Denouncing domestic terrorist violence against religious organizations and domestic terrorist violence against groups and organizations providing pregnancy support for expectant mothers, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the topic of this Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of the 2,500 unborn lives we lose to abortion each day who cannot stand for themselves. That is nearly half a million little boys and little girls in the United States alone this year. These numbers don't reflect, though, and take into consideration self-administered chemical abortions.

Last month, the Supreme Court announced what the pro-life movement was waiting half a century to hear: Roe v. Wade is overturned. As a proud pro-life grandfather of 10, I enthusiastically applaud the Justices for recognizing that this terrible relic from 1973 has no place in 2022.

Roe was both a legal and moral abomination from the beginning. It mocked our Nation's Constitution and paved the way for the abortion of more than 63 million innocent babies in the years since.

The men who first decided Roe invented the right to abortion out of thin air. By adding an extra line to our Constitution, they ignored one of the first sentences of the Declaration of Independence, which holds that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

With Roe in the dustbin of history, the abortion question returns to the democratic arena where it belongs. The most contentious of issues can now be properly debated and deliberated at both the Federal and State levels, where, ideally, the most logical and persuasive arguments can triumph and translate into new law.

Let us have clear eyes to see exactly what science shows us, that fetuses in the womb are human beings who develop with each passing second. These innocent children have their own DNA and soon develop hands, feet, eyes, and lips. They can also feel pain. Just as importantly, they have the potential to grow up, flourish, and achieve amazing dreams. Let us have the compassion to give them that chance.

For those of us in elected office who sincerely believe that human life is a sacred gift from God in need of society's protection, our position is no

longer theoretical. We now have a pressing responsibility to examine how public policy can best be crafted to adequately accomplish our stated goal.

I believe we already have an answer. When an expectant mother visits a doctor for an ultrasound, the image of a beating heart is the first confirmation that a child has been conceived. When someone is involved in a severe accident, a medic will check right away to see if there is a pulse to make sure the victim is alive. In short, a heartbeat means a life.

Now, to legislate consistently with this truth, I introduced the Heartbeat Protection Act in the U.S. House of Representatives. This bill would legally prohibit future abortions from being performed if a preborn child's heartbeat can be detected, with the exception for when a mother's life is in danger. It is a science-based, humanity- respecting solution suited to the new landscape in which we find ourselves.

The post-Roe world is here. As legislators in each State determine the extent to which they wish to defend life, pro-life Members of Congress can simultaneously take action to make our beloved country a place where both children waiting to be born and their mothers are acknowledged and safeguarded.

Mr. Speaker, tonight, we have a very distinguished group of Members with us who will also speak on this subject. This doesn't have to turn into an angry debate. This doesn't have to turn into something that people get so upset with each other about that they can't even sit down and talk intelligently about what is going on.

If we cannot see the value of life every day in every single person, then what have we witnessed this year, just this summer--the horror that has taken place in our own cities, the loss of life that we have experienced, the sincere sorrow that this country feels. Yet, we have a blind eye and a deaf ear to the cries of the unborn.

Do they not deserve that same type of consideration that every human being deserves?

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. McClain).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Joyce), another member of the fantastic Pennsylvania conference group and a strong defender of life.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson), a member of the Republican leadership group.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Johnson.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa). I think we came into Congress in 2011 and it has been a pleasure serving with you. I appreciate your comments tonight on this very important issue.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman), my friend and a strong defender of life.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Grothman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs), a great consistent defender of life.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Biggs.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Mann), another great defender of pro-life and consistent member of pro-life.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), somebody who has been a friend of mine since way back in 2011, and who has never stopped fighting for life since he got here.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great State of Georgia (Mr. Carter), who is another great defender of life.

We have been defending life for so long with such great patience and such great prayer. It has always been done in a peaceful manner.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great State of Georgia (Mr. Allen). Again, I thank the Representative for

being with us tonight. He is a great defender of life.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Representative for his remarks. Tomorrow is a big day for all of us.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great State of Mississippi (Mr. Guest). As we all ponder tonight what tomorrow will bring, I thank Mr. Guest for being with us and defending life in every step of the way.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Representative for his comments.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great State of Tennessee (Mr. Rose).

