 decision.

Mr. Speaker, this year we are possibly on the brink of a transformational moment in our history, a moment of hope that we really haven't had for many, many years, the reversal of or major changes to Roe v. Wade.

As most of us know, in June of this year we expect the U.S. Supreme Court to hand down a decision on the Dobbs v. Jackson case. In deciding this case, the Supreme Court has the opportunity to protect the lives of unborn children after the 15-week mark of pregnancy.

Mr. Speaker, I think we all have to be clear. Even if the Supreme Court upholds the Mississippi law as it is written, abortion will not be banned nationwide. It simply gives the power back to the States. For me, my pro-life stance is deeply rooted in my Christian faith. Just as important, my opposition to abortion is about doing what is right. It is about protecting unborn babies. It is about not trying to impose my faith on anyone else.

Mr. Speaker, that is because it is also rooted in science. Like much of science, our scope of knowledge on the development of unborn babies has advanced farther than what we knew back in 1973. It is time for our laws to catch up.

At 15 weeks, an unborn baby has a heartbeat. It can open and close its fingers and hands. It can taste. It can even feel pain. No argument in favor of abortion can overcome one unchanging fact, and that is abortion stops a beating heart.

Given developments of unborn babies at 15 weeks, abortions after this timeframe often involve gruesome medical procedures that are dangerous for mothers and undoubtedly painful to the baby.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues, as we look forward, as we return back to our States, and as this issue is hopefully turned over into the hands of the States, we can make groundbreaking steps in saving the lives of the unborn.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) for being a stalwart leader on this ever since I have been involved in this. I appreciate him for being courageous and strong on defending life.

Mr. Speaker, as we know, in the 49 years since the Supreme Court codified Roe v. Wade, the science behind pregnancy and its diagnosis, so to speak, has advanced exponentially. We know this year the Supreme Court will rule on a case called Dobbs v. Jackson to decide on limiting abortion access to 15 weeks of pregnancy.

As if there has been any doubt, really, of what a pregnancy means commonsense-wise, that it is a child developing--not a blob, a tissue mass, a clump of cells, or a baby giraffe. No, it is a human being.

Medical advancements like ultrasounds since that decision 49 years ago, prenatal surgeries, all these have shown the humanity of the unborn, which points to the value of life from the moment of conception, from that flash of light.

By 15 weeks in the womb, babies have fully developed hearts, can taste, can make facial expressions, and can feel pain. With today's medical advancements, a baby can survive outside the womb, incredibly, at 22 weeks and, in

some cases, even earlier with aggressive care and maybe a little bit of luck and God's blessing.

Roe v. Wade allows a baby to be born as late as 28 weeks. At 28 weeks, a baby is a living, breathing, developed person with thoughts and a future. We need revisions to Roe v. Wade. The future of our Nation, its morality, its outlook, it depends on it. Abortion is a gruesome act that destroys families, harms women's health, mentally and physically, and takes the life of the innocent.

I will always fight for the unborn, the sanctity of life, and our traditional family values this country is founded upon. It is truly a cornerstone, and it is abhorrent that lives like this can be taken needlessly when we have so many remedies.