Floor Statements

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague for agreeing to a time split this morning where I will speak for 30 minutes and, at the end of that time, Senator Santorum will speak for 30 minutes, and then we each expect to have other Senators speaking. We will figure out at that point how to divide the time.

We are here this morning because there is a strong disagreement between the House and the Senate on the issue of Roe v. Wade, a Supreme Court decision that occurred in 1973 which ruled that it was unconstitutional to take away a woman's right to choose and that found a privacy right in the Constitution.

The Senate has gone on record several times supporting the Roe decision. In S. 3, the bill that was brought to us by the Senator from Pennsylvania and others, which for the first time banned an approved medical procedure--the first time ever--without a health exception, Senator Harkin added an amendment to support Roe. I will show you what that amendment was and what the debate is about.

Senator Harkin's language in S. 3 that was disagreed to by the House is the following:

It is the sense of the Senate that--

(1) the decision of the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade--

And it cites the ruling--

was appropriate and secures an important right; and

(2) such decisions should not be overturned.

This is the simple language that the Senator from Iowa, who spoke quite eloquently last night, made part of S. 3.

The Senate had a debate about the Harkin amendment. It was an extensive debate about why it is important that a woman's right to choose remain the law of the land, why it is important that the Court not overturn it.

The House, which says it very much wants to ban the procedure that is banned in S. 3 without a health exception, could have simply taken the Senate bill and sent it off to the President, and we would have had the argument about this underlying bill in the Supreme Court, where it is going to go, by the way, where I believe it will be ruled unconstitutional because the centerpiece of Roe is that a woman's health and life must always be protected.

Let's look at the language in Roe which provides for the woman's health to always be protected and why, to those of us who believe Roe v. Wade was rightly decided, it is so important.

The important point about Roe, which people sometimes don't get, is

that it is a very modest decision, a very moderate decision. It balances all the interests in a way that is fair. It says that in the early stages of a pregnancy, a woman has a right to decide whether to carry this child to term. She makes that decision after searching her soul, talking to her family, her doctor, her God.

Guess what. Government isn't in the picture, Senators are not in the picture, Congresspeople are not in the picture, Senator Boxer is not in the picture, when a woman is making this decision. Neither is Senator Santorum nor Senator Frist nor Senator Stevens nor Senator Daschle. As far as this Senator is concerned--and I represent the largest State in the Union--that is the way it should be.

I support everyone making their own decision as Roe states they should have the right to do in the early stages of a pregnancy. In the late stages of a pregnancy, after viability--that is when a fetus can live outside the womb--this is what the Court said in Roe:

The State, in promoting its interest in the potentiality of

human life, may, if it chooses, regulate, and even

proscribe--

Meaning ban--

abortion, except where it is necessary, in appropriate

medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health

of the mother.

It is a very sensible law. After viability, any State in the Union can ban abortion but always making an exception for the life and health of a woman.

We have a decision, that I believe was very carefully thought out, that balances everyone's views, or let's say the majority of views, and indeed the majority of the people support Roe. In my particular State, it is overwhelming, but it is a strong majority across the country.

Here is why it is so important. I guess my colleagues said: Why is Senator Boxer having us vote to disagree with what the House did? The House tossed out the support of Roe in S. 3 and said: We don't want it. Therefore, the two bodies will go to conference.

Why do I want to take the time and have a debate about Roe? First of all, it is a very serious worry to many people in this country that with the Supreme Court at roughly a 5-to-4 vote on Roe, we could lose this right, and with the Senate now only having 52, 53, or 54 people in favor of Roe, which is diminishing, this is a problem. With the House anti-choice, this is a problem. They believe that making sure people understand what Roe actually did, what the decision actually did, is very important. So I think for that reason, to remind all of us what Roe v. Wade actually said and actually did, it is important.

The other reason is, the underlying bill goes completely against Roe. Why? Because Roe v. Wade said, yes, the State--meaning the Government-- can even go so far as banning abortion but always having an exception for the life and health of the mother. This bill makes no exception for the health of the mother.

Now, why is this important? What could happen to a woman if she cannot have the particular procedure that is being banned, as Members of the Senate and the House play doctor, and for the first time decide that they are going to outlaw a procedure?

Let us look at what could happen to a woman's health. The night before last I put in documentation, letters, that laid out these problems. This is what doctors tell us could happen if the procedure that is banned in this bill cannot be used to save the health of a woman. I want everyone to think about whether they want their wife, their daughter, their sister, their friend, their aunt, or anyone else they love to go through this.

A woman might have a hemorrhage, a hemorrhage that could get worse and worse and could lead to serious, long-term damage. Her uterus could rupture, meaning she may well never have another child. She could get blood clots, and everyone knows how serious that is. She could have an embolism, a stroke, damage to nearby organs, even paralysis. This is what doctors tell us.

We do not have one OB/GYN in the Senate. The OB/GYNs tell us these are the things that could happen if a safe procedure that is recognized is not available to a woman, and yet this bill, S. 3, bans this procedure, does not give a whit about this in the end because there is no health exception. Believe me, my colleagues tried to offer very tight health exceptions and oh, no, the other side would not give an inch--no health exception.

This is what could happen to a woman, and the only saving grace of S. 3 is that it has the Roe language in it that we support in Roe. What does that say? It says to the Supreme Court across the street that even though the Senate passed S. 3 and banned a procedure, it also at the same time said, do not overturn Roe. Roe has a clear statement that the health of the mother must always be protected.

I hope everyone on the other side votes for this. I have heard it is possible because there is a technicality here. If this amendment or this motion to disagree goes down, then there will be no conference and the bill cannot go forward. I hope all my colleagues on the other side vote for this, I really do, because I want a strong signal to go out that this Senate disagreed with what the House did when they said strip out the Roe language.

If everyone on the other side, or a lot of my colleagues on the other side, vote with us and we get a strong vote, that sends a message to the conferees that most of the people wanted to keep the Roe language. I trust they will come back after conference with the Roe language. Send this bill into conference with a strong vote for Roe, and we expect Roe will come back in the bill.

I think it is important to look at what happened before Roe so I am going to read a couple of statements. Dr. Douglas Black, Concord, NH, was then--pre-Roe, pre-1973--an OB/GYN. He did his specialty training in New York City from 1959 to 1963. During that time he saw hundreds of botched back-alley abortions, and many women died. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. For every one woman who died, there were many others who were rendered pelvic cripples. He said it was not a pretty sight, and he remembers doing hysterectomies on 13-year-old girls. Also, he and others were often unable to treat women until the women told police where they had gotten the abortion.

Dr. Black says:

I can vividly remember pot-bellied, cigar-chomping

detectives picking on some young, very sick kid, bleeding

excessively, with shaking chills of fever and a high

temperature.

That is what it was like pre-Roe. That is why Senator Harkin offered this amendment. That is why the Senate voted for it and that is why we disagree with the House stripping out this amendment supporting Roe.

Let me read another one. This one is from Philadelphia, PA, Dr. Louis Gerstley. Dr. Gerstley has been an obstetrician and gynecologist since the early 1950s. From 1956 through 1967, he worked at the Philadelphia General Hospital, where a 32-bed ward was kept purely for the end results of badly botched abortions. Imagine that, they had beds set aside for women who had to go to the back alleys and sneak and pass dollar bills across a table to some back-alley abortionist. The beds were constantly filled, and Dr. Gerstley saw women who were sick, who were dying, and who died.

He remembers one 22-year-old woman in particular who came into the ward suffering from septic shock from a botched abortion. He and others worked on her for 6 hours and finally decided to give her a hysterectomy to save her life. The procedure was performed without anesthesia because she had no blood pressure and no pulse. The patient died. Dr. Gerstley has said:

I never want to see that again.

He opposes the criminalization of abortion. That is why we are here, because we want a strong vote going into conference that Roe v. Wade should not be reversed.

Let us look at Senator Harkin's language again. It is very temperate, very clear, and very important. It is worth a debate. I appreciate the fact that we have a debate about Roe.

It is the sense of the Senate that the decision of the

Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade was appropriate and secures an

important right; and such decisions should not be overturned.

It is very simple, very elegant.

We do not want back-alley people, who are not doctors, who are not trained, to touch a young girl in trouble, or anyone who deserves to have their health protected. Their health must be protected. That is why Roe is so important.

Dr. Robert Prince from Dallas, TX, has been an OB/GYN since 1958. At the end of his third year of medicine, he did a research fellowship in Nashville, TN. One of his duties was to perform autopsies. Since abortions were illegal, any death attributed to an abortion required an autopsy. In his own words:

My first case was that of a 20-year-old college student,

who had been brought into the emergency room by her boyfriend

for vaginal bleeding. She had gone to a nurse's aide, who had

attempted to place a catheter in the cervix to effect an

abortion. A vital blood vessel was damaged, and the patient

was in shock when she arrived at the emergency room. . . . In

a clinic setting, this patient would have survived in spite

of the injury . . . if abortions were legal, she would have

survived. How often did this happen in the pre-Roe years?

Multiply the scenario by a thousand.

Rollyn Carlson, Austin, TX, was 20 years old in the summer of 1971 and pregnant. She decided to have an abortion and found an office in Mexico on the other side of the Texas border. After the abortion, she bled heavily and ran a high fever for 3 days. She was one of the lucky ones. She married and had two children. She now has a teenage daughter and is concerned about her. What if she got pregnant? What if she needed an abortion? Rollyn worries that if abortion is illegal, her daughter would have to have an illegal abortion and could die.

Here is the point. People in our country can make their own decisions in a personal, private, difficult moral, sometimes religious, decision. Some will decide to have the child, to keep the child, to love the child. Some will decide to put the child up for adoption. Some will decide to have a legal abortion in the early stages.

Under Roe v. Wade, if a person waits until the end, that is a time when the State can step in, always, and say, no--but always protecting the health and the life of the woman. Again, that is why Roe is so important. That is why being pro-choice is so important, because it says that I respect you. I will do anything I can to protect your right to decide however you want to decide. I will not force you to decide the way I want you to decide.