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate Representative Rose's being here tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I will use some of the time we have remaining. I know that we always want to debate this proposed legislation about what is good about it and what is bad about it. Oftentimes, we use languages to actually disguise what it is that we are actually talking about.

Tomorrow as we will debate and vote on the Women's Health Protection Act, abortion is the only medical procedure where two people go into the doctor's office and only one comes out alive. I know that in this people's House we have had heavy debate, and I know that both sides are divided on it and sometimes the language gets out of hand. It gets too hateful.

My colleagues on the other side have often said to me:

Look, we believe like you believe. We believe that life is

sacred. We believe that every--every--child has a chance, and

that unborn child is waiting to be born and waiting to

experience all that life has to offer. But, you see, the

Supreme Court took that option away from me. My personal

preference would be life, but the Supreme Court took that

option away from me.

So tomorrow, as we debate the Women's Health Protection Act and we hear a lot of discussion that goes back and forth and defending and then tearing apart and people adding to and subtracting from, we come to a lot of different things.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to share with you that last weekend while we were home, I had the opportunity to visit in Erie, Pennsylvania, in the district that I represent, I visited a women's care center. This is a center where too often they are described as people who are trying to discourage pregnant mothers from actually giving birth. They are trying to lead them into a different direction.

I just want to say this: the people who man these agencies give up a day of their life to come in and help counsel women who are going probably through some of the most difficult times of their life. Maybe it is not the right time for them to have that child. Maybe there is a financial problem, and it is just not right right now.

Maybe there is something else that stands in their way, and they are saying: Well, I am so alone. I am by myself. I don't know how I would handle this.

To those ladies who go through that, I would say that there are options available to you. The adoption option is there. We have thousands upon thousands of people who would love to adopt a child and to give it a loving home and to help nurture it as it goes through its lifecycles. We also have foster care that is available.

I know that I have talked to too many women who have experienced the

anguish of going through an abortion and then later on thinking that they made the biggest mistake of their life and holding that guilt feeling in their life.

I would just like to suggest that we are a very forgiving society. We are a people who say:

Look, don't let that ruin your life. Don't let that ruin

your life. There is forgiveness, there is grace, and there is

mercy.

We know that. But as we stand here tonight in the people's House--in the people's House--how did we ever get to this point?

How did we ever in the United States of America decide that all life is not precious?

I mentioned earlier some of the horrific instances that have taken place just in the last few weeks, in the last few months, and in the last few years.

I know that, on Wednesdays, a lot of Representatives wear red, and that is to bring about the remembrance of the Boko Haram and the little girls who were kidnapped and never returned. It is always about ``we need to get our girls back.''

We have such open hearts, and we have such understanding in some cases. Then in other cases, we just close our eyes. We plug our ears. We say: No, no. You don't understand. In this situation, the conception of that child was not what we were looking for. That is not what we wanted, but it happened, and now we have a problem. What are we going to do with this little girl or this little boy?

I know people look away. They look to the sky, and they look to the walls, and they look to the floor, and they say: Look, my personal preference would be--but the Supreme Court made a decision. The Supreme Court has just righted a very wrong decision.

I hope that, at some point, the greatest defender of life in the history of the world, the greatest defender of liberty and freedom in the history of the world, the United States of America, would take a look at the course and the direction it has been taking for the last 50 years.

Millions upon millions upon millions of little boys and little girls have been denied the right to life. Where in our history did we ever come up with this idea that abortion is okay?

Look, I said earlier, I understand there are times in your life--I can just tell you this: As a father of four and a grandfather of 10, between our firstborn child and our second-born child, there was a pregnancy that took place. It was an ectopic pregnancy. My wife has wondered forever what that child would have been like had she gone full term.

I want to take a moment, Mr. Speaker, as we close now. In this building, in this room, in this town, tomorrow, we will have a chance to look at what it is we are doing and where we are going. I would just ask it all to be prayerful, peaceful, and understand that this is an issue that we can no longer close our eyes to.

If it is your personal preference, if it is something that you think is right for life, then, please, walk away from any political bend that you may have and look at the policies.

We are here for the best interests of the United States and the best interests of our American citizens.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you so much for your indulgence. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Kelly's leadership that he is providing for us here tonight and all through the year and all through your tenure here on this key moral issue.