I wasn't elected to be God. I am a Senator. I was elected to respect you and respect your freedom and to pass laws that balance your rights with other rights. Roe v. Wade was that type of decision. It is very important that it not be overturned. It is very important that it be part of this law that is in front of us because the law that is in front of us makes an exception for the health of a woman.

If we have the Roe language, we are sending a signal that, yes, a majority wants to ban this procedure. They couldn't get the votes to have an exception for health, but we still support Roe. That is why this is important. This is not some technical matter that we voice vote. This is a moment in time where we can discuss and debate the wisdom of the Harkin amendment, which is very clear and simply says Roe is important.

I want to read this. Some of the stories are very hard. This woman's name is Romanita, from Pittsburgh, Pa. Romanita married and had three children, one, her daughter Norma, with spinal bifida. Her husband was a heroin addict and had left the home. One day he showed up and he raped her. He then disappeared and she found that she was pregnant. She sought an illegal abortion and experienced bleeding for 2 weeks. She lived to tell the tale.

Again, our being here is not frivolous. I hope the other side will not paint it as such. We have so many issues facing our country today that are so important. We have an economy that has lost 3 million jobs in the last couple of years. We have deficits as far as the eye can see. We have to deal with that. We have environmental laws that have been rolled back. We have to deal with that. We have our young men and women in Iraq in terrible danger, without much help from the international community, unfortunately. We have a request for $87 billion. We have to deal with that. We have to work that out in a way that protects the troops and yet makes sure we have some kind of exit strategy and we are not turning our back on the needs of our own people. We want to make sure procurement reform is done, so when Iraq is rebuilt it is done in a way that is fair.

All those issues are before us. I don't come to the floor in a frivolous manner because I am working on all those issues. I have an important hearing today that involves a big industry in my State that is in some kind of trouble. We are having a hearing about that. So, no, I have come here early in the morning because I want to make the case to my colleagues as to why we are calling for a vote on this issue of Roe v. Wade. We are asking our colleagues to strongly disagree with what the House did when they stripped out the Harkin language. We want to send a strong message--hopefully, a very large number of votes will come our way on this one--to the conferees: Keep the Harkin language in the bill, please. We know we differ with the House. But we are right on this one.

I thank you, Mr. President, and I thank my colleague from Pennsylvania for being so gracious as to allow me to open this debate. I know he will have a vigorous dissent, and I respect that. I suspect we will dissent on this matter many times in the future if we are both here to be able to do that. Of course that is up to the people of our States.

I yield the remainder of my time and yield the floor.

Let me say to my friend, one death is too many, if it is your wife. We could debate the numbers. I gave you cases, cases, cases here. A woman who was raped and had to go get an illegal abortion. I have so many more of these.

I have the data and I have the sources. I will, before the end of the morning, have them printed in the Record. But, again, there are varying estimates. I have never heard the one, 83, as being a serious estimate.

Be that as it may, Roe v. Wade says that you always protect the life and health of a woman. That is a basic disagreement you and I have.

Mr. President, thank you very much. I have gone to one meeting. And I have another hearing. I appreciate my colleague from Pennsylvania being so gracious as to work the time so I could continue to come back and forth.

Before I left the floor, I promised him I would put in the Record the various publications that have stated that approximately 5,000 women a year died from illegal abortions before Roe.

In a moment.

The Senator read from the CDC figures. I realized as I left the floor that at the time women were having these illegal botched abortions and were dying--it made some of them infertile, and they were suffering from trauma--they were not supporting the CDC or any government entity because they would have been put in prison because abortion was illegal. Any claim that the CDC would know the accurate number of illegal abortions just flies in the face of all common sense. Women were not cooperating with the Government. They were in fact standing up to the Government which had outlawed the procedure.

I am glad to yield to the Senator.

I could tell you it was illegal in my State. I will be happy to give you all of that. That isn't the point. At the point in time when the CDC was collecting these numbers, many of the women were having abortions. In my State--probably the most populous State at that time--they were not reporting these things.

My friend challenged me. I come back with the fact that I don't believe the Senator could say the United States Government knew. But I will tell you who did know.

I have a book that has stated that number.

I am glad to yield.

I am talking about the number of illegal abortions.

Excuse me. I don't interrupt the Senator, if he would allow me to respond.

I am saying to the Senator that the collection of data at that time would not be done by someone who feared prosecution. If a person dies, I can tell you that right now doctors weren't reporting these things. Families didn't want to say their child did something illegal. The Senator is the only one I have ever met in the movement to outlaw Roe who would put the number of deaths at 83. But I want to tell the Senator that 83 deaths of women--and I have read stories and my friend has heard them, and they are brutal stories about 13-year-old girls, and women who were raped who were afraid--these people died. You can take your number of 83 which is the CDC and which would, I say, make no sense because people were afraid to death, frankly, and families were afraid to report that. Or you can take the number of 5,000 which has been written about quite a bit in science magazines, or you can take some other number in the middle. My friend can pick whatever number he wants. He has chosen the number of 83 women who died. That is 83 families destroyed. But you can belittle. That is fine.

The bottom line is that Roe v. Wade said the Government has a right after viability to ban abortions. But there is always an exception for the health of the woman.

My friend can sugar-coat his bill any way he wants. But the fact is even the people who want to ban abortions have written--and I just read an account today where one gentleman who was a big leader in this movement to overturn Roe said this bill is unconstitutional.

That is the reason why it is important for us to say we support Roe, because this Senate shouldn't be reporting language that is unconstitutional and which jeopardizes the health of a woman.

I yield for one more question. I appreciate having a chance to finish my remarks.

I am suggesting to my friend that when people could go to prison because a woman had an abortion in the early stages of her pregnancy--this is my opinion--I don't believe there is going to be accurate reporting. I think it had a terrible impact on people. People were so frightened.

We have testimony from a doctor who said that while a woman was on the table bleeding to death, the doctor was afraid to perform an abortion because--he was allowed to do it because the woman was raped, but he was afraid until the police cleared it.

The bottom line is this was a period in our history where women were made to feel like criminals. I remember those days. Women's lives were lost. The number of illegal abortions is hard to determine. It is hard to determine the cause of death. The fact of the matter is I don't know too many people who believe the number of 85. There are people who lived in those days who saw how many women were having these abortions. Perhaps they were raped. Perhaps it was a situation where they wanted a family, and that wasn't to be. Whatever the reason, it was happening. They weren't reported, and I don't believe the deaths were accurately reported.

The point is, Why are we here having this debate? Would I still be standing here if I believed that ``only'' 85 women a year died? Yes, I would be, because that is too many deaths, if it is your friend, if it is your mother, if it is your sister, or if it is your aunt.

The question isn't only how many illegal abortions there were and how many women died. The Senator made no reference to how many women became infertile. Then the Senator says something that is totally untrue--that we have never placed into the Record at all any statement that shows that by banning this procedure which is banned in this bill with the health exception there could be health damage.

There is testimony of Anne Davis before a hearing of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the House Judiciary Committee. She is a physician licensed to practice medicine in New York, and she is a board-certified OB/GYN. She got her education at Columbia. She is a fellow of the American College of OB/GYN.

With all due respect to my colleague from Pennsylvania--and I totally respect his right to his opinion and would fight for his right to have it--I trust an OB/GYN more than I do him on matters pertaining to a woman's health and her body.

She says this bill will severely limit physicians' ability to provide the best medical care to their patients. She says it is confusing; it is contradictory; it would be difficult for physicians to interpret. And she says she believes after reading it, the bill appears to ban safe and common abortion procedures

used well before fetal viability. By the way, this was another ground on which the Supreme Court overturned a similar Nebraska statute. It said it was vague.

She says the bill leaves physicians with an untenable choice of not being able to provide the appropriate medical care and, she says, it poses grave risks to the patient. Let me repeat that. My colleague said there was not one bit of evidence that the procedure that is banned-- not one bit of evidence--that it could hurt a woman and that I put none in the Record.

I refer to my colleagues the testimony of Anne R. Davis, M.D., before the House Subcommittee on the Constitution on March 25, 2003.

Mr. President, she says it puts patients at risk, and she goes on about it. She goes into great detail. I will not take the Senate's time because it is highly technical and it has to do with medicine, and this is not, as I said, a doctor's office. It is the Senate floor.

It goes on for pages and pages. The bottom line is, she is saying there are times when this procedure that is banned is the one that is necessary to protect women. As a matter of fact, she has a whole section titled: ``The bill lacks necessary exceptions to protect women's health and their lives.'' And she goes through that.

This is the first document for the Record. It is 11 pages. I hope Senator Santorum will take the time to look at that.

Then I have a very important letter from another OB/GYN. As a matter of fact, she is an adjunct professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at UC-San Francisco where she directs the Center for Reproductive Health Research and Policy. She says she represented the United States at the International Conference on Population and Development. She served on a number of boards of organizations that promote emergency contraception and new contraceptive technologies and supports reducing teen pregnancy. I hope my friends agree that is a good idea. Her area of expertise is family planning and reproductive health.

Very clearly in her four-page letter to us--again, a lot of which is technical--she lists these very problems of what could happen to a woman if there is no health exception in the bill. Here is what she says: Death, infertility, paralysis, coma, stroke, hemorrhage, brain damage, infection, liver damage, and kidney damage.

The Senator from Pennsylvania said I never put anything in the Record that said if they cannot use this procedure that is banned in this bill there would be problems. Here is another, Felicia Stewart, M.D., with the highest qualifications you would ever want to have if you ever needed to go to an OB/GYN, which none of my male colleagues would ever have to do, but my female colleagues would have to do.

I ask unanimous consent to print this letter in the Record.

Mr. President, I have another letter from the American Public Health Association. The American Public Health Association opposes the bill because it fails to include adequate health exception language and where certain procedures may be determined by a physician to be the best way to preserve the health of the woman.

There we go, the American Public Health Association is concerned about women's health.

I ask unanimous consent that this letter from the American Public Health Association be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I have another letter from Lynn Epstein, president of the American Medical Women's Association in Alexandria, VA. They strongly oppose this ban, and they say it fails to protect the health and safety of women and their children. So that is another.

I ask unanimous consent that letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, here is another letter from the Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health. They are located in New York. They say the legislation is dangerous because it is vague and there is no health exception. They also add something I think they are absolutely right on about. Politicians should not legislate medicine.

This is the first time any Congress has ever outlawed a medical procedure that is supported by the medical community. You may find a few doctors who don't, but the organizations all do. They are very concerned that women's health is not being respected or cared about.

I ask unanimous consent to print this letter from Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health in the Record.

Mr. President, here is another one. Senator Santorum said we had no documentation that the ban would hurt women's health. This is testimony of Vanessa Cullins, vice president of Medical Affairs of Planned Parenthood. She is a board-certified OB/GYN with a master's degree in public health and business administration. She talks about the fact that this bill prevents doctors from exercising necessary discretion and how that is dangerous. She says it outlaws techniques that are critical to the lives and health of American women.

Mr. President, I refer to my colleagues the testimony of Vanessa Cullins, M.D., before the House Subcommittee on the Constitution on March 25, 2003.

Mr. President, then there is the UCSF Center for Reproductive Health Research and Policy. Their first objection to the bill: It fails to protect women's health by omitting an exception for women's health.

I ask unanimous consent to print this letter in the Record.

Here you go. We have all of these documents that clearly say the problem with this bill is it makes no health exception; it is vague; it is dangerous for women.

The fact is, the bill passed the Senate. We had these arguments and the bill passed the Senate, but the great news about that debate is that Tom Harkin offered his amendment, and that is the subject of the vote we are going to have, where I hope everyone votes to disagree with what the House did because what the House did is it stripped out of the bill this very important language that deals with Roe v. Wade.

What did it say? The decision of the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade was appropriate and secures an important right and such decisions should not be overturned.

It just shows you the real desire of the anti-choice Members of the Congress. They could have taken this language, which has no force of law--it is a basic statement, an important statement, a crucial statement, in my opinion, but it has no force of law. It doesn't say we say Roe v. Wade shall never be overturned and we pass legislation which embodies Roe. We have not done that. I wish we could, I hope

we will, and I think some day we will. I think it is going to take a pro-choice President, but I think some day we will make Roe a law that is actually signed rather than just a court decision. I have offered bills to do that. We have not moved forward because we have had to fight off so many other attempts to restrict Roe.

Indeed, the House could have taken the bill which bans this procedure without a health exception with this language, and it would have been on the President's desk. But they are so against Roe--that is what this is all about--that they had to strip it out, even to slow down the bill.

That is what we are here today discussing: whether the House was right to strip out this sense-of-the-Senate Harkin amendment. We have had a good debate so far. We have some time left. Senator DeWine is going to speak for the rest of the time this morning, and we will have more time to finish our debate, whether it is before the storm comes or after the storm comes. I don't know how we will resolve that situation.

We will have more debate. It is a very important debate. It is an important debate because before Roe became the law of the land, women died. One could argue how many. I am not going to get into the argument. I have evidence it was 5,000. Senator Santorum says his evidence is it is 85. One is too many.

Abortion should be legal in the very early stages, as Roe says. After that, the State should be able to come in and set rules and to say after viability one cannot have any abortion, except to save the life and health of the woman. That is the bottom line of Roe, and that is why we are arguing so strongly that this Senate should go on record disagreeing with what the House did so that when this bill goes over across the street to the Supreme Court they can look at this record, which we will make sure they look at, and see that the Senate, while voting to ban this procedure without a health exception, also said do not overturn Roe.

To me, that is a signal to the Supreme Court that they should rule the bill unconstitutional. We would have been happy to vote for that bill with the health exception. I do not understand why a group that calls itself pro-life will not stand up for the life and health of a woman. I do not understand it.

Look, I respect it because this is America and everyone has a right to his or her opinion, as strong as it may be. I do not mind that. I think it is great. It is what makes our democracy great, that we can have these debates and discussions, but I do not understand how a movement that calls itself pro-life can be that disinterested in the health and the lives of women.

Women are not just vessels that carry babies to term. Women are human beings who deserve to be respected, admired. They need dignity. A woman does not just say, oh, I woke up one morning; I do not want this baby at the late stage; I think I will change my mind. If my colleagues think that about women, they do not know women. We are the nurturers.

Roe v. Wade was a decision that weighed the rights of women with all the other rights that compete, and it came up with what I consider to be a very wise and moderate decision, which is before viability a woman has the right to choose and Senator Boxer, Senator DeWine, Senator Santorum, no Senator, no matter how powerful, no House Member, no President has a right to get involved in the decision that she makes with her doctor, her God, and her loved ones.

We are not her loved ones. I know we want to be loved by everyone-- most politicians do--but I can guarantee, we are not. We do not belong in the lives of our citizens at a point where the Court has clearly stated that they have the right and respect to make that choice themselves.

So what did Senator Harkin do? He said: Let us have an amendment that says Roe v. Wade should not be overturned. We did it. We passed it and the House stripped it out. We are saying we want to vote to disagree with the House. This is Roe:

. . . the preservation of the life or the health of the

mother--

Must always be considered.

I am very happy I was able to place into the Record the scientific articles which stated that, in fact, there were 5,000 women who died every year of illegal abortions. I pointed out that I do not trust numbers from the Government when the Government was about prosecuting people who had abortions. So I do not trust those particular numbers at that time.

I also was able to place into the Record a number of articles, a number of letters, testimony from doctors who deal with these issues every day, not Senators who make up and do this for politics but doctors who take the Hippocratic oath to do no harm to their patients, who are telling us, please, do not go down this path; you are jeopardizing the lives of women.

The Supreme Court is going to get this case, but I hope the Supreme Court also will note that we voted overwhelmingly to disagree with what the House did by stripping out the Harkin amendment that simply says Roe should not be overturned.

I yield back my time, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. President, what time remains at this point?

I just wanted to thank my friend very much, through the Chair, for coming over. I know it is a very hectic day for all of us. I appreciate the fact that several of my colleagues have come to the floor to speak about this.

The Senator's point is quite eloquent; that is, affirming Roe, saying this decision was the right decision and what this Senate ought to do.

Further, what we ought to be doing instead of outlawing procedures without making exception for the health of the woman, we ought to be moving forward aggressively with family planning. We ought to be helping poor children and poor families.

I find very interestingly the very people who want to have the court overturn Roe, say that Roe is a bad decision, and the Government should decide what women should do with their own bodies are the ones we cannot get to support us on family planning and on helping poor kids. It is a very odd set of circumstances to me when I see an elected official say we should ban abortion because it is wrong from minute 1. We should ban abortion, force women to have these children at the earliest stages, not let them decide but have the Government decide, and then turn our backs on the children once they are born.

I ask my friend if he does not see an irony here?

I ask my colleague one more question. My colleague has come in favor of the Harkin amendment. I hope we have a very big vote to disagree with what the House did. The House struck the Harkin amendment from the bill. That is a very strong difference the Senate has with the House. We will vote to disagree with what the House did.

I share with my friend the very elegant simple language of the Harkin amendment:

It is the sense of the Senate that:

(1) the decision of the Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade (410

U.S. 113 (1973)) was appropriate and secures an important

right; and

(2) such decisions should not be overturned.

This is a very elegant, simple statement and, by the way, has no force of law. It is simply a sense of this Senate.

Does it not seem to my friend to be an indication of how out of sync the House is on that they would strike this simple sense-of-the Senate language? If you ask the people, and we have a recent poll--Should Government be involved in the early stages of a pregnancy?--80 percent say, Government, keep your nose out. And the House is so interested in passing this underlying ban on a medical procedure that, by the way, has no exception for health, would the Senator not think they would have just left this in and then there would be no difference between the House and the Senate? As we know from our Government textbooks, when there is no difference, the bill would go right to the President. Does my friend believe that the House leadership, those who struck this language, who pushed striking this language, are out of step with the vast majority of people in New Jersey, people in California, people in this country, 80 percent of whom believe the early stages of pregnancy, this decision should be between a woman, her doctor, her God, and her family, and it is not about Senator Corzine deciding or Senator Boxer deciding or Senator Santorum but rather the women, in consultation with their conscience, their family, their God, their doctor.

Madam President, will you give me the time situation, please?

Madam President, will you please notify me when I have 10 minutes remaining?

Madam President, we are coming to the end of what I think has been a very good debate. I am very hopeful the Senate will vote yes on the motion to disagree with the House. The Senator from Pennsylvania, who is worried about this, has decided everyone is going to vote for it. I say good news. Let the Supreme Court see that while the Senate took up this bill to ban a medical procedure, a medically necessary procedure, it, at the same time, supported a landmark decision called Roe v. Wade that said to the Government: Stay out of people's lives in the very early stages of a pregnancy. It said to the Senators then and to the Senators now: You think you are important, but guess what. You need to respect the people you represent and not interfere in a decision they need to make with their God. I think that is profoundly moral.

What I think is immoral is to take your views, Madam President, or my views or the views of the Senator from Pennsylvania and force them on the people of this country. It is disrespectful, it is not right, and it is not what America is about.

In 1973, the Court said to us: At the early stages of a pregnancy, a woman has this right, but at the later stages of a pregnancy the State can, in fact, ban abortion, as long as the State always respects the life and health of a woman. That was a wise decision, and it has held to this time. There are many people who want to see it overturned. Indeed, the Court is about 5-4 on that decision. A lot hangs on that because this is not some abstract issue. This is a real issue.

The Senator from Pennsylvania challenged me this morning. He said: You keep saying women's health would be harmed if this medical procedure in the underlying bill is banned, but you have no proof.

I don't know what more I can do than what I did this morning, which is to put into the Record--and I will reiterate the documents--how many doctors, organizations, how many nurses, how many OB/GYNs said, we are, in fact, opening up the door for women to be harmed, gravely harmed.

Let's put up the chart that shows what we were told by physicians could happen. If this is supposed to be a moral bill, I ask you a simple question: Is it a moral position to outlaw a medical procedure that doctors are telling us is necessary, in many cases, to protect the health of a woman? Is it a moral position to subject a woman to hemorrhages, to uterine rupture, to blood clots, to embolism, to stroke, to damage to nearby organs, such as your kidneys, to paralysis? If that is considered a moral position, then I guess--I just can't see it. I don't see it.