I am glad also to join the rest of my pro-life colleagues here to reaffirm our dedication to protecting the innocent unborn.

Indeed, we have cause for celebration, something that has been corrected, over nearly 50 years and over 50 million lives taken, the unconstitutional Roe decision has been rightfully overturned and the power put back to the States to a legislative process, not one decided by seven of nine on a Supreme Court.

Indeed, now we can have debate and people can be accountable for their votes. The public can have input on what they think about this topic. The public is much more educated at this point than they were 50 years ago and what this really means.

Every pregnancy actually results in a human life in that pregnancy. It is not something else. It is not a blob. It is not a tissue mass. It isn't going to be some other form of life or an animal--this is a human life we are talking about, and we value that and we protect that. It is constitutional to protect life in this country.

Though that decision does not outlaw abortion, it puts the responsibility and accountability back to legislatures, whether it is going to be States or here in the U.S. Capitol.

They still pushed forward anyway with a determination to go even farther than Roe v. Wade--their abortion on demand bill that they are going to take up tomorrow. It provides for discretionary abortions at any point in a pregnancy on the basis of a baby's sex, race, or possible disability.

What are we doing here?

We must stop the left's radical, extreme, immoral abortion agenda and uphold the value and dignity and potential of every person's life.

We even see now that corporations want to pay for travel for abortions for their employees. Amazing. They think this is helping women--$4,000 is possible for your travel.

We have States that also want to be abortion tourism centers. My home State of California, shamefully, is trying to draw people in, pay for their stay, pay for their travel--even for illegal immigrants.

How immoral can you be?

Each one of these innocent souls was created by God. We see this immoral decay of our country, and it is really coming to fruition right in bright colors in front of all of us.

There is no denying that what we are talking about is a human life. As early as 5 weeks in the womb babies have a heartbeat; 10 weeks, arms, legs, fingers and toes, and they can jump and kick even inside the womb; 15 weeks, fully developed hearts, they can taste, yawn, and hiccup. Indeed, they are real.

It is not some blob. It is not something to be dismissed. What we are seeing here with the overturning of this decision, is the responsibility is back in front of the people to have this debate, and it is going to be a serious debate with all the States that are going to take this up, and here in Congress.

My hat is off to all the people that have worked so hard all these years--those pro-life folks out there--making the case, pleading, praying, and working so hard to educate about the miracle that is life.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for hosting this very important Special Order hour, it is a hard-pressed thing and there is nothing more important that we can talk about right now.

I rise tonight to use my voice in defense of the voiceless, the unborn. Abortion has desensitized our Nation and I pray that the recent Supreme Court ruling wakes up our country to the horrors that we have visited upon our country's most vulnerable citizens whose lives have been snuffed out by abortion.

By 12 weeks of age, a baby has fully formed arms, hands, fingers, feet, and toes, a fully functional circulatory system and liver, and the capacity to experience pain--all at the weight of just 1 ounce and the length of 4 inches.

This is a miracle of God, and rather than stand in awe of it, some lawmakers would rather disregard it as meaningless. Abortion is not simply an elected medical procedure like getting your wisdom teeth taken out. There is another person involved--another eternal soul whom God created, loves, and sent his son, Jesus, to die for so that they might live.

The Supreme Court finally rectified their unthinkable wrong from 50 years ago, when the court legislated from the bench with Roe v. Wade and declared abortion a constitutional right grounded in a woman's right to privacy--a jurisprudential move that was shaky, biased, and flat wrong.

The United States is one of only eight countries in the world that permit abortion after 20 weeks of gestation, which means that 95 percent of the countries on Earth think that we are dead wrong on abortion. Now, as the Supreme Court has finally handed this decision back to the States, Americans will get to decide for themselves how abortion should be regulated.

It is easy to get caught up in the legislative language and forget that the numbers involved in the abortion issue are actual human beings. In the United States, 63.4 million people--Americans--have died from abortion over the last 50 years.

To put that number into context, that is roughly the entire population of the Midwest, which is estimated at 65 million people. Think about that.

Would our country notice if the collective populations of Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin were wiped out overnight? Would they miss these people?

That is the impact that abortion has had over the past 50 years.