If you don't know, if you do something without knowledge, I cannot say you are immoral. But if you are doing something with knowledge, if you are banning a procedure we know is necessary, and we have doctor after doctor--here is testimony of Vanessa Cullins, vice president of Medical Affairs of Planned Parenthood after years of being a board- certified OB/GYN with a master's degree in public health and business administration. That is her testimony.

We also put in the Record the testimony of Anne Davis, M.D. She is a physician who practices in New York. She is board-certified in OB/GYN. She went to Columbia University. She gives us chapter and verse about her belonging to the American College of OB/GYNs and how they are very worried that these things, and worse, could happen if this bill passes.

Let's face it, this underlying bill is going to pass. For the first time in history, Congress is playing doctor, outlawing a medical procedure that is sometimes necessary to save the life and health of a woman, outlawing that procedure without a health exception, and we are doing it with knowledge and forethought. If you can sleep at night doing it, then that is fine.

The American Medical Women's Association: Please have a health exception.

The American Public Health Association; Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health. It goes on and on. This letter by Felicia Stewart, who is an OB/GYN in California, was very specific on what could happen. So the bottom line is, if we want to talk about morality, I am ready to talk about morality.

I will withhold my 10 minutes until after the Senator from Pennsylvania speaks.

I never said we should not pass laws that stop immorality. I am a champion of those. I am leading a fight right now in the Commerce Committee to stop child kiddy porn. I am sure my friend is going to work with me on it.

He misunderstood and absolutely misrepresented what I said. What I said is that the underlying bill, which does not make an exception for the health of the woman, is an immoral

bill. I do not think it is a moral bill. I think it is an immoral bill, and the reason I think it is an immoral bill is it makes no exception for the health of a woman, no matter how hard we try. We reached across the party line. We said we want to make an exception for health. Oh, no, women will lie. Oh, no, doctors will lie. We cannot have a health exception. People will lie.

I feel sorry for a woman who finds herself in a circumstance where she is in desperate shape, in a pregnancy gone horribly wrong--and I have met many of them. I have seen their faces, and God bless them because they have come out and given up their privacy to talk about what they have gone through. I feel sorry for the next woman who is lying bleeding on a table and a doctor has to take out this law and say: I am not sure because your life may not be at stake. It may be your health, and if I use this safe procedure I might lose my license, I might go to jail.

Anyone who wants to be party to that, be my guest. Thankfully, across the street there is a Supreme Court, and I think they will find this underlying bill unconstitutional because it is vague and because it does not make an exception for the health of the woman. Even the most rabid anti-choice people are now saying that this bill is surely unconstitutional.

Why do I think the underlying bill is immoral? Because we know a woman could get a hemorrhage, a uterine rupture, blood clots, an embolism, a stroke, damage to her organs, or paralysis if this technique, this medical procedure, is not used in certain very serious cases.

So, oh, yes, I support laws that are moral. My colleague is absolutely correct, there is morality in everything we do. When we go after corporate abuse, when we go after criminals who because of insider trading, for example, make an illegal profit, I am going after them. That is a moral issue. Weapons of mass destruction, that is a moral issue. A new generation of nuclear bombs, that is a moral issue. Abortion is a moral issue. You bet it is.

I believed that the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 took a moral stand and found that they have to balance the rights of all involved. My friend says, and I am going to quote him now, ``Our society is corroding.''

Well, I do not believe that I am corroding because I am pro-choice. I do not believe the people in the Senator's State who are pro-choice are corroding. I do not believe that the people of this country who believe that politicians ought to stay out of their private lives in the early stage of a pregnancy are corroding. I think they are struggling with a tough issue.

My friend said this morning that I was wrong, that 5,000 women did not die. I put a cite into the Record. I now have a book by Richard Schwartz, assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. He was the chief of the section there. This is an old book from 1968 in which he says:

It has been estimated that as many as 5,000 American women

die each year as a direct result of criminal abortion. The

figure of 5,000 may be a minimum estimate inasmuch as many

such deaths are mislabeled or unreported.

As I said to my friend this morning, he said the CDC said only 85 women died of illegal abortions. Well, people did not come forward. Families did not come forward. Doctors did not come forward.

This was a crime. He has in his own State a great university, and one of the leaders of the School of Medicine there has written this. I ask unanimous consent that this excerpt from the book be printed in the Record.

Another point of debate about how many women died, whether it is 85, 89, 100, 5,000, or as Dr. Schwartz says, probably much more, one death from an illegal abortion is too many.

Those of us who remember back to those days remember that, and that is why the Harkin amendment is so important because the Harkin amendment simply said we strongly support Roe. We do not think it ought to be overturned. I am very hopeful that every Republican and every Democrat today will vote to support Roe in this motion to disagree.

My colleague says it is just a routine voice vote. No, it is not. It is a vote on substance. That is why we have been arguing it. If it was such a routine, just a go-to-conference vote, I do not think he would have been arguing against Roe. If he wants to argue against Roe and then vote for Roe, that is great with me because we are sending that right over to the Court, and they will see that the Senate stands firmly in favor of Roe.

There are certain problems in our country that we thought we solved. One of them was this problem because when Roe v. Wade was heard, we did have thousands of women dying, and thousands more being made infertile. We all knew the stories. We all lived through those times. Roe said something had to be done about it. What they decided to do is balance all the interests.

Let us show what Roe says, because it is, in my opinion, such a moderate decision that balanced all of the interests and why it has been supported for so many years. What they say is that after viability:

. . . the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality

of human life may, if it chooses, regulate and even

proscribe--

that means ban--

abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical

judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the

mother.

I believe people who come to this floor and talk about morality, that is their right to do it. If they want to say they are more moral than someone else, that is their right. I do not have a problem with that. But what the Court did back in 1973 has said this is a tough issue. We have to look at everything. What they decided is instead of women running to a back-alley abortionist and paying cash under the table and risking their life by bleeding to death, becoming infertile and all of that, that in the early stages of a pregnancy, before the fetus could live outside the womb, that a woman has this right to choose.

I have to say, if we go back, and we could go back--it all depends on who is in this Senate, who is sitting in the President's seat, who is over in the Court. That is all that is riding on. It is very clear. If we go back, we are going to go back to the days that were not good for women and were not good for families. Do you know what. They were not good for anyone.

The beauty of being pro-choice and being in favor of Roe is that we respect everyone's opinion, not only by just standing here and saying, I respect the Senator, I respect the Senator--that is all fine. I respect my constituents. That means I trust them to make a judgment. That is the foundation of Roe--balancing all the interests; saying, at the early stages, keep the big nose of Uncle Sam and the Government out of private lives.

Some people find that privacy ruling distressing. I think it said: Do you know what. This is a great country because we respect our people. We are not an oppressive government like China. We are not an oppressive government like Romania certainly was. We don't force our people to have children. And we don't force them to have abortions. We trust them to think about what they want to do in such a situation.

I am extremely hopeful that in one moment from now we will have a big vote, a big vote to disagree with what the House did when they callously stripped out the Roe language that Senator Harkin put in.

I hope it is a big vote. I cannot wait to see the vote because we are going to make sure the Supreme Court understands that we still stand for the life and health of the woman.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Reserving the right to object, and I will not object, except to say I hope the Senate notes we had a 93-to-0 vote in favor of the Harkin amendment on Roe, and we hope our conferees will fight hard to keep that language in this bill.

I will not object.

Mr. President, I rise to support the Senate resolution to overturn the Federal Communications Commission's, FCC, decision to relax our Nation's media concentration rules. That decision threatens our democracy by placing more power over what we see and hear in the hands of fewer big interests.

The voices of those who oppose the FCC decision range from Bill Clinton to Bill Safire, from the National Rifle Association to the National Organization for Women. I am particularly disappointed with the manner in which the agency has ignored these voices. The FCC held only one public hearing on these rules. But commissioners and their staff met with just one firm lobbying on behalf of big media more than 30 times.

The agency received more than 700,000 letters opposing the relaxation of the rules and only a handful supporting that decision but failed to take that overwhelming public sentiment into consideration. I reject the FCC rule because the FCC ignored the people's concerns.

Congress must send the agency a clear bipartisan message--the airwaves belong to the American people, not to you and not to a small group of media elites. The FCC must be forced to address the concerns of the American people. The people know that the FCC decision to relax our media ownership threatens democratic discourse and participation. It will allow massive media giants to grow--media giants that already use multiple media outlets to promote their views and overwhelmingly dominate public debate.

The courts told the FCC to explain why the rules were justified. With the more than 700,000 public comments opposing relaxation of the rules, the agency had that justification. The American people understand that it cannot be in the public interest to further relax the rules that protect the public's access to multiple sources to information and media. My office alone has received 4600 letters and e-mails on the issue.

The FCC is charged with protecting the public interest. In this case, I believe the commission has failed and Congress must act.

Mr. President, I would like to engage in a colloquy with the distinguished Senator from Nevada, Senator Reid, the ranking member of the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee.

I want to thank Senators Domenici and Reid for their hard work in developing this legislation. In particular, I appreciate the attention that they have given to the infrastructure needs of California, as well as to the overall importance of this bill for those of us representing western States.

Los Angeles, the largest metropolitan area in the western United States, faces many challenges. Local community leaders are working hard to revitalize the areas surrounding the Los

Angeles River. The river, reinforced with concrete to provide flood control benefits, runs 51 miles through much of urban Los Angeles.

Both the Senate and House of Representatives include funding in the Energy and Water Appropriations bills for operation and maintenance of the Los Angeles County Drainage Area project. However, the House Appropriations Committee also included language directing $2 million of additional funding to be used to ``support Corps of Engineers assistance in local activities to revitalize the project areas for public safety, environmental restoration, recreation, aesthetics, community improvement, and related purposes.''

This additional funding would provide essential support for local leaders and community stakeholders, working in conjunction with the Army Corps of Engineers, to move forward with this critical project. I urge the Senate conferees to agree with the House funding level for this project.

I know how much the Senator from Nevada cares about improving our communities and protecting our precious natural resources. This project works toward achieving both of these important goals.

I thank the Senator for his support.

dworshak reservoir

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask what the pending business is.

Mr. President, as I understand it, I will have up to 60 minutes to discuss this tonight; is that correct?

I ask my friend from South Carolina what issue he is here to discuss tonight and what his time parameters are.

If I could ask my friend, is the Senator able to wait 30 minutes?

Senator Hollings raises several issues that are so important to the Nation. This issue of media ownership getting out of control and the need to reverse what the FCC did and also the issue of the war, how badly it is going, how much it is costing, the danger our troops are in, the fact it is not internationalized and there is virtually no burden sharing going on--these are all issues that I hear about at home when I go to the grocery store or take a walk. People are anxious and concerned. These are the issues of the day.

Therefore, it is rather stunning to me that given all this and the fact that the deficit has gone off the charts--we have seen the picture of what has happened to the deficit since Bill Clinton left office; it is a straight line up. I never saw anything like it in my life. We are getting to the point where we are bankrupting this country and laying all that bankruptcy on the backs of our kids, as Senator Hollings has said.

With all of these issues pending, why am I here tonight speaking about an issue that was resolved in 1973, the right of a woman to choose--the fact that this Senate went on record supporting that right quite recently as part of S. 3, that very simple language that simply said Roe v. Wade has saved lives, stating it is the sense of the Senate that the decision of the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade was appropriate and secures an important right and such decisions should not be overturned.

That was language in S. 3 which also for the first time banned a medically recognized procedure. Senator Harkin and I and a majority of the Senate added this language.

What happens with all of the problems we are facing and with our brave men and women in such jeopardy abroad, our taxpayers just getting squeezed, our education bill underfunded, the country going broke, the environment getting worse because every other day, and usually on Fridays, we see more rollbacks of environmental laws, the media getting bigger. We have to overturn that.

With all of those issues, one would think the House of Representatives and the Republican leadership would have said: We want to get this bill to the President's desk. We want to ban this procedure. So let's just take this language. The decision of the Supreme Court in Roe was appropriate and secures an important right, and such decisions should not be overturned.

Friends, that was not to be the case. Instead of sending this bill off to the President for his signature, which my colleagues have been wanting to do for a very long time, they say we need to strip out this very simple Roe language. In fact, that is what the House did.

So before this bill can go to conference--and it is a technical matter, but in order for a bill to become law, when the bills are different, you have to have a conference to resolve the differences. When the bills are the same, the bill can go straight over to the President's desk.

No, the House leaders, Republican leaders, I believe quite radically on this point of a woman's right to choose that was resolved in 1973, they strip this out. Now in order to go to conference, we will have a vote to disagree with what the House did. I hope we will disagree with what they did and take another stand for Roe. That is why we are here tonight.

The reason the House will not go along with this, and many in our own Senate will not, the real agenda in all of these bills that attack a woman's right to choose--and there have been many, and I will go through them, including bills that hurt family planning--the real agenda is to overturn Roe. I believe that is what we are talking about. It may show up in a different form, such as banning one medical procedure, which is a horrible precedent, as we are going to do.

It may show up by saying to a woman in the military: You will have to fly back to the United States on an ``as available'' basis and spend your own money--nothing to do with your own military pay--to get an abortion. We have said to Federal employees: You cannot use the health insurance that you pay a good part of to get a legal abortion, legal, not illegal, a legal abortion. Abortion is legal.

My friends, some of them here do not like that. So there has been this huge attempt to narrow this right. So every time we get a chance, when we see these bills come forward that would narrow this right, that would potentially harm women, we offer the Harkin-Boxer amendment in favor of Roe. Even though we did not get as many votes as we would like, we got a majority, and that is what we are continuing to discuss.

Now, what does Roe guarantee to women?

In the decision of the Supreme Court, the Court found that a woman's reproductive decisions are a privacy right guaranteed by the Constitution. But I have to say that even though this right was granted to women, it was not an unbalanced decision. It was a very moderate decision. That is why, in my opinion, the majority of Americans support it.

In the early stages of a pregnancy, the Government cannot intervene with a woman's right to choose. That is it, plain and simple. Guess what. We are not going to be big brother or sister, as the case may be. We are going to allow a woman, her doctor, and her God to make that decision.

But in the later stages of pregnancy, Roe found that the Government can intervene, that it can regulate, that it can restrict abortion. We all support that. All of us support that. But there is one caveat-- always, always, always. Any law that a State may pass to restrict abortion rights has to have an exception to protect the life of the woman or to protect her health.

This is important because, I have to tell you, before Roe, before 1973--and I remember those years--life for women was very different. Before Roe, up to

1.2 million women each year resorted to dangerous illegal abortions. According to one estimate, at least 5,000 women a year died as a result of botched illegal abortions. Thousands of others nearly died, became infertile, or suffered other health complications.

I have a few stories--I want to tell a couple of them--of life before Roe.

Polly Bergen--we know her--an actress, went public with her story. She became pregnant when she was in her late teens and it was a disaster for her. As a result of an unsafe abortion, she had several miscarriages. At the age of 33, her doctor said, because of that botched abortion, she had to have a hysterectomy. She desperately wanted children. She had a hysterectomy.

Lynn Kahn was 24. She was divorced with two young children when, in 1964, she was raped by a stranger on her way home from work. Because she was so ashamed, she did not report the rape. But she soon found out she was pregnant. She scraped together $300 for an illegal abortion. She nearly died. She was hospitalized with a serious infection caused by a botched abortion.

During her multiday hospital stay, she was absolutely terrified that the police would come and arrest her because the treating physician had told her he was going to inform them about the abortion. The police did not arrive, but the whole experience was so traumatic that Lynn was unable to talk about it for over 20 years.

Mary Roper, a 19-year-old sophomore in college, was in an abusive relationship. She got pregnant, and the man she was dating encouraged her to get an abortion. She had been raised a Catholic and felt she could not be single mother in her community. She endured three attempts to end her pregnancy--one person used a coat hanger, and one a hose. During the time she was seeking an abortion, she was questioned by the police about her intention. She finally found a doctor in Chicago, 3 hours away, to perform an abortion. She continued to have problems and a couple of months later needed her parents' written permission to receive a medically necessary abortion. She continues to have nightmares today.

Elizabeth Furse, a former Representative from Oregon, was 25 in 1961, married and pregnant with her third child. During the first trimester of her pregnancy, she developed the measles. She was subsequently tested, and the tests confirmed what she and her husband, and obstetrician, had feared: if she carried her pregnancy to term, the baby would likely be blind, deaf, and severely brain damaged. They were anxious to have more children but did not want their child to suffer and be in pain, and so they sought an abortion. Her physician was sympathetic but would not perform an illegal abortion. At that time both the doctor and Elizabeth could be prosecuted and jailed for terminating the pregnancy. She did not want an illegal abortion and could only have one legally if her life was threatened. Since she had one kidney, her doctor thought that they might be able to persuade a panel of doctors that he life would be in danger if she carried the baby to term. They agreed, but required her to have a total hysterectomy at the same time.

Rollyn Carlson of Austin, TX, was 20 years old in the summer of 1971 and pregnant. She decided to have an abortion and found an office in Mexico on the other side of the Texas border. After the abortion, she bled heavily and ran a high fever for 3 days. She was one of the lucky ones. She married and had two children. She now has a teenage daughter and is concerned about her. What if she got pregnant? What if she needed an abortion? Rollyn worries that if abortion is illegal, her daughter would have to have an illegal abortion and could die.

Sherry of Peoria, IL, was married with two children when in the mid- 1950s, she was brutally raped and left for dead. She did not die, but as a result of the rape, she became pregnant. She went to her doctor-- he would not perform an abortion. She went to another--he would not perform an abortion either. She then resorted to ``home remedies'' such as pounding on her abdomen with a meat mallet and throwing herself down the stairs. It did not work, so she went to the local abortionist. He was drinking during the procedure and offered to give her back some money if she would perform oral sex on him. She subsequently started to hemorrhage and was hospitalized. Decades later, she still has nightmares about the procedure.

Romanita of Pittsburgh, PA, married and had three children, one--her daughter, Norma--with spina bifida. Her husband was a heroin addict and had left the home. One day he showed up and raped her. He then disappeared, and she found out she was pregnant. She did not want to take the chance of having another baby with deformities. She sought out an illegal abortion and experienced bleeding for 2 weeks.

So the point is that when the Court made this historic decision called Roe v. Wade, women were dying, maybe 5,000 a year. And you ask me, why would people, lawmakers, want to see us go back to those days? I will tell you right now, I don't understand it. It isn't right. It isn't right for the women of this country. It isn't right for the families of this country. Roe v. Wade was a balanced decision.

Then you have a situation where we wish we had more family planning funds because then we would be in a situation where we would not have these unwanted pregnancies. The same people who want to outlaw abortion are not interested in family planning funds. And interestingly, the same people who want to go back to the days when abortion was illegal, who will fight for the right of the fetus over the right of a woman, where are they, sometimes, on preschool programs, afterschool programs, caring for our children, helping our children? A lot of times they do not vote for it. As a friend of mine once said, he sometimes thinks that some of our colleagues who take this position, and then don't help the kids, are all for the kids between conception and birth; and then where are they?

So the reason we are here tonight is because the House is so radical on the point that they will not accept our language, that simply says: The decision of the Supreme Court in Roe was appropriate and secures an important right, and such decision should not be overturned.

Imagine, they say they want S. 3 so badly, they want to outlaw this medical procedure, which is the first time an accepted medical procedure is outlawed by politicians, but yet they cannot accept this language, which has no force of law. That is the incredible thing. It is a sense of the Senate. It does not even have the force of law, but it shows you that the goal here is not simply outlawing this one procedure; it is overturning Roe. I cannot say that enough because that is absolutely true, even when 80 percent of the people said that whether to have an abortion is a decision to be made between a woman and her doctor.

This debate is very serious. It is very serious because the underlying bill, S. 3, which bans this procedure, makes no exception for the health of the woman, and we tried every which way to do that. We said: Roe is the law of the land. Under Roe, the life and the health of a woman must always be protected. So in order to be constitutional, we are willing to walk hand in hand with you, and we will ban this procedure, even though some of us believe we should not get into playing doctor--that is not our role. There is no OB/GYN in this body. People don't come to us when they are sick. They come to us when they are sick and tired of politics, but they don't come to us when they are physically ill.