I believe that life begins at conception, which is why I support adoptions, foster care, and crisis pregnancy centers that work tirelessly to care for mothers and their babies.

I take this moment to thank the pro-life movement at large in American and I am standing with you and thanking God that Roe v. Wade has finally been overturned.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his important voice and for hosting this Special Order hour.

The sanctity of human life can never be overemphasized. The gentleman has done so much work in that arena, and I appreciate him.

I am thankful to our Democratic colleagues tonight, as well, for skipping their Special Order hour so we can just go right ahead and get started in prime time. If America were experiencing record inflation, sky-high gas prices, and uninhibited illegal immigration under our watch, I would probably yield my time back, as well.

Mr. Speaker, this morning in our Judiciary Committee, the Democrat majority convened a hearing, and they titled it: ``What's Next: The Threat to Individual Freedoms in a Post-Roe World.'' It was an appropriate title, indeed, because the radical abortion advocates are becoming completely unhinged. They are seeking to trample on

the individual freedoms of anybody who disagrees with them.

Case in point, over the weekend, the leftwing activist group ShutDownDC offered $200 bounties for public sightings of our Supreme Court Justices.

This week, Senator Elizabeth Warren--talk about unhinged--said that crisis pregnancy centers all across America should be shut down.

There are 2,700 pregnancy centers all around this country in all 50 States. They are supported by over 10,000 licensed medical professionals. They are annually serving approximately 2 million women and men. I used to serve as legal counsel for many of these organizations, and I can testify to their invaluable work.

Why would anybody want to shut down pregnancy centers? They exist to provide counseling, care, aid, and comfort to struggling mothers who just want to have their babies. This is just abhorrent.

Speaking of abhorrent, I suggest to my Democrat friends to study up tonight--really, I mean, seriously--on the bill that we are going to be voting on here tomorrow. They call it the Women's Protection Act. It is not. We call it, more appropriately, abortion on demand until birth act.

Even though this will be the second time we voted on this bill in this Congress, I am not sure they know what is in it. I keep hearing my Democrat colleagues tell us: Oh, no, it is not about abortion on demand until birth. It absolutely is.

Surely, if they knew that this legislation did this, they wouldn't support it, right?

The American people certainly don't support it.

To our Democrat colleagues tonight, as I yield back to my friend, I would just humbly suggest--read your bill. You got a few hours. Read your legislation. Search your conscience. I hope that you will do the right thing and vote against that bill tomorrow.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Kelly again for the Special Order hour.

Mr. Speaker, our country was sent on a journey a week ago to see how we would respond to the Dobbs decision. This decision challenges all Americans to decide where they will stand on the abortion issue.

It is particularly a challenge to the churches of this country who are supposed to provide moral guidance to the country as to where to stand.

These are decisions that will have to be made by the citizens, in part, when they vote. Decisions have to be made by State legislators, district attorneys as to whether they are going to uphold pro-life laws, and perhaps, most important of all, individual decisions that are going to have to be made by women or families who are in a situation in which some people are going to try to persuade them to have an abortion.

It is interesting when we talk about this to remember that in 1973, as far as I can determine, no State between California on the West Coast and New York on the East Coast had entirely open-ended pro- abortion laws. Nevertheless, at a time where we didn't really have ultrasounds, every other State ruled that something barbaric was going on.

You just heard other statistics--we know at 6 weeks a child has a heartbeat; 7 weeks, feels pain; 10 weeks, jumps if startled, and has fingers and toes; 15 weeks, sense of taste.

Obviously, anybody who says: What would God want us to do in this situation realizes a human being has been created by God, and that human being should be cherished and kept alive.

It was, again, apparently the clergy in 1973, or society as a whole, did a good job of informing people that something so horrific was happening in abortion that it should be barred and made illegal. Since that time, the clergy of this country and the churches of this country have had 49 years to weigh in with the public and guide them as to how they should think. We are soon going to find out what a good job they did or a bad job they did.

In any event, we thank the Supreme Court for reaching the right decision. Now we put the ball in the court of Americans as a whole, whether they will respond, recognizing the precious lives that we have to protect in America, or if they are going down the shoot toward more of an atheistic view of the world, similar to countries like North Korea, Red China, countries in which atheism is part of their roots.

The challenge is yours, America--the challenge to the churches.