We were willing--those of us who are very pro-choice--to say: We will accept this if you will have an exception for the life and the health of a woman. Oh, no. They would not do it. That is why our language on Roe, that we attached to this bill, is so important. Because, folks, this bill, when it becomes law--and it will become law--is going straight to the Court.

We want the Court to understand we stood firmly for Roe. When they take a look at the outlawing of this procedure, and when they see there is no exception for the health of a woman, they will realize maybe some people voted for it who would have preferred a health exception. By showing them we have the votes to sustain a sense of the Senate in favor of Roe, we will be sending a strong signal on behalf of the women of this Nation to the courts.

Yes.

Nebraska.

It was in 2000. It was a case of a Nebraska law. And, yes, the Court found it unconstitutional.

What the authors of S. 3 will tell you is they have met the test. But what constitutional lawyers tell us is that the test isn't met at all. There is no exception for health. My colleague actually carried the health exception.

Now, this is what the Supreme Court said--and I am glad my colleague asked this question--in Stenberg v. Carhart. They basically said: If you are outlawing a medical procedure, you have to have a health exception.

The governing standard requires an exception ``where it is

necessary, in appropriate medical judgment for the

preservation of the life or health of the mother.''

Our cases have repeatedly invalidated statutes that in the

process of regulating the methods of abortion impose

significant health risks.

My friend is right on target. This is the Supreme Court.

Working with physicians across the country, I want to tell you what they have told us in writing. I ask unanimous consent to print those letters in the Record.

What the physicians have told us is there are serious health consequences of banning safe procedures such as the one that will be banned in this bill. One is hemorrhage. People can die, they can lose blood, or be ill for a very long time. They can rupture their uterus and therefore never be able to carry a baby. They could get blood clots and have serious brain damage, an embolism, a stroke. There could be damage to nearby organs. There could even be paralysis. These are the terrible incidents that could happen to a woman if a doctor is in a situation of an emergency late-term procedure and is not able to use everything he has been able to use up until S. 3.

The answer is absolutely not. That is why it is so shocking to me. My friend knows because he worked hard on this. He tried to get a health exception. As a matter of fact, it was very strong language. Will my friend remind me what he said in making that health exception?

Well, I would say politics is part of it, but I would also say there is an agenda in this Senate and in the House. That agenda is to overturn Roe, to keep on pushing through bills that challenge Roe directly. And Roe, as I said, is very clear on the health exception.

Let's go back to the first chart. The bottom line is, Roe is very clear:

In 1973, for the stage subsequent to viability, the State

in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life

may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe--

which is a fancy word for ban--

abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical

judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the

mother.

This is the heart of Roe.

That is right.

That is right. But it is even worse because the language Tom Harkin had written into the bill, the sense-of-the-Senate language, is now being stripped out of the bill by the House. The reason we are here talking about this is, I want the Senate to disagree with what the House did. It is bad enough to do what we have done here without my vote--and I believe without yours, although I am not sure in the end how you voted.

The bottom line is, it is bad enough to ban a procedure and make no exception for the health of a woman. It is so violative of her rights and her dignity and of the respect that is due her. But in addition, they stripped out the language we added that said, maybe people, for whatever reason, are going to vote for this, but we also want to go on record in support of Roe. The reason we are here now is that the House, rather than take that language and send it off to the President, would have gotten their ban with a little sense-of-the-Senate language that supported Roe. No, the House had to prolong this, strip this out. And now to get to conference, we have to have a motion to disagree with what the House did, which I hope we will disagree with what they did.

So what I was trying to do and what Harkin was trying to do--and we all were trying to do--is say: S. 3 has problems, but you should know we still support Roe.

That is right.

It would be a disaster for women. I have noted that before Roe, 5,000 women a year died because there were very harsh laws. If Roe v. Wade was eliminated, women would not have the right to privacy in this matter. Early-stage abortion would not be between her and her doctor and her God and family, but it would be a matter for Senators to determine--and State Senators and assembly members and Governors all over this country. And a woman would risk her freedom if she had an abortion, just like we had before 1973.

So affirming Roe v. Wade is the right thing to do. It has made a difference in women's lives. More than anything, I think as our country matures, we recognize that women deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. It has been a long, hard road for women in this country, I say to my friend who is such a supporter of equality across the board. Women didn't even get to vote until 1920. We had to struggle. In 1973, I remember it very well. I remember women risking their lives to get an illegal abortion. I had read a case of a woman who was raped and she was so fearful and embarrassed and ashamed, she got an illegal, botched abortion. She was sick and the doctor even threatened to call the police on her.

I think the Senator is right. The further we get away from those years, there is less memory. I think there is something else. I think most people--young people and middle-aged people--who don't have that many memories of it think Roe v. Wade will not be overturned; it is just a slogan.

Let me say what my friend knows so well. Roe v. Wade is hanging by a 5-to-4 vote in the Supreme Court. That is why I think my colleagues keep coming back with this approach of banning this medical procedure, which many doctors have used because it was the safest one to save the life and health of a woman. They keep coming and they keep thinking someday the Court will reverse it and go 5-to-4 the other way. I think at that point women will rise up. But it is our job. That is why I am so grateful to the Senator for coming over here. It is our job because we are lawmakers to look ahead and not wait for that crisis, and to make the point and to discuss what could happen to a woman. She could have a stroke if this procedure is outlawed. She could have a hemorrhage or a blood clot. She could become paralyzed. She could be infertile. These are horrible things that can happen to our daughters, our granddaughters, and it could even be worse. We can have some States, if Roe were overturned, that could put a woman in jail, could put a doctor in jail for trying to assert a privacy right.

There is no question about it. With this administration, the very first thing the President did was put in place the international gag rule, which stopped nonprofits all over the world from getting Federal funds to use to help these women to plan their families.

Let me tell you what has happened. We have seen already an assault on a woman's right to choose. I think my colleague is absolutely right to point out that Roe is just one of their goals; it is their major goal, however. I will tell you what is happening. Federal regulations were issued by this administration that make embryos and fetuses, but not pregnant women, eligible for health benefits. What you will see is this is all leading up to the place where a woman eventually will not have a right to choose, or any rights at all when she is pregnant. In other words, pregnant women now cannot get the prenatal care; it is the fetus. We have never done that before. We have always recognized that it is the woman who is nurturing that child; that the woman gets the help and the child gets the nourishment.

There is legislation being pushed here to recognize an embryo as a person with rights separate and apart from the woman. That is another move to set up a situation where abortion, even in the first minute, would be seen as murder. So this is what is happening today. There is moving legislation forcing some young women to make reproductive health choices alone and criminalizing caring adults who help them. There are attempts to block women's access to RU486, a drug that is proven safe and effective and would be an alternative to surgical abortion. There are attempts to block access to emergency contraception. There is a denial of Roe v. Wade protections to Federal employees and low-income women who rely on the Federal Government, who live in the District of Columbia, and to U.S. servicewomen living overseas, and women in Federal prison. These women cannot get the health care if they want to exercise their right to choose, whereas a wealthy woman can do that.

Here is your point: They are starving funding for family planning programs, both here and abroad. And there is also the cancellation of international family planning funding. We voted in Congress for $34 million for international family planning money. The Bush administration will not spend a penny. When you ask them why, they say these agencies are using it for abortion. That is plain untrue. It is untrue. They don't because they are audited and monitored, and they cannot.

In winding down this debate--and we have several hours left--I want to say why I think it is so important that we stand in favor of Roe v. Wade. We are going to go back to what the debate is really about. It is about standing up for the Senate language that was brought to us by the Senator from Iowa, Tom Harkin, with over 50 of us signing on and voting for it, that simply says it is the sense of the Senate that the decision of the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade was appropriate and secures an important right, and such decision should not be overturned. It is a very straightforward and simple statement--elegant, if I may say so; it is an elegant amendment by the Senator from Iowa that says to the women of this country that we respect you and, as my friend said, he is personally opposed to abortion. You know what. That is so much that is right in this country of ours. That is what being pro- choice is--that each of us in our own hearts, with our own family, with our God, can decide this issue for ourselves, without Senators peering into our private decisions. What a horrible thought is that. Really, life is complicated enough without having a bunch of Senators deciding what we should do in the privacy of our own homes in the early stage of a pregnancy.

That is what Roe was--a very balanced decision. It says: If you want to go through with this pregnancy, absolutely that is your right, but if you do not, in the early stages it says to women: We respect you enough, we give you that dignity; we trust you enough to make that decision.

Senator Harkin said it right. This Senate stood up with him and we voted in favor and appended that language to the banning of this medical procedure. Our colleagues in the House looked at this--and they are so radical, I say to my friend--and rather than moving that bill right through to the President's desk with sense-of-the-Senate language that has no force of law, they chose to strip out this language from the bill, and now we have to take this bill to conference.

The reason I am here and the reason the Senator from Illinois is here tonight is to say we are going to take another stand in favor of Roe. We are going to vote to disagree with what the House did. We hope that vote will be large, and we hope that the conferees will, therefore, go into that conference and push hard to have this language added.

If this language is not added, this Senate is going on record with S. 3,

minus this language, of saying: Women's health is just not important. I hope every woman in this country, whether they agree with Roe or they disagree with Roe, whether they themselves would make one decision or another, will come together and say: Pro-choice means that the Government respects the individual, and isn't that really what our country is all about?

I thank the Chair. I yield back my time.

Mr. President, the images of September 11, 2001, remain etched in our minds and our hearts. On this second anniversary of the attack, we commemorate those who died in the attacks and the unwavering spirit of those who survived. We remember the true heroism that emerged out of tragedy, how strong and united we can be, how we can set aside differences for the greater good and work together.

Californians were part of each tragic moment of that day. Some were trapped in the World Trade Center. Some were at work in the Pentagon. And the fates of others were sealed as they boarded planes bound for San Francisco or Los Angeles. All four planes used by the terrorists on September 11 were headed for my State of California.

I want to remember the more than 50 Californians who were victims of the September 11 attacks. Their memories will live on and their legacies will live on, as will the memories and legacies of every innocent victim who we lost on that tragic September day.

The people of California join the Nation in mourning the loss of these Americans:

David Angell; Lynn Angell; David Aoyama; Melissa Barnes; Alan Beaven; Berry Berenson; Dr. Yen Betru; Carol Beug, Mark Bingham; Deora Bodley; Touri Bolourchi; Daniel Brandworst; David Brandhorst; Ronald Gamboa; Charles ``Chic'' Burlingame; Thomas Burnett; Suzanne Calley; Jeffrey Collman; Dorothy DeAraujo; Lisa Frost; Andrew Garcia; Edmund Glazer; Lauren Grandcolas; Andrew Curry Green; Richard Guadagno; Stanley Hall; Gerald Hardacre; John Hart; John Hofer; Melissa Hughes; Barbara Keating; Chad Keller; Christopher Larrabee; Daniel Lee; Dong Lee; Joe Lopez; Hilda Marcin; Dean Mattson; Dora Menchaca; Nicole Miller; Laurie Neira; Ruben Ornedo; Marie Pappalardo; Jerrold Paskins; Thomas Pecorelli; Robin Penninger; Marie-Rae Sopper; Xavier Suarez; Alicia Titus; Otis Tolbert; Pendyala Vamsikrashna; Timothy Ward; Christopher Wemmers; and John Wenckus.

As we reflect on the horror and the pain of September 11, we embrace our Nation and our freedom. We must continue to work together to strengthen democracy in the world, and we must redouble our efforts to erase terrorism's shadow from our lives.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I will send an amendment to the desk. I ask if I have 15 minutes to present this amendment. Is that accurate?

I send the amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

I ask if my colleague from Nevada would like to take some time now for a consent request.

I would be proud to add Senator Reid as a cosponsor. I make that request.

Madam President, as we look at the request for $87 billion, most of it for Iraq, I hope we will find it in our hearts to look at the millions of children in our own country who are waiting to get into afterschool programs.

When we passed the No Child Left Behind Act, we made a promise to our children. I want to focus on that promise as it pertains to afterschool programs.

This is a blowup of a little of the act itself.

It is the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 that President Bush is talking about everywhere he goes in the country but unfortunately is underfunding.

It is very clear. It is in black and white. The No Child Left Behind Act spelled out exactly what was supposed to be spent on afterschool programs for our children. In the year 2002, we were supposed to spend $1.250 billion; in 2003, we were supposed to spend $1.5 billion; and in 2004--the bill we are debating now--we were supposed to spend $1.750 billion.

If this were an exam that our children were giving us, we would fail and fail miserably.

Afterschool is a great program. That is why this afterschool act which is part of the No Child Left Behind Act was supported by both sides of the aisle. It was written by myself and Senator Ensign. But I have to say, as the author of this bill, that it saddens me greatly to realize we are breaking our promises to children.

Let me show you how we have broken those promises. It is a sad chapter in our history. I told you that the No Child Left Behind Act calls for $1.7 billion this year. The Bush budget was $600 million. Not only would he not fully fund the No Child Left Behind Act but he cut it from the $1 billion level that is in the current bill before us. I commend my colleagues for at least adding $400 million and getting it up to level funding. The Boxer amendment doesn't even meet the commitment of the No Child Left Behind Act. If it did, I would be adding $750 million. But in an effort to win the votes of my colleagues, I am asking for $2.25 million.

The No Child Left Behind Act says we should be spending $1.75 billion. The Bush budget, with only $600 million, throws thousands of children out of coverage. The Senate bill comes to us with $1 billion, and I am attempting to begin moving this funding to where it would reach what the No Child Left Behind Act has promised. We are breaking a promise to our kids. I want to translate this money into children so that you see how we are not just talking numbers but we are in fact talking about children.

In the Bush budget, if we had not changed the number in the No Child Left Behind Act, 1.6 million fewer children than we promised would have been covered. Under the Senate bill right now, 1.1 million fewer children are covered. Even under my amendment, 800,000 fewer children than we promised would be covered.

To put it another way, the No Child Left Behind Act was supposed to cover 2.5 million children--our present children--after school. Instead, the Bush budget would cover 850,000 kids; the Senate appropriations committee, 1.4 million kids; and the Boxer amendment would cover 1.7 million children.

Even though we are not going to fully cover the 2.5 million children the act promised, at least we are moving up from where we are; 300,000 more children will be covered by the Boxer amendment.

The demand for afterschool care is great. According to the Department of Labor, the parents of more than 28 million school-age children work outside the home. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as many as 15 million latchkey children go home to an empty house.

Where are our family values? You are a devoted mother, Madam President. You know how important it is for the children to have someone to be there when they come home from school. Yet we are depriving millions of children whose parents can't afford to have a babysitter there, who can't afford to enroll them in some private afterschool program.

What does latchkey kids mean? They have a key, they let themselves in, and they are on their own. The parents can't afford programs for these children.

Mayors surveyed in six cities reported that only one-third of children needing afterschool care were receiving it. And the need for Federal help is growing.

In Minnesota, for example, State budget cuts are forcing schools and community partners to scale back or cut after-school enrichment programs.

This means that in Duluth, the Lincoln Park Youth Collaborative, which unites the Lincoln Park School with such organizations as Lutheran Social Service, the Boys & Girls Club, Duluth Family YMCA and Neighborhood Youth Services, will be dissolved. Additionally the Boys & Girls Club in Duluth is scaling back hours and activities.

Currently, more than 80 percent of the 665 students at Lincoln Park School participate in one or more of these programs. How are people in Duluth reacting? According to the Duluth New Tribune, they are afraid-- afraid that youth crime and violence will increase. And the children are devastated, as Tylor, a Lincoln Park seventh grader put it, ``How would they feel if they were kids and we were the ones taking the money and they wouldn't have anything to do?''

We know that when our schools close down, their afterschool programs--which is what is happening now because they are so short of funding. It is very devastating to children. It is very devastating to their families. And the teachers suffer because the kids are just not what they were before. They are not ready for school. They don't have mentors to teach them and to work with them one on one after school. Afterschool care is not a luxury; it is a critical investment in our children's future.

I want to show you a chart that shows juvenile crime. You might say it is a no-brainer. But I think it is worth looking at an FBI chart. What is it showing? Juvenile crime soars to its highest rate between the hours of 3 and 6 p.m. It just goes way up as soon as school ends. We all know this intuitively. But this is a FBI statistic.

What is happening is very clear. According to the National Center for Juvenile Justice, children are more likely to be involved in crime, substance abuse, and teenage pregnancies if they are left on their own after school. We know from studies that these afterschool programs work. They reduce crime. They reduce drug use. They reduce teenage pregnancies.

We have studies done by Quantum Opportunities. We have researchers from Columbia University and the American Health Foundation. They compared five housing facilities without Boys & Girls Clubs to five similar facilities with Boys & Girls Clubs. By the time the study was concluded, housing facilities without the Boys & Girls Clubs had 50 percent more vandalism and they had 37 percent more drug activity.

It is no surprise then that law enforcement supports afterschool programs. In a poll conducted by George Mason University, 86 percent of police chiefs nationwide said that expanding afterschool programs will greatly reduce youth crime and violence.

I will show you a quote from Sheriff Drew Alexander from Summit County, OH--right from the heartland. This is what he said:

We can pay now for afterschool programs and invest in

success. Or we can plan to spend far more later on prisons

for our failures, and funerals for their victims.

When I first got into politics and into local government, those of us who wanted to invest in things such as afterschool and early childhood education had arguments with law enforcement. They didn't agree. They said: We will get the criminal after the crime is committed.

They have changed dramatically. They are now on the front lines. They are my best helper in helping to get back-to-school programs, which we have enacted here. They have been my best helper in rounding up votes. I hope they have been successful today. We are going to find out later.

What is also remarkable is that while the administration cut afterschool funding in half, throwing millions of children out of afterschool programs,

another arm of the administration was saying in a paid-for advertisement. This is an amazing paid-for advertisement from our government: ``It's 3 p.m. Do you know where your kids are?''

Times have changed. Keeping kids off drugs means knowing

what they're up to. Especially after school. There are ways

to do it.

And they talk about various ways to keep your eye on your children. This is remarkable. It comes from the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

While the administration is spending money asking parents where their kids are after school, on the other hand, with their red pencil they are cutting the funding for afterschool. I don't know how this makes any sense. I was fortunate enough to spend the month of August in my home State. I went to a number of afterschool programs, as I have done over the years. As a matter of fact, I have made 23 visits to afterschool programs. I will show some of the pictures of the kids I have seen in these afterschool programs.

Here is a picture from Sacramento Start. These kids are thoroughly involved in work. They are playing a learning game. They are engrossed, instead of being home alone, watching cartoons, or out on the street getting into trouble.

Here is another picture from Sacramento Start. A mentor came in with this huge alligator. All the kids are standing around in amazement. There is not one disinterested look, not one idle face in the room. It is so exciting what can be done and what is happening in California and across this country in afterschool programs.

Here is an afterschool program at Sullivan Middle School in Fairfield, CA. We call this program, which I visited, The Place To Be After 3. These kids are shining. Walk in there and anyone will see they feel proud of who they are and what they are doing. You can see from the smiles on their faces. When you ask them why, and I do every time I go to one of these programs, they say, ``We are safe. Kids ask us to do things after school that are not good and we just say, 'We can't. We are in afterschool programs.''' They come home; they have done their homework; they can have family time. When mom and dad get home--or if it is a single-parent household, they are exhausted. They have to make dinner, make sure the child is bathed and ready for the next morning. The bottom line is the child comes home, the homework is done, and they can then bond with the parent.

It really works.

I will read some of what students have told me. One of L.A.'s best students said:

The most important thing I learned was that anything I set

my mind to, I can do.

That is from a fifth grader at Hart Street Elementary School.

Another from Manchester Avenue Elementary School said when asked what he most liked:

There are no strangers to harm us, because the teachers are

around.

From a fourth grader at Canoga Park Elementary School:

I know if I'm in trouble, I can turn around and they'll be

there for me.

And then a parent of a student:

My daughter has gone from the bottom 30% to the top 25%

after joining the LA Best afterschool program.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record other stories of other children.

I will wrap up right now by saying, we need to look inside our hearts. We represent American children. They need our help. These programs work. These programs deserve to be fully funded because the President and the Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act. To freeze these programs for another year makes 3 years in a row.

How can I tell my kids that the kids in Iraq are more important than them? I am going to do my part to help the kids in Iraq; I am doing my part. I will do my part to help the kids in Afghanistan; I am doing my part. But I will not walk away from doing my part for the children in California and the children all across this country. I urge a ``yea'' vote on this amendment.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask a minute of my colleagues' time to call attention to this vote we just cast because I think sometimes we go through the motions and we do not connect the dollar amounts to the children.

We have just deprived 300,000 children in every one of our States of afterschool care, after being told by law enforcement that it helps solve crime problems, after being told by parents that it makes their children happy, after learning from study after study that the kids do better.

I think it is very sad, indeed, for the children of America to know they will not have this afterschool opportunity that will keep them on the right track when we are giving billions of dollars to the children of Iraq and billions of dollars to the children of Afghanistan. Lord knows, I want to help them, too. But how about the children of America who were promised in No Child Left Behind that they would get afterschool care?

This program has been flat-lined for 3 years in a row. It is a sad day, and I hope we will reverse ourselves at a future date.

Mr. President, I join my colleagues in paying tribute to former Senator Vance Hartke of Indiana, who passed away this summer.

Throughout his three terms in the Senate, Vance Hartke was known for his tremendous energy, vision, and courage.

First elected to the Senate as part of the great Democratic class of 1958, Vance Hartke campaigned with legendary vigor and vim, visiting every county and town in Indiana and stopping to talk and listen to everyone who would stand still. He worked hard to benefit his home State, using his chairmanship of the Commerce Transportation Subcommittee to bring key road and rail projects to the Hoosier State.

Senator Hartke helped enact landmark legislation, including the progressive programs that made up President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society. Despite fierce opposition, he helped steer Medicare through Congress. He was the Senate's acknowledged champion of higher education and adult education, and he also helped lead the efforts to expand veterans benefits and establish Federal student loan programs.

In the mid-1960s, Senator Hartke put his political future on the line when he became one of the first Senators to oppose the war in Vietnam. In following his conscience, he parted ways with most of his constituents and his good friend President Johnson, but he stuck to his principles and survived a bruising reelection campaign in 1970.

Though Senator Hartke lost his Senate seat in 1976, he became a good friend and adviser to the man who defeated him, Senator Richard Lugar, and he never lost his passion for politics or his home State.

Senator Vance Hartke served the people of Indiana and the U.S. Senate with great distinction. I am honored to add my voice to the chorus of praise for his life's work and legacy.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

I would like to ask a question of my colleague. Here we are in the week of September 11. We are going to memorialize the heroes of September 11. The last memory we all have of our President going down to Ground Zero and placing his arms around the shoulders of these brave people--and we just found out they were in serious danger due to what was happening in terms of the quality of the air. We have found that it was not what it was said to be. Everything that I am reading and the mail I am getting indicates that many of our firefighters, emergency workers, and nurses are workers who rely upon overtime pay in order to keep their families together. I have the most emotional letters which I have put in the Record on this point.

Does my friend not see the irony in the fact that we are approaching the September 11 date and honoring the heroes of that day and they are the ones who are going to be hurt by this terrible ruling of the administration unless we prevail and have a vote to overturn it?

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

I thank the Senator so much.

I have been trying to thank the Senator for a couple of days now, but it has been hard to get a moment. I am so glad I have this moment to thank him so much for giving us an opportunity here in the Senate to stand up for working families.

I want to read just one letter I received from a woman in my State and ask the Senator to comment because his point is so right.

This Bush administration rule, which would take away the pay from hard-working people, is an attack on America's families. What is so interesting to me is, when I think back after 9/11 and the President going to Ground Zero and standing with his arms around firefighters and saying, ``These are the heroes,'' the firefighters are the ones who are going to be hurt by this change. The safety workers are going to be hurt.

I want to read a letter, and I want to ask you to please comment. Celine Krimston, the wife of a firefighter from La Mesa, wrote:

We are a family of four. Our children are four months and

five years of age. I work full time outside of the home to

make ends meet for our family. My husband's firefighter

income is not enough to support a family of four, yet too

high to receive any type of subsidy. Without the overtime pay

we would actually be deemed low income and qualify for

subsidized childcare. Our nation should be ashamed!

Please support America's working families by voting against

the Bush administration's proposal to cut overtime.

So all I want to do today, in this brief interlude, if you will, is to thank you. These working people--who barely have time for their kids, who are struggling to make ends meet, to put food on the table, to pay the rent or the mortgage, to give their family a modicum of security--are under attack by this Bush rule.

I want you to comment on this, if this does not reflect the comments you are hearing as our leader on this issue?

Did it not strike you--let's just use the word in an ironic way--when President Bush stood, on Labor Day, with a group of working people and talked about how much he understood that they were going through hard times and how important it was for them to get jobs? By the way, we have lost more jobs now than ever in history since Herbert Hoover, since the Great Depression.

But while he is doing this missionary work and trying to tell working people how he is going to get them jobs, he is also going behind their back and cutting their pay with this rule.

I wonder if my friend would comment on those two issues: The irony of this hitting our firefighters, our first responders, and also the fact that at a Labor Day event the President was saying how he understands working people, and then putting this provision in, which is such a disaster for our people.

Will my friend yield?

I would hope your wish comes true, but I understand we received a message that he would veto this bill with this in it. Let's hope he knows that letter came over here because, frankly, if he doesn't know it, he is not doing his job. So I have to assume he knows it. That is my own view, not that I want to ruin your day.

Maybe he will take back that letter he sent us.

Mr. President, the Reid-Bingaman amendment would provide an additional $210 million for Hispanic education. I am pleased to support it.

Since 1990, the number of school age Hispanic children has grown by 61 percent. This means that one out of every six children who attends public school is Hispanic. Yet, only about 60 percent of them graduate from high school. Hispanics over the age of 16 are more than twice as likely to drop out of school than African-American students and four times more likely to drop out of school than white students. In the Nation's l17 largest Hispanic-serving school districts, Hispanics lag behind white students in reading achievement by an average of 30 points and math achievement by an average of 27 points. And according to the 2000 census, only 8.5 percent of Hispanics between the ages of 25 and 34 had earned a bachelor's degree.

These statistics are troubling, and we need to address them. After all, education gives individuals the tools that they need to succeed. But education programs are underfunded, and the bill before us cuts $21 million from bilingual education, $11 million from dropout prevention programs, $10 million from high school migrant education, and $15 million from college migrant education.

The Reid-Bingaman amendment would reverse these proposed cuts and would increase funding for English instruction for non-native speakers, dropout prevention, and migrant education.

I urge my colleagues to vote for this very essential and worthwhile amendment.

Mr. President, it is my privilege today to recognize the 50th Anniversary of the Pinewood Derby. In 1953, Donald Murphy of Torrance, CA, initiated the first Pinewood Derby, an activity that has been enjoyed by millions of Cub Scouts and their families to date.

Mr. Murphy devised a miniature race car from a block of pinewood and asked his employer, the North American Aviation, to sponsor a race of the miniature cars for his son's Cub Scout troop. He hoped the event ``would foster a closer father-son relationship and promote craftsmanship and good sportsmanship through competition.'' The Pinewood Derby quickly became a staple event for Cub Scout Packs.

Today, Pinewood Derbies are fun family endeavors that encourage creativity, develop skills, and promote teamwork. At each race, cars with unique paint jobs and designs demonstrate the pride and sense of accomplishment that participants have in their Derby entries.

As the ``father'' of the Pinewood Derby, Mr. Murphy can be proud that the Derby has enriched the lives of children and families across the country for half a century. Please join me in recognizing the Pinewood Derby and Mr. Murphy's role in its success.

Mr. President, I wish to reflect on the proud history of Orange High School, which is celebrating its centennial this year. This is a particularly special moment because the Orange Unified School District is also celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

Earlier this summer, more than 220 friends and alumni gathered at an event called ``From Kibby to French'' in honor of the district's first superintendent, Harold Kibby, and current superintendent, Bob French. The high school and district have come a long way since its humble beginnings many years ago.

Orange High School opened in the ``Dobner Building'' on September 21, 1903 as Orange County's fourth high school. In its first year, it had an enrollment of 81 students. A few years later, it moved from the ``Dobner Building'' to a building at Palm Avenue and Glassell Street, which is now Chapman University's Wilkinson Hall. It was not until 1953 that it moved to its current site on Shaffer Street.

As those close to Orange High School celebrate this special occasion, they can reflect on the school's progress and historical milestones. The school newspaper, ``The Reflector,'' celebrated its first issue in 1916. The following year, the Class of 1917 painted a large ``O'' on a local hillside, which started a well-known tradition lasting through the 1960s. 1928 marked the beginning of another famous school practice, the ``Dutch/Irish Days,'' with a basketball game played between graduates of St. John's Lutheran School, the ``Dutch,'' and Orange Intermediate School, the ``Irish.'' The game was last played in 1965. In 1970, Orange High opened a stadium in honor of 1912 Olympic champion and class of 1911 alumnus, Fred Kelly. On the school's 75th anniversary in 1978, a museum opened in the Townsend Room.

I would like to conclude my remarks by describing a tradition some alumni from the Class of 1943 started about 15 years ago. They started to meet for breakfast once a month at Watson's Drug and Soda Fountain, a place near the ``Dobner Building.'' David Hart, an Orange High alumnus, was quoted in the Orange County Register on the centennial as saying, simply, ``We like each other . . . I have breakfast with kids I went to kindergarten with . . . Other schools don't have that.'' This unique feeling of closeness and friendship clearly shows the meaning of Orange High School its alumni.

I congratulate both Orange High School and Orange High School District on this important milestone, and wish them many more years of success.